 Welcome to the ITU studio in Geneva. I'm pleased to be joined in the studio today by Suella Hansen who is director of Network Strategies Limited in New Zealand. Suella, welcome to the studio. Thank you very much. I'd like to start off by talking about this event that we're here at the moment. It's the World Telecommunication and ICT Indicators Symposium, WTIS, 2018. How important is WTIS in the overall development of the telecommunication stroke ICT industry? Well, I've spent most of my professional life undertaking quantitative analysis in telecommunications for a mixture of policymakers and regulators. Quantitative data to support policymaking is absolutely crucial to this endeavor. And to be honest, most of the data sets I start with are ITU data sets because they're one of the few organizations which provide a consistent set of time series data which I can work with. So for me, these data sets are crucial in my work and without them it would be impossible to support many important regulatory determinations and telecoms policies to advance economic development. And in this symposium it's essentially bringing that data together as well as conversations around it, is that right? That's right. And also, the nature of telecommunications itself is changing all the time. The technologies change, markets change. And so with it, it is very important to keep indicators up to date. So definitions may need to change with the move of technology. For example, the definition of broadband itself. The speeds involved, no longer the speeds of even five years ago terribly relevant to today's technology. So this meeting gives the opportunity to revisit definitions and also to think about new data that will be relevant going forward in this modern environment. As was officially announced last week, the 50-50 milestone for internet use has been surpassed. However, there are still far too many people around the world waiting to reap the benefits of the digital economy. What more can governments do to bring more people online, do you think? Well, I believe that governments need to illustrate leadership so that they need to be using the internet through e-government themselves. And by e-government I don't just mean a website, a portal. I mean integrating ICT into everything they do. And that would go a long way towards demonstrating the benefits of ICT. I think that in many instances people are unaware of potential applications of the technology. While it's true that affordability is still a problem for many potential users, in many cases particularly mobile technology is becoming more affordable, mobile broadband technology that is. Yet particularly the middle-aged and older demographic are struggling to use it for a number of reasons. So government has a role here in terms of education and also the promotion of local content which is relevant to particular cultures. Let's talk about local content. What would you say has been the economic and social impacts of ICTs in New Zealand where you're based? That's a very good question because New Zealand is one of the few countries in the world where we have a national public-private partnership for the roll-out of ultra-fast broadband. And that initiated in 2010 with a very brave decision by the government. And the idea was that 70 to 80% of the population of New Zealand should have access to fibre broadband by 2019. I think we're already towards 80% now. The take-up of homes past is 50%. In the rural areas where fibre broadband can't reach, we have a rural broadband initiative. Take-up of that is 40%. In terms of the impact it's having, New Zealand is very, very geographically disadvantaged. We're at the end of the earth. And so we rely on getting our products to market somehow, our services and products. The introduction of high-speed broadband is already starting to show economic benefits for the country. As an example, in the service industry we're seeing many more film ventures taking off in New Zealand and also in post-production. That is an area that is particularly booming and frankly high bandwidth is essential for that. In the primary industries, which are key to our economy, we are seeing the impact at the micro level. So farmers are embracing the technology to improve efficiencies, to save on costs. And then also at the macro level, the taking of the products to market, so many transactional benefits and improvements are occurring through the availability of the broadband. Finally, what key messages do you think people will be taking away from this year's symposium? Well, I hope that they'll take away the message that it is important to continue to support and channel resources into the collection of consistent data sets over time. I hope that people are taking on board the value of this data to policy decisions. I do hope that a key takeaway will be that the body of evidence that broadband in particular is supporting economic development is becoming quite overwhelming now. And I'm hoping that the lower income economies, the policy makers in those countries will consider putting in practice some of the learnings from the other countries in this respect. So, Hansel, thank you very much indeed.