 Welcome to CBS 2018 here in Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic, where I'm very pleased to be joined in the studio today by Patrick Bussambu, who is the Director-General of ITSO. Patrick, thank you very much for joining us in the studio today. You're welcome. Now we're here at CBS 2018, it's the Global ICT Capacity Building Symposium here in Santo Domingo. It's basically every couple of years in the ITU's calendar. Why is this event important in your calendar? Why have you taken the time to be here all the way from Washington? Well, thank you for that question, Max. But I think one thing which is very unique about this symposium is the kind of reach that it has. And ITSO being an intergovernmental organization, just like ITU, with the membership of 149 countries, we take particular interest in global events. Because that brings together a lot of community of interest in terms of capacity building. We have had a partnership with ITU for the last eight years in which we focus on trying to do a number of things together. And for us, one of the things that we are mainly concerned about is the fact that satellite communications is unique in the various ways. One of the things that is unique about it is the fact that it has such a major impact or should have a major impact on ICT for development. Because if you look at the population size or the number of communities or countries that require ICTs and do not have connectivity today, the one easiest way of being able to reach them is through a global arrangement, like through satellite communications. And so when we talk to capacity building within entities that need to do that, I think partnership with ITU makes a lot of sense. Secondly, in terms of the constituencies, policy makers, a lot of policy makers and regulators within the ITU community. And yet these are the key people that want to develop policies that are going to make satellite communications part of the solution within the national broadband plans. And it's important to bring them on board in terms of knowing how valuable it is as a contributor to the achievement of national broadband plans. And if you are going to do that, you must develop their capacity first to make sure they are in sync with what you need to do. And so it's an exciting time for us. I think the perception of the past has been that satellite communications is very expensive. But nowadays, of course, the price of communicating by satellite, by launching satellites, small satellites into the atmosphere is a lot more accessible. Is that right? That's true. That's true. And actually that's part of the challenge. That's why even capacity building is so much more important. Because this perception, which goes back over a number of years, that satellite communication is expensive, in itself means that even the operators say, well, I'll not use satellite communications as a solution because it's expensive. But things have changed. Just like you mentioned yourself, the way satellites are launched is now a completely different approach. Just the other day, Intel said launch two satellites on the same vehicle, something which was done for the first time. The types of satellites being launched today, called high-through-put satellites, they have the capacity ten times of the traditional satellites and yet delivering the service at the same cost. So that means the cost has come down by a significant factor purely because of its genuine technology. But also more important, like I said, because the areas that you want to reach today are areas that are not going to be reached by traditional means. And so that means, as a technology, it has to reinvent itself so as to be more cost-effective, so as to be more in tune with what you want to do. And what about partnerships? Because, of course, partnerships are very important, public-private partnerships and partnerships in capacity building for the digital area. What do you think should be the key elements for that? I think in terms of addressing the capacity building, one of the things that we need to be conscious about is that the players are now completely different. You take in the applications that are going to be delivered or which are being delivered. What will be a traditional consumer today is just as much a player as the person who is offering the services. The fact that you have handed over the sort of control to the application developers as opposed to the people that put up the networks means that your capacity building is a broader scope. It's not just going to talk to people who are engineers. It's going to talk about users. It's going to talk about so many intermediary participants. And so I think the challenges are different. And yet, at the same time, what you can do with, I see it as moving into digital era, is such a big scope in itself that focusing on that alone is a challenge. So, yes, it is different times. What about the conversations that you've been hearing here at the symposium? What do you think are going to be the key takeaways here? Well, there are a number of things, but one thing which interested me was the fact that, and this was in one of the sessions yesterday, about the need for continuous development, continuous learning. The fact that today you cannot simply sit back and say, because I went to school 20 years ago, I have all that I need. That in itself, I think, is a very interesting issue because, suddenly, the constituencies that you have to focus on, whose capacity you need to go up, is so huge that you need a lot of, you know, you have to think out of the box as to how you are going to be able to achieve that. And the methods of delivery, of course, have changed? They have changed and they will continue to change. Again, just this scope of it alone challenges that. So it means that the people who are themselves being the deliverers of the program, they have to be capacity trained themselves. And so the players who are going to be in the field to do that also will be more. So there are many, many things to be looked at. Patrick Masamba, thank you very much for joining us in the studio. And very much, we hope to catch up with you again sometime in the future. Yes, you are. Thank you for your potential. Thank you.