 Welcome to ITU Telecom World 2018 here in Durban, South Africa, where I'm very pleased to be joining the studio today by Shamil Jusab, who is the CEO of Vodacom. Mr. Jusab, thank you for joining us. Thank you, mate. Thanks for having me. I'd like to start off by asking you a little bit about smart digital development. It's the key catchphrase here at ITU Telecom World this year. What does it mean to you and how is Vodacom working towards it? Well, I think for me it's twofold. I think one is that we act as an enabler for smart digital development, and two is that it's an enabler for us. Let me explain the difference between the two. One is us enabling the industry or the broader market, if you like. And in that respect, it's important to have access to the right technologies, putting in the capital investment. It tells us very much about the capital investment, so that you have to put in the capital investment to have access to the latest technologies. And then that in itself will play a big role in helping to transform society. So that's the one side of it. And in that respect, having access to the latest technologies is things like narrow ban IoT, investment into artificial intelligence, investment into 5G into the future, readying your networks for 5G, investment into fiber. So all of that is important in trying to enable the broader society. So that's the one part, and also strong partnerships, I would say. And as an enabler internally, it's about how we use this technology to make us smarter in terms of the way we do things. An example of that would be artificial intelligence and machine learning, you know, basically deployed into our offerings, like I was just for you proposition, where today we sell 2.3 billion bundles, most of which are on machine learning, and it personalizes the offer to each customer and based on behavior, it then adapts the offer. And that's been extremely successful for us. So that is enabling us. Secondly, smart capex deployment, which technology do you deploy, where smart maintenance, these type of things. So using big data analytics to help us create the right, you know, put the investments in the right places and so on. But also making us faster to market, so, you know, introducing agile, but also using a lot of the tools, big data artificial intelligence in various different categories, from call centers to deployment of network to online sales and so on. So for me, it's both. I may be able to guess the answer, but I'm just wondering, in terms of innovation, which particular innovation do you think is going to be the most transformative? I think it's really comes down to, I think 5G is going to be transformative in a big way in that it now gives us capacity. And I think it gives us capacity that can emulate and maybe even bypass what is possible on a fixed line network today. And that then opens up endless possibilities. Secondly, it reduces the latency quite significantly. So VR augmented reality now becomes more virtual reality, augmented reality becomes more possible today. And that then, you know, enables a whole lot of new industries and creates a whole lot of new opportunities. And then I think IOT is another one. So there's quite a few impressive technologies at the moment that are out there. That's going to require investment, but I think what it will come a lot of opportunity and so on. And so that's on the technology side. I think the other thing that is crucial is policy. And I think firstly, having converged licenses are extremely important. So that's critical access to 4G spectrum, access to 5G spectrum, especially in Africa being proactive on it. I would encourage governments to really get behind 5G early on. You know, we only, we still don't have 4G spectrum in a number of countries, including South Africa, where we're still waiting for 700, 800 and 2.6. But you know, recently in some of our countries only have now access to 4G. So I would encourage regulators to be on the front foot on the 5G opportunity, particularly if we want to make a big dent in the cost to carry on one side. And also, this could be transformative for us because we don't have a lot of fixed infrastructure in Africa. So this could be really a transformative technology for us. It's not solely concerning Africa, but I wanted to talk about the rural connectivity gap. I just wanted to find out what key factors you think are going to be able to close that? Well, I think first and foremost, it's important for governments to have a clear policy and direction of what they want to achieve. Especially in terms of rural coverage, I think there's quite a few innovative models that you've seen from around the world that could potentially work in different markets. But I think firstly, policymakers need to be clear. One is obviously linking it to license obligations, so that's an obvious one. But also, encouraging partnerships, operators to work together, especially when it comes to rural coverage. That's the one part. And so that's important, and I think networks can share in that respect. But the other parties, I would say, partnering with the likes of the Googles and the Facebooks who are also trying to help to reduce the cost by creating open source type solutions. And I think we should really get behind that. We're currently doing some of those testing with some of these guys locally. And if that can drive down our costs, today it costs us about $50,000 to roll out a low cost site. If we can halve that cost, we can roll out twice as many sites. So it's in their interest, it's in our interest. So I think fostering those partnerships, firstly from us as private sector, but also government can play a role in helping to foster these parts and also helping with just putting in rapid deployment and those type of things, which makes it easier for us to deploy in some of these rural areas. And of course, partnerships can really help to stimulate investment in digital development. Very much so. So I mean, your partnership part plays a big part, especially in the digital development space, in a number of respects because it helps you to create ecosystems. And I think for countries, we need to start to ensure that really from an education perspective, from our universities, from what we're educating, that we're really behind the opportunities that is going to be presented with this new digital development or what we're calling the Fourth Industrial Revolution. But it's important to get behind it, make sure that our syllabus and so on speaks to it so that we can create the right caliber of people, but also to foster more little development hubs, if you like. Because with that level of innovation, you know, we can be on the front foot in terms of things like artificial intelligence, machine learning, IOT, and create some homegrown solutions that can work not just for Africa, but for the world. To close, I just wanted to ask your presence here at Telecom World is obviously very valuable. I wanted to find out, what's the value of attending events such as this? Well, I think firstly, I mean, it's what you're doing is you're bringing, you know, firstly, the regulatory part, international expertise from all over the world to one single event. So there's a lot of, firstly, showcasing, you can see in terms of products and solutions and that, so that's one part of it. But more importantly is the meetings around it. It's an opportunity to engage with people from all over the world. You know, some of the meetings that I had earlier, you're starting to, you're meeting with policy makers, you're meeting with international players from China, from around the globe, and there's areas of cooperation, right? So I think that for me is the most important part of the ITU. Shamil Juseb, thank you very much indeed. Thank you. Thanks.