 Welcome to WTDC 17 here in Buenos Aires, Argentina. We've got the great pleasure of being joined in the studio today by Mr. Rashid Ismailov, who's the Deputy Minister for the Ministry of Telecom and Mass Communications of the Russian Federation. Deputy Minister, thank you very much indeed for joining us today. Thank you very much for inviting me. Now Deputy Minister, I'd like to start off by asking you the theme of WTDC 17 is ICTs for SDGs. What ways has your country been integrating ICTs in its development agenda? First of all I would like to say that our strategic goals, I mean in the country they're matching are compatible to what the UN has with its sustainable development goals. I will not tell you exactly 17, but most of them they're matching including even the, as far as I remember, the one about the seas and oceans and so forth and so forth. They're so big that we can embrace all these 17 indeed. Now our way of integrating that in the development agenda is, as a matter of fact we've started, in 2011 we started the state program which was called Information Society. And most of the things that we are actually discussing now after six years I think we started to implement back at that time. There were a lot of things which were, you know, not integrated into one digital platform so to say, but there were many things that we were doing like e-signature or e-government services. That's the programs that we started back so many years ago. They are now full speed. I mean we have now KPIs that we're measuring our developing program with the number, for example, of the subscribers for e-government services. And the number is constantly increasing with which we see that we are in the right trend, in the right track with the sustainable development goals definitely. And what challenges do you face in implementing the SDGs and how do you see the ICTs making a difference? Actually one of the big challenges is, I was always telling about that. Back two years ago I was making same kind of, you know, interview on the VISTAs forum and I remember that I recall that one of the biggest challenges for us is the density of the population and the territory. It's the biggest country. I believe in Argentina here you have the same challenges. A lot of population are concentrated in two biggest cities as well as, I mean, other biggest cities. And then it's a vast territory with a skist population and low density and all in all they are still citizens of the country. They cannot be ignored, neglected, so you have to deliver all the services that you are actually as the government trying to involve the population into these small destinations, towns and villages. Besides, I believe that the complexity of this kind of ICT projects needs a lot of financing and financing is always an issue not only for developing, even for developed countries I think that EU has the same challenges when it comes to digital gap inside European Union or US. I mean financing is an issue. Resources is an issue. Each year for the ICT programs we have increased the number of the students that we are preparing in the country for the ICT professions and we still fill the gap and the needs for these kind of experts. I think these are all common for most of the countries. However, what I've seen here is that to many kind of goals or projects we have gone quite a big distance already competing with many other countries especially in the government services in broadband. We've laid 250,000 kilometers of fiber in Russia. That's a huge project actually. You can rope five times the globe with this one. So these are the challenges. It's obviously infrastructure and capacity. But what policies and regulatory reforms do you think are needed to connect the next billion and of course in your case as well, especially in remote and rural areas? This is an equilibrium, a balance between the global regulatory issues that are undertaken here for example, I mean on the ITU level. And at the same time there's no unique solution for each and every country also because of the reasons that I have already talked to you about. I mean Russia is in this regard quite unique and even inside the country it's sometimes difficult to match the needs. So it's quite complicated and the experience that we have in our country shows that in the first place you need to focus on the accessibility, on the network, on the basement for delivering these kind of projects and implementation of the goals that we're talking about. Now there should be a consideration of the digital gap. I mean we think, I was once on the UN conference about the gaps between south and north. As a matter of fact our north is our south. I mean north is huge in Russia, in territory of two Brazils maybe, I mean altogether and the population is very small there and there's a gap between the developed cities like Moscow, St. Petersburg and these ones. The approaches towards the regulatory issues should be, I think in the first place we have to put the needs and the satisfaction of the end users so that the government portal of the services should be very easy to handle and so far and so forth. Then a lot of education is needed to the government especially for the age person. I mean we're talking about new generation that are very handy with ICT devices and gadgets. However I mean the age population which Russia is ageing country actually, we need to address all those problems and the solution of these problems to this category of the population as well. And in terms of this particular conference I wanted to ask you what concrete actions would you like to see come out of WTDC to further develop the ICT sector? I'd like to mention that the most important document for this conference is the strategic plan of the IETUD and the regional initiatives that the regional organizations have put forward actually. And then having considered all that they should develop the unique approaches and plan of actions towards implementation of these strategic goals of IETUD. A lot of things we believe are important like coordination between different regional initiatives. It's also about helping the development of network which should be safe, secure. The security issues are actually very important. Building an ecosystem with initiatives that are coming from IETUD, building a good ecosystem for all countries so that they shouldn't be deprived in terms of accessibility to the network, to the services, to the applications that are going to be developed in this new digital forthcoming era. I think that according to our opinion the declaration that has been adopted here reflects a number of ideas and a number of initiatives that are also very touchy and close to what Russia has. I think that at the same time we need to reinforce our efforts to gain close the digital divide and the economical gap that exists between developing and developed countries. There are a number of resolutions that are either to be considered revised or even the new resolution that I've put forward. I believe that particularly we need to focus on efficient usage and delivery of the spectrum. We're talking about the network of 5G as a basement actually for digital shift. Now 5G needs frequencies. Frequencies are in the first place divided in ITU. Maybe WTDC is not the right place to discuss them. Frequencies however, from the point of developing the networks, this is actually the conference that we need to discuss. Languages are the problems. We have seven languages. We think that they should be equally utilized. Numbering. Numbering is also, I mean, these are all the resources that ITU has, you know, the right to distribute or to decide. That means that in this case all the parties, all the countries that are involved, their needs, their wishes, plans should be taken into consideration. This is, it should be fair. And we're concluding our interview. I've just read a good expression. We are all, I mean, this is the revolution. There were several number of revolutions in the mankind, even without going to the deeper ages. Let's start with the English agricultural revolution. I mean, it boosted. It gave an opportunity to, you know, to increase the GDP, to shift the society into industrial one. However, I mean, we had enclosures at that time, and there was a saying, if you remember, that the ships ate the man. Then, I mean, each revolution of that kind had their side effects. Now we have approached the level, at least in ITU, that we should consider the risks that might, you know, happen with the implementation of IITs. I mean, from the security point of view. What artificial intellect is bringing to us as a mankind. I mean, we have been never challenged by anybody else as a human being, I mean, here on the planet. Now, I mean, it might be so that we should consider it the one. This is, I think, that on this conference, there were no focus on that one. What kind of, you know, risks brings the digital transformation. There are a lot of hopes and expectations when it comes to the increase of number of jobs and, you know, improving the living conditions, decreasing the digital gap. However, I mean, there are things and the risks that might happen. As in Portuguese they say, amanhã pode acontecer tudo, inclusive nada. So it should be so that it shouldn't be nada. It should be, you know, something that's substantial that brings the positive changes for the mankind. Thank you. Deputy Minister Rashid Ismailov, thank you very much indeed being with us in the studio. And we look forward to catching up with you again sometime in the future. Yeah, well, I hope so. Thank you very much. Thanks very much indeed. It's great. Thank you.