 Hello, my name is Vishnu Kalindi. I work at the International Telecommunication Union in Geneva. My portfolio of responsibility is limited to rural telecommunications. Okay, so can you first tell us about the first report, which is the one focused on Bhutan, and tell us about how the study was initiated and why the study was made in Bhutan especially? This report presents the project undertaken by the Government of India, ITU and UPU in Bhutan with the cooperation of Bhutan Telecom and Bhutan Post. When we started the project, we began with the assumption that Bhutan being an all-mountainous country, let us take anywhere from 2 to 28 days. Our project focused at that time on an element of introducing electronic communication. If somebody can go to the post office, get the letter scanned and send it by email, it could be delivered the next day to greatly facilitate communication. Then we covered 38 post offices, which meant we equipped them with the postmasters, etc. Of the 38, 6 post offices are in some of the most remote locations. They would take anywhere from 2 to 7 days to one-way walk. Two of them are cut off for 6 months a year, Laya and Lunana. And Lunana is cut off for 7 months. The Government of India provided a piece of equipment with a hubbent input, access to Indian satellite, free for the duration of the project, training and maintenance, and solar power and battery support to the remote areas. We evaluated the project last year and we find that the project had unexpected benefits. It was the first time that many people had ever had to make a telephone call. People came from different places, distant places to use the facilities. Apart from the major objectives which were supposed to be achieved, there were unintended side effects, very beneficial. Like the culture of Bhutan Post has changed. Everybody has now become technologically aware and they use technology for different aspects of their daily work, like tracking mail, tracking express post. On the whole, we find that the benefits have been very substantial. Was there any challenges for conducting the study in Bhutan? Challenges were serious in terms of establishing the facilities at remote locations. For one location, Bhutan Telecom hired 156 porters and 50 horses. But for most of other places, other 4 places, they transported the equipment by helicopters. There are serious environmental challenges. At these remote locations, equipment can go wrong. There is a lot of pressure on snow, lack of sunshine, etc. The problem is, if something goes wrong with these facilities, it might take anywhere from 6 to 9 months to get it back on track. But fortunately, after 5 years of existence, all but one these at stations are functioning. And we thank the government of India for the help they have extended. We are very grateful to the engineers of TCIL who brave high altitude and extremely difficult conditions to go and install the equipment and provide support later. So that is the first report. Thank you so much for informing us about it. Let's move on to the second report. This is the second book, ICT's Community Access and Development, case studies from 6 developing countries. This book presents ITU projects which were undertaken over the last 10 years in different parts of the world. The objective of those projects was to develop models for provision of ICT access in rural areas. These projects have typically involved a large number of partners and the study compares the lessons learned from different countries. The six countries provide interesting variations in terms of socio-economic status and differing needs of target groups. The countries are, the projects are, Timbuktu in Mali, Bhutan, Honduras, Vietnam, Nicaragua and Tanzania. As you see, the context encompasses marginal economies, marginal economies in transition and emerging economies. The data for the studies has been conducted by local project teams and we also conducted a village-level survey of users and non-users of these facilities to identify the discriminant that distinguish these two groups. The projects encounter different issues at different project sites but these differences actually offer great opportunity to study two important issues, social and economic factors that influence the acceptance and utilization of ICT. How to best realize the role that ICT can play in the process of economic and social development? So what are the any challenges that you face in the study or? The critical factors are access to education, literacy and higher education is the most important enabling factor that makes access to information usable for the target targets. But in one case we find that literacy and economic opportunities make communities ICT friendly. In another case we find that lack of economic opportunities result in limited use of the facilities. But most important thing is that social rate of return is likely to be very high and ignoring it for the sake of financial return is certainly feeding. Finally we have to say one word, access to ICT programs have to be taken up as an integral part of other ongoing development projects. Access to information has to be taken up as an investment that has massive impact, overarching impact on all activities of an economy and therefore it should not be constricted by financial return alone. So that's the second study. Can you tell us about the third report? This publication, ICT's new services and transformation of the post is a joint ITU-UBU report. What started on this report last year? This is basically an extension of the Bhutan project. When internally we reviewed Bhutan project and trying to consolidate what general points can be made. The suggestion was raised that a number of case studies of where post offices transform themselves can be brought together in order to draw guidelines which will be useful for developing countries. And after very extensive consultation we identified projects in seven countries. They are Bhutan, Botswana, both these countries used post offices to provide communication services in remote areas. Brazil post makes extensive use of information and communication technologies in financial services and postal banking system which has become extremely efficient. Italy post uses virtual mobile network for financial applications. Russia where they have extensive programme on cyber money transfer areas. Saudi Arabia has an interesting project on integrating electronic address and physical address which means that you basically have a database of all the customers in the country. This has even a massive push to e-commerce in the country. Things can be delivered. And a large number of traditional artisans in most of the most remote parts are using Saudi post network to sell their goods. And Saudi post has a portal, it has a supermarket on the virtual supermarket where all these different artisans participate to sell their goods. And this electronic physical address system has facilitated e-commerce in a great way. Then we have a case study from South Korea where South Korean post supports e-commerce and they have a portal for e-commerce. They can guarantee the quality of goods produced on fish from post and in this process they have also promoted small industry. I hope I have covered all the countries. But one most important thing is user by city in post is not just confined to the... Impact is not confined just to the post office but it has a cascading effect on the whole that they call the number of jobs it is the most important thing. It has also enabled the postal services to improve quality of their service and provide value-added services. I am Pradishanath. I work in an institute called National Institute of Science Technology and National Institute in Delhi. I have visited with this first two publications of the last five cities for community access and development and I put on the portal Satellite Access. So your question on mythology is there is like... We used a questionnaire based structure data collection. Some places we visited, some places we used the local people to collect the information. Basically our idea was to understand the socio-economic backgrounds of the users and non-users of the statistics and to see that what are the factors that can discriminate between users and non-users. So if some people are not using it, why are not they using it? And if some people are using it, who are they who are using it? So basically we have tried to identify beforehand that what could be the personal factors and data was collected on those factors. So our theoretical understanding was that like literacy, health, social factors as well as economic factors together they determine actually the use of ICT when access is provided. So data was collected on socio-economic factors behind using or non-using ICT services that was provided to the people around. So and then some statistical exercise was conducted to arrive at this result that the result has just narrated you that one important factor is literacy and education. This is the most important factor that discriminates. And second thing is that you know like how integrated this access to ICT program is with the development program. Third thing realize that this access to ICT has a cascading effect on you know all aspects of the economic and social life. So the social return on such investment is very high. So it should never be compared with you know the short term loss and profit account. So these are the major issues that actually I mean the survey was focused on to get enlightened about these factors. My final question would be how did you define an e-service when you discussed the Bhutan study what definition did you give for e-service before you conducted the surveys? The service for Bhutan it was very simple access to say email. I mean that was the most important service that was being provided to them. Internet service basically. So for them it was the main thing it was as simple as that. Okay thank you so much professor for your insight thanks.