 I'm here at ITU Telecom World 2012 in Dubai and I'm very pleased to be joined by Lina Ravindra Green who is CEO and Chief Consultant of Get It. Lina, thank you very much for being with us today. Thank you very much. Debates at ITU Telecom World 2012 focus on the current radical transformation of the ICT sector. What for you are the main challenges from this transformation? Well, first of all, I've been actually very fortunate to have taken scene telecom through many years. My first telecom was actually in 1987 and over the years have seen different technologies being the thing that was going to transform the home telecom industry from ATM to ISDN to the Internet. And as you know, everyone's been talking about convergence for a long time. But in some ways, what the radical transformation we're finding today is, right, that convergence we've been talking about for a long time about the telecom industry data and media is actually happening. There's a whole mesh of different players in this industry. Who's going to be making money? Where's the money flowing to? Is one of the key challenges that telecom operators are facing. The other thing is that we've had so many years of telecom deregulation and privatization that in many markets we just have so many players. So some of the key challenges people are talking about, is there enough spectrum to go around? Is there too much competition that margins are very low? How are we going to survive? Who's going to pay for the millions of people who are downloading YouTube videos, for example? Someone threw out the statistics about how in 2013 one day of traffic is what we had in one year of traffic in 2001. So the network demands are really, really huge. And this is what we are facing today, is this transformation that is finally kind of happening. And that challenge actually is very exciting because I've been involved in seeing this talk about this convergence and we've seen this convergence finally happening today. Okay, we've talked about the challenges. What about the opportunities are arising from this? So just like the challenges brought together many different players, that's actually where the key opportunities are going to be. As telecom operators, if they break away from thinking of themselves just as the pipes, the provider of the pipes and the access to the end user, but rather build into this transformation of this industry where basically voice is noise almost. It's all about data. It's all about, and also the beauty of the end-to-end paradigm used to be traditionally called the Internet. I found it interesting, one of the speakers at the opening ceremony talked about the Internet world and the telecom companies and how they are not working together. But largely what we're talking about is IP-based networks. Really, even media companies, a mobile company, all are IP-based networks. You've enabled this end-to-end paradigm and who produces content on YouTube? It's not YouTube. It's not the provider anymore. It's completely changed this whole paradigm of where the money is, where the content creator is. That's where the opportunities are coming from. What I see right now is telecom operators, three basic things they deal with. How do I keep capex stagnant? Of course, as you're building broadband, that's going to increase rapidly. That's an amazing opportunity here because now we have an area of huge innovations in, say, open-source routing technologies, green telecoms technologies that are really going to make your capex look very different. OPEX, how can I reduce my OPEX? Again, there are a lot of innovative ways people are looking at green ICT being energy efficiency and other ways in which energy OPEX. But revenue is where the excitement is. How can I create stickiness and loyalty in my customers? And how can I create new services? This area is very interesting as well because the opportunities may not necessarily be from me creating these services, but creating a platform of innovation that enables other entrepreneurs and young people and the power of the potential that unleashes that, that creates and adds value to my network. So it's a completely different paradigm of looking at where value is. I'd also like to ask you, what are your expectations of ITU Telecom World 2012? And what key message would you like to deliver here to our uniquely influential audience? Well, what I expect of any telecom that I come to, I think telecom is a very unique place in which the ITU has the ability to bring forward heads of governments and heads of telecom operators and vendors and create this conversation and dialogue in which people can exchange, how can we unleash that potential in the future? My passion has always been, I've been in telecoms for about 25 years and my passion has always been the bridging the digital divide. And as you can see, we're moving to broadband. That divide is actually redefined itself. We talked about bringing a telephone to walking distance of somebody. And now we're talking about bringing broadband internet to everybody. So the conversation has changed, but that passion and that mission hasn't changed. And that for me is where I'm involved in the two areas that I'd like to see governments and people be involved in. My last name being green, I'm very passionate about green ICT. I would like to see governments, for example, not not necessarily heavy handed regulation, but governments as procurers and governments off ICT actually lead the way in enabling green ICT to have that volume to make it, you know, basically sustainable ICT that we all are using. Using ICT as a leverage to help combat climate change and bring a more sustainable economy. So that's one area I'd like to see. The other area that I'm involved here at ITU telecom, which I'm very passionate about is the young innovators competition. I've been invited to be a panel on the judges, and I judge the second round as well, and I'm mentoring some of them. And that's actually one of the beauties and beauty spots I would say of ITU telecom 12. You have this experience of how innovators from different countries from Brazil, Kenya. That is what I want us to recognize. Because in telecom 99 Nelson Mandela stood up and he said, we need to have a South-South cooperation. And guess what? Necessity is the mother of invention. And especially in areas of bridging the digital divide, you can see amazing innovations coming out of scarcity of energy, scarcity of bandwidth, and the applications that people are coming up. That's what we need to help fund. That's how we need to innovate and allow them to go. And perhaps light handed regulation because at times, for example, in the last mile, they may be great partners for the telco. The telco may not have made business sense to go there. Then let the young innovators do it and partner with them. And together, we can bridge the digital divide in that way. That's what I would like to see. I certainly hope so too. Lionel Ruvindra Green, thank you very much for being with us today. Thank you very much.