 Welcome to the Global Symposium for Regulators 2019 in Port Villa, Vanuatu. We're very pleased to be joined in the studio today by Mr. Charlotte Selway, Terry Masmas, who is the Prime Minister of Vanuatu. Prime Minister, welcome to the studio. Thank you, good night. I'd like to start off by talking a little bit about the theme of this year's Global Symposium for Regulators. It's inclusive connectivity, the future of regulation. What does that mean to you and why is it important? Well I think firstly it's very important, especially for regulators, because I believe that regulators have an important role to make sure we have affordability and accessibility as well as the quality and the coverage, and I believe that during this symposium it can help our regulator, how to address and how regulate operators of telecommunication and high-city in Vanuatu. And it can be a good experience at this time because not only for Vanuatu but also the Pacific Island countries because it's not a landmass. It's an ocean, vast oceans in the world and it will be another experience for the symposium and by through the discussions we can find better solution how regulators and regulators of Vanuatu can regulate telecommunication as it's always. Our playing vital role today in the world for connectivity and why is this inclusive because I believe that now that it's becoming an important tool, an important infrastructure for connectivity, especially for islands like Vanuatu because Vanuatu is not one island, it's an archipelago separated by seas and it can help to reduce the cost of, but also for doing business. It can reduce the cost of business and it can bring also closer families and friends. Well I see a lot of benefits so this is why it's becoming an important tool for development in in the regions like the Pacific but also in Vanuatu because it's made of islands and it can become an important tool of telecommunication. We have a national digital roadmap what we decided very recently and we see really big importance and but at the same time we have also some issues and I believe that can be regulated for example rooming because we try to telecommunication to bring closer communities and the Pacific it's a community, the Pacific community. We are also a firm divided by separations for Micronesian, Polynesians and also Melanesians but we're still separated by the sea and how can bring us together to come up with some better solutions and but also to address security because Vanuatu is vulnerable to disaster shocks and is topping the list of vulnerable and but also to address security because Vanuatu is vulnerable to disaster shocks and is topping the list of vulnerable countries. Telecommunication can play an important role in terms of security but also especially during warnings of cyclones or tsunami and telecommunication is becoming, is playing an important role and I saw big improvement since when we introduced telecommunication and when we undertook some improvement in Vanuatu so during the cyclones we can get warnings from our phones. This is always the case but most of time because we don't have coverage of media radio broadcasting so we only we have people from the south to the north and we are using mobile phones so we can get messages from mobile phones and warnings as well so it's quite important to have inclusive connectivity. You talked about people coming together in this region a lot of people have come together from all over the world here I wanted to ask you what does an event like the Global Symposium Regulators means of Vanuatu you're graciously hosting this event here and the region in general. Well we are thankful firstly I'm very thankful to ITU to choose Vanuatu for this conference or for this symposium and maybe it can be a good experience as I mentioned earlier I mean while having this symposium in other parts of the world it is on the land and we don't have the same challenges might we have in the Pacific and for me it's an opportunity to expose Vanuatu to expose Pacific Island countries the challenges that we are facing and what are our capabilities and capacities. For example in part of climate change as I mentioned earlier Vanuatu of the Pacific it's a vast ocean so how to address it in terms of telecommunication Vanuatu it's more than 82 islands and it does almost habitat almost every islands are habitat so we have an increasing demand also transport today is becoming very expensive by planes or by boats that telecommunication maybe can reduce a lot of expenses especially government services one example when you want to apply for a passport and the person is living in the north of Vanuatu close to Solomon Islands he has to spend 500 US dollar to come down just to pick up an application form and he will travel back to fill the form and go to world witnesses and go and wait for the immigration of the passport to deliver the passport so you will spend again the same money to come down to pick up the passport or you might be waiting around here or renting rooms and traveling by bus and I believe technology or ICT can address and reduce all these costs so even for government services we still spending a lot of money today to buy vehicles as you can see in the roads most of the vehicles who have 1000 vehicles and I don't see the reason why government still spending a lot of money buying a lot of vehicles while we have post and we have also ICT and we can reduce and even avoid all kind of expenses by having better and protection of natural resources as well food security how each farmers connection information so it's a lot of benefits and in terms of forest in terms of ocean as well how we can protect our ocean and so we are also one of the country but we have more sea than land and we don't control and we are experiencing pirates coming and fishing award and so maybe ICT can be a solution for us to address this kind of situation that we are facing and we have been under grudges in on IUU because we might we are granting license to people who are fishing or business people who are fishing in our waters but we are suspect that we are over fish over Cota but has been provided so it's the reason why you bless us in this yellow list so it can be a way to control fish catch on private boats and maybe to ICT telecommunication we can find a better way how to control our resources finally ITU and Vanuatu have a strong relationship and have been cooperating on issues related to emergency telecommunications and cyber security for examples looking forward how do you see the cooperation with ITU evolving we believe and will continue to work very closely with ITU how we can address future issues and one of the issues with all OTT and I hope that during this meeting and with ITU we can find ways how because we are providing services we are providing information but it seems to me that we are operating beyond border and we don't respect any border and it's a matter of sovereignty and I think with ITU we can find solution how this OTT can over the top services yes we can assist countries like Vanuatu in building infrastructures because in Vanuatu it's like a Pacific Island country it's a small market and we governments tend to believe only to that only private sector can do it unfortunately we don't have the same objective private sector objective is to make business to make profit while government want to get access affordable and accessible to everyone and but because we have a small market even would have a big market like in some countries in Asia or in Europe or Africa yes you can reduce the price because so you have more clients and our users but it is not the case of countries like Vanuatu so this is the reason why we really want to bring access affordable price to our citizens even today telecommunication window we did some progress in telecommunication and ICT in Vanuatu but we are still the most expensive telecommunication in the Pacific so some contributing factors it's infrastructure building and I think it's one of the area that government has to invest because when we talk about infrastructure before we traditionally think about infrastructure is only walls, roads, bridges but telecommunication doesn't need infrastructure like utilities and I think that we need to change our mindset and I believe that we can work together with ITU and the other thing is OTT it's an issue on one side we are providing services but it's a very competition to operate as we are paying license to operate in Vanuatu we pay rights to operate and to the business in Vanuatu while we don't pay anything and we are not contributing to build towers or submarine cable we are not helping us to address telecommunication and on the other side as well because it's almost an open network to debate anyone can say anything they want but Vanuatu has some important principle in terms of culture and in terms of tradition and in terms of Christian principle so it's one of the principle of constitutional principle in the Republic of Vanuatu for example shame or respect it's a culture in Vanuatu but today it's not anymore because we bridge every boundary so and we think that with ITU we can help us how to address it maybe through our telecommunication regulation or laws or cyber crime regulation that we are working on or maybe through regulation of the regulator in Vanuatu so we trust but maybe we've experienced land for many countries but ITU can assist in addressing all these challenges Prime Minister well thank you very much indeed for joining us in the studio and we wish you the very best of luck for the future and thank you Tomas thank you Tomas