 We're here at ITU Telecom World 2015 in Budapest in Hungary and I'm very pleased to be joined by Mr Nikolay Nikiforov who is minister of the Ministry of Telecom and mass communications of the Russian Federation. Minister, thank you very much for being with us in the studio today. Thank you. Thank you so much. Now, the theme of ITU Telecom 2015 is accelerating innovation for social impact. I wanted to ask you, how do you see ICT innovation directly impacting on socio-economic development in Russia and are there any particular concrete examples important to you? You know, if I think if you ask any government leader or any ICT minister everybody is really dreaming about every household connected. About every school teacher with a laptop or tablet. Every doctor also connected with some type of mobile device and really wireless broadband access in order to have all these serious social services to be very modern, accurate, online. Everything calculated and everything calculated precisely. That is why we really need some new technology breakthroughs to make it happen. To make the cheap, affordable, ready to use everywhere even though we still don't have connection probably in every part of the planet. If you take Russia as an example, today we are having some very ambitious project of connecting all the villages with a population over 250 people. With fiber optics, which is probably quite an easy task for a small country. But if you take into consideration the territory and the climate and geographical differences in different regions of Russia, it's really kind of a challenge. It would take us to put 215,000 kilometers of fiber optics, which is about five times around the planet to connect these villages. Finally it will bring the internet possibility of the high-speed internet connection for about 40 million new internet users from Russia. But finally it will help to connect all schools, all hospitals, which are connected today, but are connected on pretty low speeds. Sometimes they are connected through satellites, sometimes it's old style DSL connection. That will be affordable and high-speed, real broadband fiber optics, which will dramatically improve the way how these social services are being delivered. Better education, better healthcare, it will really influence a lot and especially these rural areas where also every country is dreaming to create more jobs, more added value just to bring more modern life into this territory. So this is kind of a challenging project for Russia and I believe that social impact of this broadband initiative will be really fantastic. Now there's very much focus here on encouraging entrepreneurship, on fostering the growth of SMEs, a lot of SMEs here being represented. Why is this important in driving development do you think? And what is Russia doing in this regard in terms of multi-stakeholder partnerships, for example, in driving development? You know, it's definitely important and we've been investing a lot. We've created a whole network of techno parks. We do have a lot of business angels, venture funds, all this necessary innovative ecosystem to support that. We've even built two new satellite cities. One is near Moscow, which is called Skolkovo. Another one is called Dinopolis, not far from the city of Kazan, also a million large city in the central part of Russia. But you know, I think we've been just discussing the document which is called the Budapest Call for Action with exact statements that several dozens of ministers were trying to negotiate to finalize their ideas. But I think we are missing quite a very serious point here. When we speak about SMEs and especially, you know, their innovative potential for the global market, and we always think of high cities as the global market with no boundaries, no barriers, I think we are missing the competition part of this story. Competition is of great importance, but today if we take an honest look at the market statistics, we see that the whole ICT ecosystem is monopolized just by one country and few companies, especially if you take such areas as, for example, mobile operating systems. What if one of the SMEs invents, creates, develops new mobile operating system? What if it goes to Samsung or Huawei or, I don't know, LG or any other device manufacturer and will offer this new state-of-the-art technology? Nothing will happen because competition is very limited because of many, many different hidden parts of these or that commercial agreements, all of them are under NDAs and it could not be wireless. But today, for example, in the European Union as well as in Russia, we have certain even legal antitrust agency decisions about that. And I believe that this competition part of the game is one of the most critical issues that has to be solved because we really want to have a more balanced, when I say balanced, I mean we need to have many different state-of-the-art products and we need to have the methods of delivering them to the market, even though the market today is pretty structured and structured in just straightforward way. And I think it should be discussed and we need to find these answers. By the way, as well as the management of the critical internet infrastructure. And I believe the transition idea of IANA function of ICANN should be discussed once again. We've just passed the September of 2015. Unfortunately, the decision is still not taken. But we believe and I think many, many countries support this vision that is so widely discussed, widely outlined by Russian Federation. We really believe that it should be, I mean the critical infrastructure should be really managed by all the interesting, interested partners, not just under a particular contract between one government and one legal entity. Now, you've obviously got a very busy schedule. We're very pleased to have you in the studio here. But I wanted to ask you, what is the value for you of attending an event such as this at ITU Telecom World? I think both bilateral meetings because we have, it's a unique chance for me to meet almost ten ministers or deputy ministers from different countries. And these bilateral relations are of great importance because we have certain mutual projects. We initiate new projects about mutual research and development between our universities, different student exchange programs, different programs for our SMEs, exactly all those topics that we've been discussing. So this is important. The other thing is that it's a wonderful platform for us, I mean government representatives, to have very fair feedback from the industry because we have both industry representatives. We have a fantastic exhibition here which allows us a chance for the companies to share the technology vision for those who take regulatory decisions for us to spend this time together and to discuss all the opportunities actually to make the whole mankind to benefit from future development of ICT and from increasing the penetration of ICT into our lives. And finally, what's your main message to participants here at ITU Telecom World and also those following us on the internet? Well, I was very much satisfied by the upcoming documents from planning potentially. The key goals are set up. Everybody is focusing on them, governments and changing their plans are prioritizing their resources in order to offer this broadband connection. I think when we speak about broadband, we think we need to focus on the economic side of it. I've been sharing this idea at the recent meeting of Broadband Commission in New York and I believe it's all about money. It's all about the way, it's all about particular business case and how to make it happen. All the countries are different. The infrastructure development is different. The electricity price is totally different in different parts of the world, but we need to find some proper economically sustainable solutions in order to finally deliver the broadband to where we want it to be. And the second topic is this competitiveness. I believe it's really a very, very serious problem. There are no easy answers here, but we have to take the opportunity as well as this ITU Telecom platform to discuss it very honestly, frankly. And finally to find the ways on how to really make it possible for the real startup in any country in the world to really jump into the global ICT ecosystem no matter who is controlling it today, no matter who are these monopoly giant companies playing on the market. And this is the critical task for all the governments, for all the ministries to make it happen. And we still have to do a lot about that. So money and competition, I think these are key drivers of our future progress in the United States. Sounds very good. Well, thank you very much, David, for being with us today. Thank you so much.