 Welcome to WTDC 17 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where I'm very pleased to be joining the studio today, Mr. Karol Okonsky, who is Under Secretary of State for the Ministry of Digital Affairs for moment. Mr. Okonsky, thank you very much for joining us today. It's my pleasure, thank you. Now I'd like to start off by talking about this conference, WTDC 17, the World Telecommunication Development Conference. Why is this a conference important to you? Well, basically, I think what is worth mentioning is the fact that the ITU as an organization is an institution where we think that different countries, both the underdeveloped, the middle and the highly developed, can share the experiences, especially in the development sector. It's actually all about giving away all the knowledge and all the experiences, also some funding from the countries, to just, you know, we're already on the path and already succeeded, to the ones who just need some support. And we as Poland more or less, you know, also benefit from some of the help of the organization, because we are more or less moving from the, let's say, the underdeveloped to the highly developed country. And knowing that there is a framework where you can refer to, knowing that there is some states who are willing to include you in your projects and to make sure that you, you know, don't make the same mistakes, but you can benefit from the best practices. So this is, you know, this is basically the core of this, of the ITU. And in this respect, also the conference where it's the culmination of all the work that was done, the summary of work that was done so far, and setting also the goals for the next period. So from this respect, you know, very important. Now, the theme for this conference is ICTs for SDGs. In what way are ICTs being used to attain sustainable development in your region? Yes, I think this is very important to balance, you know, the high growth and the innovation with the fact that they should have, you know, some clear goal of not leaving behind some of the people who might not be so digitally, well, they would have the skills necessary to catch up with all the digitalization notion. So what do we do in Poland also? We try to even, well, we have called even our cross-country strategy the sustainable development strategy because we know that the society in Poland is not equal in the way that there are some still places or people who don't feel really at ease with the new technologies and all the ICT that can give them. And in this respect, we try to find ways to make the ICT as simple and as straightforward as possible to become sort of like a natural way for them. One of the examples I can give is that a very successful cooperation with banks in Poland. We agreed with the banks that people can use their banking, online banking credentials to log into the public portals, public sites, for example, to apply for the social welfare benefits. So in that way, you know, we try to get over some limits or borders that the people might encounter when trying to use ICT. A number of years ago, I mean, about 20 years probably, I did a piece on EuroNews about basically the infrastructure, mobile telephony actually being able to help people to get as communicated, communicate a lot sooner than before. I mean, there used to be 26-year waiting lists for a telephone and that kind of thing. Obviously, a lot of things have changed since then. But I wanted to ask you really just in terms of the adoption of ICTs, how is that going in Poland? Well, I think the adoption rate is, you know, getting, with each year it's getting higher and higher. And we see that it's, let's say, on both, I would say both, I would say two sides of this. First of all, is let's say like I said before, let's make sure that there are no barriers or limits or something that actually what people, what will make people, which generally are lacking time to make them actually do some additional work that they don't think is necessary. At the same time, the education in the way that the people know what they can get from ICT, but know opposed to potential risks. So they use it just wisely. And the last thing I would add is that what we try to do is try to, let's say, convince the people that there are really some valuable, for example, electronic services that can really make their life much easier. And in the end, you know, just making them just live better. So try to have the positive language about this and not trying to force them and feeling just unsafe with this. And in terms of policy and regulatory changes, what would you like to see and what do you think is needed in order to connect the next billion, I mean, in terms of a global perspective? Well, I think here what we should do is just continue the activities that were performed by ITR so far. So in terms of the standardization, especially with the moment that we will be approaching, adopting the 5G technology for the wireless communication, definitely here, the role of ITU as the entity to coordinate the efforts to make sure that there will be no isolated standards coming up because of the new technologies to making sure that it's streamlined in the right direction. And sharing also some, again, some best practices or some proof of concept, some point of views that might be, that might also speed up then the work that will be done in the countries that are just, you know, going in the next wave, I would say, after the leaders. This is three years since the last telecommunication development conference. What do you hope will come from this conference? What concrete steps do you think will be achieved? Well, I think that what most of the countries are hoping is that the regional initiatives that every continent of the region has come up here to propose, actually, they form kind of goals that are the most important things that each region things should do in the next period of time. In terms of Europe, for example, it was the idea of trying to build and supporting the building of the citizen-centric services, sort of the 5G already mentioned. So I think that confirming by this conference that the whole world has the same, well, the same opinion and in the end finishing this conference with the notion that, you know, despite all the differences between us, we can still come up with this simple and common message would be, I think, a very important step. So that would also allow us to look more optimistic into the future. Well, with an optimistic eye for the future. Thank you very much for joining us in the studio today and we wish you the very best. Thank you very much. Thank you.