 Welcome to the ITU studio in Geneva where we're here for the Future Network Cast Symposium and I'm here in the studio today with Belal Jamoussi who is the Chief of ITU's Study Groups Department. Belal, welcome to the studio. Thank you Max. Now let's talk a little bit about the symposium, perhaps you could offer us a little introduction to this symposium and why are the conversations taking place here important? The conversation is very important because it's bringing two sectors together, the ICT sector and the automotive sector. We do the symposium in collaboration with UNICE, our partner from the automotive sector and we use this platform of the Geneva Car Show usually to bring the stakeholders from both sides to have this dialogue. And this year is the 15th year and the dialogue continues because there is more and more ICT that goes in the car. The car is now, most of the cars are salt connected and that connectivity is based on certain numbers and codes that come from the ITU and once the car is connected it has to have a lot of standards that make it part of the connected world. Now ITU is providing a platform for this conversation but is there a key message that ITU would like to get across at this year's symposium? Yes, part of the SGG's goals is that we reach half of the deaths on the road by 2020 and it's going to be difficult to reach that goal this year. Part of the reducing fatality on the road, one of the elements that we have is the emergency call. So God forbid someone gets in an accident, all the cars that are sold today they come with an emergency call and the number that is used usually for the emergency call is not tied to a particular geography. So it doesn't have a country code like here in Switzerland 41 for example, but many of the cars they come with a country code 882 or 883 that are non-geographic, they're really shared globally and they are assigned directly by the ITU, by the TSP director. And those codes allow the car anywhere in the world to call the emergency line and the car will call not the person in the car because in an accident people may not be able to call. So that when the call is received by the call center it has a country code 882 and 883 and sometimes the call center will try to reach back into the car and it's important for administrations, regulators and operators to open those codes 882 and 883 for emergency calling. So for this year we are seeing massive deployment of connected cars but with that we need to see massive connectivity with these two emergency codes. And how close are we to having that university deployed? We have at least 15 large operators today who are deploying it and some of the stumbling blocks that they're seeing is that these codes are new, many regulators are not aware of their use in emergency calls and they find a bit of difficulty and delay in getting those numbers opened for calling like an irregular telephone call. So that's why we're really trying to use this meeting and this symposium to reach out to all the stakeholders and ensure that these codes are opened as quickly as possible. And from the consumers point of view it's not just an open line like a Siri or an Alexa listening in all the time but it's essentially when that line is activated that they can hear what's going on in the car. Exactly. So if there is a crash the car itself will call for help and the helpers, the emergency team needs to be able to dial back into the car and listen in and talk to the survivors. It sounds incredible. So I mean obviously that would hopefully save people's lives and draw the emergency services attention to the most critical accidents. Perhaps you could tell us more about ITU's standardization work in support of automotive innovation. I mean you've just mentioned one here but perhaps you could share some of the insight into ITU's data projects in this area. Yes. Of course once the car is connected it has to have secure communication and when cars are connected today they have maps for example, they have software that operates the engine and you know the car itself and manufacturers need to do software updates like our computers once in a while have an update. The car itself needs to have an update and that needs to be happening over the air so over the cellular network or a Wi-Fi network and those updates need to be able to be done in a secure fashion. So in our study group on security we have a new standard to secure the connection for over the air software updates. The other aspect of standards is that when you're in the car and you bring your mobile phone often there is a Bluetooth connection and in order to provide high quality voice in the car using the speakers in the car and the microphone and so on that we have a number of standards to ensure the high quality and mobile phones who comply with the ITU standards and have been tested for compliance around our conformity database. Another aspect is the intelligibility of the car especially in an emergency call. We want to make sure that all the cars have the quality of service and quality of experience standards in ITU that allow for that emergency call to have the right quality in order to reach the emergency workers. So security, quality of service, I mentioned the numbering but also when we talk about connected car, usually the most screen we watch in the past was TV. Then we have the second screen as our laptop, the third is the smartphone and the fourth screen is in the car. All the new cars are coming with the screen and so we have a group working on the multimedia and the vehicle for both entertainment and infotainment but also the connectivity for the car to operate properly to do the software updates and so on. So we have a group focused on vehicular multimedia and the latest and greatest is the use of artificial intelligence for autonomous driving. UNECE has regulations on assessing the behavior of UNI as drivers. We have a driver's license and there are guidelines on what constitutes a good behavior of a driver. Now take or replace the human driver with the machine, the AI, artificial intelligence. This new focus group we have on AI for autonomous and assistive driving is trying to assess whether the AI algorithm is behaving properly like human or hopefully better. So that's the latest in terms of autonomous driving use of AI. This focus group just started this year and it's led by the Alliance for Autonomous Driving which brings many cars working on autonomous driving and we are doing this in partnership with UNECE so hope we're quite excited about this new project as something that will provide more road safety because the more autonomous driving you have, hopefully less errors we have on the road. That's incredibly fascinating and cutting-edge, that's wonderful. Thank you very much for sharing this with us. More broadly we see ICTs making a big entrance into all industry sectors. I wanted to ask you how is ICT-enabled innovation in other industry sectors influencing ITU standardization? Yes, we're very pleased with the growth of membership in the ITU, particularly in the standardization sector. 2019 alone we had about 60 new companies join ITU and when we talk about intelligent transportation system in the automotive industry we have some big manufacturers like Volkswagen Group and Hyundai. These are automotive industry companies that are joining the Information and Communication Technologies UN Agency because of the standards we were talking about, because of the quality of service, because of the security over the air software updates and also the alliances the Alliance for Autonomous Driving which brings many car manufacturers. We also have a Chinese Alliance TIAA that brings a lot of the automotive industry in China. So these continental, for example, Bosch, many companies that really are either producing components or producing an entire system are joining the ITU to work on this intersection of the ICT and the automotive sector. I was going to say it has to have a buy-in from all the players to make sure that everything works smoothly. Well, Bilal, thank you so much for joining us in the studio today. It's been a totally fascinating ride to be with you and hopefully we will catch up with you again in the very near future where I'm sure you will share some more fascinating insights into ICTs and intelligent transport systems. Thank you very much. Thank you.