 Welcome to the ITU Plenipotentiary Conference 2018 here in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates where I'm very pleased to be joining the studio today by Nusse Fuhtai Purcell who is the Acting Secretary-General for the Commonwealth Telecommunications Organization. Nusse, welcome to the studio. Thank you, thank you very much. Now I'd like to start off by asking you there's considerable attention being placed on harnessing the power of information communication technologies, ICTs, as an enabler for good, for development, for the benefit of people, families, communities and nations. What is your personal perspective on this? Well, it's great. ICT is changing the way we communicate, the way we learn, play, the way we develop, but we need to look at the availability of ICTs or Xs. We need to make sure that we work with the governments to make sure that Xs is affordable. It's no point having Xs and having a lot of technologies, but people can't afford it. And then we also need to look at the relevance. What is relevant for our people? Because every country is different. Every culture is different, so therefore it must be people-centered, it must be relevant to the culture and it must have all the benefit that it's promising everybody. And then of course we need to look at the security of the internet because the more the social media is out there, the even more security that is required because while ICT is great as you mentioned, there's also cases where its impact on the individual, on the people is very negative because social media has no borders. So therefore anyone can say anything about another person, about another government. So that is the negative part of ICTs that we also need to consider. Now this this plenipotentiary conference is the first since the world agreed on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals in 2015. Perhaps you could provide us with some examples of how ICTs are helping to drive sustainable development in the Commonwealth countries. Yes of course. Well there is lots. The SDGs 2030 talks about, in fact it's the first time ever that SDGs or a agreed document or communicate by the UNGA, United Nations General Assembly, has ever touched on ICTs as a tool for development. And I'm glad that when I was in the ITU I was involved very much in it. Now when we look at all the issues in SDGs 2030, it's about education, it's about health, it's about the environment, it's about climate change and all these things we can use ICTs as a tool. For example, education and health. In every Commonwealth developing country there is a lack of doctors, there's a lack of teachers, especially where the rural villages or rural areas are concerned. So there's a capability now of developing ICTs so that people in the rural areas can actually dial into the doctors in the business district and say hey you know we've got this case here and they're able to see the doctor able to treat or provide medicine for people out there. And it's the same as education with e-learning. Now I must admit that e-learning has been talked about for so long but in the developing countries, especially in the least developed countries, the small island developing states and also landlocked countries is still a struggle to get that and then it goes back to what I was talking before about availability or access has to be affordable, it has to be secure. So all these things link but I'm very happy that in the SDT 2030 it's now looking at using ICTs and then it doesn't stop there, it goes to climate change. The key thing is about capacity building, raising awareness of people. Then when with climate change come disasters, natural disasters, so and that is where the importance of the satellites come in as a technology because for example the earthquake in Nepal, every mobile tower was demolished and so I went there, what we did was providing satellite equipment and these are the equipment that actually helped the government to know what's happening out there and it's the same as Dominica, the hurricane of 2015, I went there, none of the mobile towers survived and there was no way to communicate to other parts of the island to find out what's happening and how can the government help them so ICTs can actually help government and other organizations to inform to decision on how to do how to help the people out there and that is where I'm saying satellites very important because it was the satellite mobile and also the global broadband area networks that we took and it's amazing. When we went to the most remote area of Dominica we set up the big ends and it worked all of a sudden you know people are the police are talking to the government and say this is a situation so please send blankets or these other things so that is where the STTs or the ICTs can actually help every country and the world to achieve the SDG goals of 2030. Now about half the world's people are connected to the internet the other half is not I wanted to ask you what do you think we should be doing to get everyone connected? Yes of course since 2016 it's been said that 4 billion people especially from developing countries don't have even any access and of course and that relates to half the population and what we need to do is the importance of international platforms like the ITU that provides the guidelines to every country but every country every government these are the people responsible you know it's up to each country to make sure that their people are connected not just around the economic area or the business area but out in the rural areas the problem is no business in its right mind no operator no mobile operator will go and spend millions or hundreds of thousands to build the business in an area where there's no profit and if I were a businessman you know I would never do that and this is where the government intervene this is where the government come in and look at different options for example universal access you know they can talk with the operators and then give them back some money to go and develop the other areas so that is I believe is the best way of trying to connect everybody but yes we need to look at issues for example in the Commonwealth there's a lot of landlocked countries so they have about four five countries to get permission for you know technologies to come in so lots of issues but we can do it you said well thank you very much for joining us in the studio today and we look forward to catching up with you again in the future thank you