 Excellencies, distinguished colleagues, ladies and gentlemen, it's a real pleasure for me to be here with you today for this launch of the fifth edition of ITU's flagship report, Measuring the Information Society. On behalf of ITU's Secretary-General, Dr. Amanant Wei, who unfortunately cannot be with us this week, let me welcome you all to this launching event which is taking place simultaneously here in Geneva. And at six other locations around the world, as well as online via webcast. So I must also express my personal appreciation to Mr. Burakima Sano, director of BDT for this wonderful organizing of this event. I see it becomes bigger and bigger. Compared with the previous editions, it's relatively modest. Now it's more than modest. It's quite good. Ladies and gentlemen, ITU is committed to connecting the world and to bringing the benefits of ICTs to all the world's people, wherever they live and whatever their circumstances. We are proud to note the impressive progress achieved in the first 12 years of the new millennium. By the end of this year, there will be almost 7 billion mobile cellular subscriptions globally. And we're over a third of the world's people will be online. But we still have a long way to go because 70% of people in developing countries and over 90% of people in the world's least developing countries will still be offline as we come into 2014. This is not about technology for technology's sake. It is about technology for educating people. It's about technology for better healthcare. It is about technology for gender empowerment. It is about technology as a means to reinforce environmental protection. ICTs will continue to play an ever greater role in social and economic development. And this will be even more important in terms of the post-2015 development agenda. Ladies and gentlemen, let me stress the importance of measurement. ITU has been collecting and publishing ICT data and statistics for well over 100 years. And we are the only organization that collects and analyses such a comprehensive set of indicators and statistics on a global basis. This is important not just in allowing us to see the progress which has been made, but also in showing us where gaps still remain. And it's useful and important both to policymakers and to the ICT industry. Let me also give a mention here to the partnership on measuring ICT for development, which is an international multi-stakeholder initiative to improve the availability and quality of ICT data and indicators. And which has been doing important work since it was set up in 2004. ITU continues to work closely with the partnership in our work on ICT statistics. In this connection, we note that the Broadbinder Commission for Digital Development has set a number of advocacy targets for broadband access, availability and policy, as well as gender equality. And the data in this new report provides crucial input to the Broadbinder Commission's work on measuring progress. Ladies and gentlemen, I do not want to take up too much of your time. Let me just therefore close by applauding the efforts of ITU's development sector in creating this new report, which brings together a huge volume of data and analysis, which allows us to encourage all countries to make strong social and economic progress by leveraging the power of ICTs. I sincerely hope that you will find this report very useful. Thank you very much.