 And here we are on day 3 of GSR 17 and I am with Mr. Shola Taylor, the Secretary General of the Commonwealth Telecommunications Organization, CTO. Great to have you with us. Thank you. All right, tell us a little bit about the CTO. What exactly is the Commonwealth Telecommunications Organization? Well, it's an organization which was established in 1901. That's 16 years ago. Wow. It has evolved from being a club of monopoly telecom operators to the government, an organization that is a membership organization which includes regulators, policymakers, operators. And our role is essentially to assist our countries in the development of ICT services in various countries. Currently, our strategy is to focus on the specific assistance that countries need, namely one, cybersecurity strategy. We have seen cyber attacks across the world. We are currently assisting our member countries in how to ensure that they are cyber-ready. As more and more of these cyber criminals are coming on board, they need to prepare. We are assisting countries to improve their broadband services, especially to remote areas. We are assisting countries in terms of their regulatory frameworks so that they can address issues like the OTTs, like the Roaming which we just mentioned. We are also encouraging youth, the youth of the Commonwealth, to develop applications which are relevant to various sectors. So we are focused on some of these issues which the policymakers and telecom regulators face on the day-to-day work. And this is part of your six strategic goals? Absolutely, yes. How many members do you have in the moment? We have currently 34 member governments. We have, these are paying. The other Commonwealth members are participating, but they are not paying members. Then we have about 23, 24 sector members. These are private sector members like Facebook, like British Telecom spread across the Commonwealth. And we also have academia that also involved in the work that we're doing. So we're just host country behind the Bahamas today? Yeah, host country Bahamas as a regulatory has joined as a sector member. So it's very active in our work and that's the reason why we've come here to support Bahamas. And particularly Uka in the work they're doing. As you mentioned, you were in a session talking about Roaming in the digital world. And it was talked about free Roaming between countries. Let's talk about that. How important is that? Is that doable at all? And what stands in the way of that happening? Well, the important thing that we need to recognize is that it's the end user that stands to gain. The end user that travels from country to country. There are consumers that travel for trade. If they begin to pay higher costs because they are traveling from one country to the other, they will be discouraged. You cannot encourage trade. So many communities, many regional economy communities have encouraged free Roaming charges when the consumers transverse the borders. But that has not happened sufficiently well. If you take Europe that has taken a lead, they used to have what they call a cap beyond which any operator cannot charge. But what has happened also is that competition has helped to drive down the prices such that all the operators are now operating below the cap, which the EU upset. So last month there is now free Roaming among European countries. Other countries, other economic committees like ECOWAS in West Africa, like SADEC in Southern Africa, the APT in the Asian Pacific countries have also adopted similar structures. But implementing it has become difficult, partly because they don't have that enforced mechanisms. If you take EU, it's an economic union. So when they decide it's binding, but in many of these other countries, the decisions that they take are more or less recommendations. So you have to go through that additional step of convincing the operators to bind to the hotel. Alright, so should it be left up to the regulators or the operators, the telecoms, companies to make these arrangements? Well, I would take a two-prong approach. One is for regulators to prepare a framework to say, look, we do not think Roaming should be more than these prices. Secondly, to push the operators in a competitive atmosphere, in a competitive environment, so that as they compete the prices will fall, and that will encourage lower prices, end user can use the traffic more. And it's to the benefit of the operators, it's to the benefit of the consumer, and it's to the benefit of the people themselves and the economy itself, which everybody wants to go. So the CTO's position on this is definitely free Roaming is where we should be heading? Absolutely. We would like to see a cost-free Roaming globally. That's our objective. But of course, the framework is not there. We preach it, but we try to make it happen at the level of the regional economic communities, like the Karecom, for example, in this region, like ECOWAS in West Africa, like the APT in the Asia Pacific region. And Europe, it's happening, so we are quite happy. We are happy to also promote that as a best practice. You mentioned cybersecurity, we're hearing a lot of talk about that during this symposium. Where do things stand from the CTO's point of view and what we need to be considering moving forward? Yeah, three things we are doing. One is to ensure that each of our member countries has what we call a policy which is clear, which also provides for multi-stakeholder participation. You cannot fight, you cannot have a cybersecurity platform that's robust without the participation of the security agencies, the telecom operators, the law enforcement agencies, the consumers, the telecom operators. So what we push is that every country must have a policy that recognizes the part that each of these players, they have a role to play, that's one. Secondly, we're also encouraging cyber standards and we are focusing on the small and medium enterprises. These are the businesses that form the majority of the economy in any country. So we're encouraging cyber standards that make it easier for each company to go to some entity and say, am I compliant? Somebody can come to their business premises, test their systems and to tell them, yes, you're sub-compliance. We are focusing on that in certain countries. We started with Jamaica in this region. Towards the end of this year, we're also going to Trinidad and we are also supporting other countries in this whole area. I don't know if you can answer this, but are there any countries or any regions within the CTO that are really taking the lead in terms of the strategic goals that are making, I guess, pathways that we can all follow? Okay. The CTO has countries that have a wide variety of countries. Some developed at the UK, for example, and some developing countries that we have to share. The UK has shown a very good example, not only by establishing a cyber center, they've also supported us in terms of financing to support countries to develop their cybersecurity strategy. So that's one. Secondly, we're now beginning to have countries like Rwanda based on advice and now having their cybersecurity strategies very clear. So other countries can actually look at what they're doing, adapt it to the environment. Excellent. So it's a cross-collaboration amongst other countries. So what do you see will be some of the biggest issues we'll be dealing with in the next five, ten years? Well, the big issues in this sector, first of all, we have a sector which is disruptive in terms of technology. We don't know what's going to happen in the next few years. Some people are saying that in the next 10 years, 15 years, nobody's going to be driving cars. Cars are going to be driving themselves. We need to prepare for that. Is the world prepared for that? There are implications, accidents. One has happened recently. And how do you deal with those issues? Policy issues, regulatory issues. To what extent can we depend on machine to determine things for us? Big data. In ten years time, for example, there will be a system in the house which will tell your wife, this is the mood of my husband. This is what he likes to eat. And that food will be prepared. Oh my goodness. Now, you're not beginning to see, my God, what's happening. The machine can determine what I want. Yes. And we have to be ready for that kind of lifestyle. It could be scary. It's going to be scary too. And you can't hide. The good thing is that, hopefully, it will reduce crime. There's no hiding place. But also, there's some fun in the whole thing. At the end of the day, technology is useful. We've got to use it well. But we also have to have the right mechanism to make sure that it's used properly. We've seen the example of social media where fake news is spread. We need to stop that. We've seen how photo shops are used to damage politicians. That needs to stop. So there's a need to also collaborate. As new technologies evolve, we must have the right framework to make sure technology is good for man, not man for the technology. That's true of the tale. It's been a pleasure talking with you. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. Great rest of your stay. Thank you very much.