 We're here at ITU in Geneva, and I'm very pleased to be joined by Dr. Sam Pitroda, who is advisor to the Prime Minister of India, ITU Broadband Commission member and holder of an ITU World Telecommunication and Information Society Award. And we're going to be discussing the first advisory board meeting of the ITU-led Empowering Development Initiative and its position as chairman of this meeting. Dr. Pitroda, thank you very much indeed for being with us today. Thank you for inviting. I'd like to start off by asking you about your role in the Empowering Initiative. If you could tell us a little bit about what the initiative is about and what Empowering Development means to you. Today, Empowering Development is one of the most important topics to work on, mainly because today we have seven billion mobile phones. You know, it took us 110 years to get to billion phones, and then all of a sudden in about 15, 20 years, we have six billion more. So now that we are fairly well connected globally, even in remote as part of the world, you will find mobile phones, and the numbers are increasing every month. So now that we are well connected, what do we do with this connectivity? So we are really now focusing on using mobile connectivity for development. Development for the people at the bottom of the pyramid, inclusive growth, development related to education, health, to get young people excited on sports, on e-commerce, mobile payment, e-governance. These are some of the key areas which would help overall development all over the world, especially for the people in developing countries at the bottom of the pyramid. This is a new tool, new opportunity. And that's why I think it is very exciting. It's very timely. I really want to compliment ITU for taking this initiative. I think it will go a long way. What were the items on the agenda today at the Empowering Development Advisory Board meeting? It was the first meeting, and I know there was a lot of discussion going on. I wanted to ask you, how were these issues addressed by the board? First of all, the idea was to really meet with the whole group and develop some synergy and consensus. One on agenda, two on the approach we should take going forward. In the first meeting in a day, you can't really accomplish a lot. But the fact that we could all come together and discuss and understand each other, because we are from a variety of backgrounds, not just telecom. It's not about technology. It's about health people, education people, operators, application people, software developers. I think it was important for all of us to really come together and develop some consensus. I think we did pretty well all of that in first two, two and a half hours. Before lunch, we all could develop some consensus on what we should do collectively going forward. Then after lunch, we decided to look at next steps. What should we do? So we collectively agreed that we should set up seven working groups. One group of people may be three to four. And focus on topics like health, education, commerce, e-governance, sports, advocacy, new business models. And then these groups will look at variety of issues related to what's going on in each of these areas today. What can we really add? What's our role? How can we bring other stakeholders together? How do we create public-private partnership? And then they'll come back as a group with these reports in maybe three months. Then we'll meet up in three months and collectively again decide what should be our role. I think there is a great need to educate people. People don't quite get the role technology can play in expediting the process of modernization, in delivering public services to people at lower cost, in improving productivity efficiency. But it requires political will. It requires commitment. And I think that's our task, really. As chairman of the first advisory board meeting, in your opinion, what measures can be taken to guarantee the success of this initiative in the future? I think timing is right. I'm convinced it will succeed. The question is how do you measure success? I wouldn't be too quick to measure success. I think our job is to plant seeds and not worry about fruits. I may not be around to see the fruits of these initiatives because these initiatives take a long time, but our job is to plant right seeds. If we do that, I think we'll see results in the next five years, 10 years, because there are a lot of vested interests. People don't want to change. Change is not something that comes easy. So we are talking about generational change in education, generational change in health delivery, generational change in commerce, and it requires ecosystems to be set up. In each of these areas and some more, we need to set up new ecosystems, new tools, new technology, new processes, new mindset, and that won't come easy. So I wouldn't be in a hurry to look for results. But I think the fact that we are planting seeds, we have taken the initiative, will go a long way, and people will join us. It is a journey. We are not looking at destination right now. I think we are starting the journey and hope people will join us, work on their own, because this has to be done at local level. We need local business models, local initiatives, local language, local content, local applications, and it cannot be done sitting in Geneva or somewhere else. We could be a catalyst. We could give processes, designs, trials. The key at the end of the day is affordability, scalability, and sustainability. If it is not affordable, it's not going to scale. So we got to be innovative, creative in not only identifying applications, in making sure it is cost-effective, so it will scale. And it's not about really pushing something down. It is about creating pool, so people demand these things. And that's the challenge. Dr. Sampath Reddy, thank you very much for being with us today. Thank you.