 We're here at Wicket 2012 in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, and I'm very pleased to be joined by Dr Bob Horton who is consultant for the Department of Broadband Communications and the Digital Environment and previously a regulator for the Australian Telecommunications Authority. Dr Bob Horton, thank you very much indeed for being with us today. Thank you. Great pleasure to be here. I'd like to start off by talking about the last conference in 1988, 24 years ago, which was called WOTC or W-A-T-T-C which was held in Melbourne, and I believe that you were there, and perhaps you could tell us a little bit about what it was like then, what was happening there, and what has changed since then. Yes, thanks very much. It was quite a period of trepidation that we saw we were on the verge of a new era coming in in terms of regulation being separated out from the operator, the monopoly operator. Also, privatisation and corporatisation were on the way, and competition was a thing on the horizon. We saw this in Australia. We were developing legislation to prepare for it, and naturally all our colleagues around the world saw that we needed some refreshed telecommunications regulation to prepare for that, and certainly it was exciting times, but also, as I said, a great deal of trepidation. We didn't know what we were walking forward into, but yes, now we're here. That was called the spirit of Melbourne, by the way, and those of us who still remember that conference, and certainly me from Melbourne, are here with a baton to pass over to Dubai, and we pass it on with great pleasure. And what have been your impressions of the conference so far? At the moment, we're still skirting around on a lot of the important issues, and that normally occurs in international treaty discussions, and in particular, ITU is no different from any of that. The first week is laying out the ground and the positions and the separations, polarisations, and then we start to move in a little bit closer and trups, linking in some of the trade-offs and packages. So that usually is in the second week. So I don't feel any sort of concern at this stage that there's a divergence of opinions. People have been working on this for 24 years, so we can't expect too much in the first week, but we are making progress. What are the major issues being looked at here? Well, I categorise them probably four or five issues. Of course, the internet has received a lot of publicity, and we need to isolate what it is that the ITU can do for the internet world. The internet is not telecommunications, and telecommunications is not the internet. The internet is supported by a component called telecommunications, and that's the platform on which it operates. But in terms of where the ITU has a role in there is what we are exactly here to find out and convey to the outside world, where we have a legitimate contribution to offer and support for the internet. Our second area is insecurity. Security of services, and we've seen the intrusion of mounted forces into telecommunications. That's a very, very broad subject as well, and something where the ITU has a role to play, and there's plenty of potential in Guadalajara, gave us the boundaries of that. Now we need to encapsulate that either in the treaty text or in a resolution at this conference, so that we've got some traction within the regulations. Other areas that we need to help with is a definitional sense of operating agencies or recognized operating agencies. Just what we call our players in the industry without capturing them into regulatory nets, because some of them are not intended to be caught. Defense networks is an example. Some private networks. So we don't want to be overly obtrusive or intrusive with regulatory measures in a market that is developing remarkably with free market forces. Another area is that we recognize too that some countries still require the old set of rules for charging and accounting. Others depend on more commercial relationships and contracts. So that is a trend in a competitive market, but we need to preserve some of the old with some of the new. And that's the transition we're in, and that's where this conference finds itself in a period of transition from the old ways of old administrations negotiating with each other to new ways of where the market forces take over in a fair way, and we can back off with the regulatory overhang with that. But we need to preserve those two tracks, almost like two highways, so that we have a set of rules that can still be used if they're needed between monopoly organizations or state-owned enterprises and new commercial agreement packages. Some countries will transfer across to the other, and there'll be hybrid arrangements as well. That's the difficulty that we have, accommodating both, and that's something we have to find the compromise and offer something for both parties, and I think that's where a lot of the tension is. And what do you see as some of the likely outcomes of this conference? Well, I would hope that we can say to the rest of the world, we have a role to play in whatever you do in the services that you provide, the future competitive service providers, and this is the limits to what we can assist with, and please don't feel as trying to take over your patch, because there's enough work for us to do in ensuring the compatibility, the connectability of services and accessibility. So the ITU is divided into three areas of radio communications and telecommunications standardisation and development sectors, and each of those areas has, well, in radio communications, collaboration on a global basis, so we have a limited resource to play with, but importantly in telecommunications, we've got cooperation, cooperation with the platform that we are providing, and the basic technical standards that are required to make that operate and function properly. And then in developments, here we have the access for developing countries, so they need to be able to know how to use it to apply it, and to develop their networks so that they can reduce the cost of communications, they can use it to develop jobs, opportunities for economic growth and for education and social applications within their own countries. So, three areas, the development sector has very much on its plate to do in that access and what they do with it, what they're presented with as an access solution. And all by the 14th of December? Yes, yes, before that we need to agree because we have a day of just drawing this all together in a legal form and then signing off on it. So, do you feel confident that all these outcomes will be reached then? I feel confident if the will is there then we will achieve that, we'll achieve most of it, we might not be able to achieve all of it, if not we can back off to what we already had, but a lot of that is still very useful anyway. Nothing will ever be perfect in life and there were some imperfections in 1988 when we finished that, but it got us through, it got us through 24 years. So, it's a Pareto solution usually because satisfying everybody is impossible but it's a consensus that we hope to get to and I'm sure we will do by the end of next week. Dr Bob Horton, thank you very much indeed being with us today. Pleasure, thank you very much.