 We're here at WICCIT 2012 in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates, and I'm very pleased to be joined by Mr. Mohamed Alganim, who is Director-General of the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of the UAE. Mr. Alganim, thank you very much indeed for being with us today. Thank you. The UAE has been hosting a number of key telecommunications events this year. Perhaps we could begin by talking a little bit about the impact of telecommunications in the region. First of all, as you know, telecommunication for the region, not only for the UAE, but for the region is critical and important. It is the backbone for all the different sectors of the economies, and it is the backbone that governments, private sector, and even people use. Now, in terms of conferences, we've been hosting, this is the third conference we've been hosting now, and we believe in ITU, we believe in a multi-stakeholder approach, we believe in getting together and bringing the entire world to discuss challenges that we have and also future perspective for telecommunication. That's why we've seen that this is an opportunity that we can bring together member states to discuss critical issues that will impact the future of our people down the road. Now, you're Chairman of this particular conference, and it's a very important conference. I'd love to get a little bit of an insight of what Wicked is like from a Chairman's perspective. Well, definitely, from a Chairman's perspective, for a conference which is as big as this, you have 2,000-plus participants, you have issues which is really contentious, which came to the conference, and for me as a Chairman, of course it's not an easy job, but for me as a Chairman, I tried as much and as hard as I can to bring people together. Now, one of the things that is missing in any negotiation is I, a person or Administration X present a proposal, Administration Y present their opposite proposal, and they don't talk. My job is to let everybody start talking, engaging, and making sure that they reach to a consensus, and that's what's important. And the philosophy is you need to open up, reach out to the other person and the vice versa, and get to bring them together in one table, discuss things, try to resolve it. From my side as a Chair, I always sometimes, or most of the time, I bring solutions, and this solution is middle of the way, and I try to bring both sides closer to what I say. It is working so far, today is the third day, the conference is still positive, positive that it will reach to satisfactory resolution. I'm hopeful that the conference is going to reach to all its objectives. Of course there are difficult issues that we need to tackle, but I'm sure with the help of everybody, I'm sure we'll reach to a satisfactory resolution. How much is actually decided in the working groups themselves, and how much actually happens in informal discussions in the corridors perhaps? There are a lot of informal discussions. Things that members say cannot talk about it when they take the podium, a lot has been discussed informally, then they get informally and they compromise. But a lot of work has been done informally, and this is what we are trying to do away from the official meetings and corridors or closed meetings bringing together parties who is involved in the specific issue. I give you for example yesterday, we've discussed issues that I thought as a chair will pass through from plenary, and that's issues related to putting provision in the ITRs that will deal with protecting the environment and promoting more energy efficiency using ICT as well as connecting people with disability. That part, we did not reach to a conclusion in the plenary, but what's positive is the fact that all administration realize that these issues are important and they need to discuss it. So now they are in an ad hoc group, and this ad hoc group is dealing with these three issues and I've heard positive news that they will come up with a text, compromise text that will be satisfactory for the conference. Is that the nature of this kind of conference that the issues like this are raised and sometimes they can take you by surprise or is it something particular to this one, do you think? Well, it is particular to this conference in particular and I'll tell you, I was expecting, for example, these things to pass in the plenary, it didn't, I expected others to pass an ad hoc group, in matter of fact, it was stopped in plenary. So, you know, I prepare, I've read all the contributions very well, I took note of a lot of details, and as a chair sometimes I get surprises, but you know, until now I'm still getting good surprises, and that's positive. My job is to push, my job is to make sure that consensus is there, my job is to also make sure that everybody is here equally. Also, my job is to make sure that the conference is moving in the right direction where I don't allow certain entities to talk beyond their limits, limited time that is given because they will waste the entire conference time. You know, a lot of serious people is coming here to find solutions, and they deserve to take the time, the proper time to do it, and we have limited time, and we need to finish. We have 10 articles, which might, someone might say, you know, you have only 10 articles, you know, the treaty is less than 20 pages, true, but there are major, major issues. Last treaty was in 1988 in Melbourne, 24 years later, the technology and the evolution of ICT is massively changed. Now, and this treaty is supposed to be, you know, at least survive for the next decade or two, so you can think about, you can see and you can imagine the size of focus from members to make sure that the text that they will conclude at the end of the conference is going to last for at least one to two decades. So where do you think we're heading? What do you think will be the key outcomes to this conference? See, there are a lot of subjects, you know, put on the table of this conference. Cyber security or network security, fraud, spam, roaming transparency, roaming pricing, environment protection, connecting disabled people, and we have proposal related to internet, and we have proposal related to ICT. A lot of it is, a lot of these issues critical and vital for a lot of administrations. We are hopeful that everybody equally go out of this conference happy and their issues has been resolved. And we have a strong treaty, you know, for the next one to two decades to come which has the satisfaction by all member states. That's my aim. It's not easy. I know it's difficult, but I'll try my best and I will strive to make sure that people compromise. This is very, very important. This is the spirit of the ITU and this is the way we deal with. We here at the UAE have something which is important. And, you know, two days ago we've been celebrating the union, the 41st birthday of UAE. And the theme and the logo of the celebration is the spirit of the union. So we are using, and I've said it in the beginning of the conference, I'm going to use that, the spirit of the union, you know, to be able to bring everybody on the spirit of the union of the old nations around the world. So we'll try and give it a shot. I'm hopeful and I'm seeing a lot of cooperation from all member states around the table here and I'm sure it's going to succeed. So do I. Mr. Al-Ghanim, thank you very much indeed for being here today. Thank you.