 Welcome to PP18, the Plenipotentiary Conference for ITU in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates where I'm very pleased to be joined in the studio today by Thomas Hickey who is the Chief Legal Officer for Iridium. Thomas, welcome to the studio. Thanks, it's great to be here. Now I'd like to start off by talking a little bit about the fact that there's considerable attention being placed on harnessing the power of information and communication technologies and ICTs as an enabler for good, for development, for the benefit of their people, families, communities and nations and I wanted to find out what's your personal perspective on this. Good question. I imagine that most attendees at the conference there in the communications field they probably have a personal view on this. As someone who spent his entire professional career in telecommunications I have always been fascinated by the technology but I also really love the idea of connecting people in distant places and I was initially attracted to work where I am now at Iridium communications because we are the only system that covers 100% only satellite system covers 100% of the planet so especially for the you know more than 80% of the planet has no terrestrial communication we we connect everybody everywhere on a non-discriminatory basis so I get pretty excited to be able to talk about how we can you know have people who are in the middle of the ocean contact home for a memorable family day or scientists who are researching things in a distant planet they can a distant part of the planet can collect their research and connect home or you know an aircraft pilot who needs to contact air traffic control we can do all those things through Iridium and other satellite companies can do some of those things but that's what gets me excited to go to work every day. Now global statistics are saying that half the world's people are connected to the internet the other half isn't what is Iridium doing to get everyone connected? Well it's true that wireless 5G is going to be really important for development in general but I think Iridium covers the entire the higher planet so as I said more than you know more than 80% of the world has no terrestrial communication so we provide that connection so in a way if you step back it's all about connections so you know connection to the internet we can provide really at no matter where you are so you're not limited by you know what continent you live in what what country you live in where you are you can you can have connection I think so in that way we're doing our part to have a connection where I think is where you start because some people have no connection. Now this planning potentially conference is the first one since the world agreed to the United Nations sustainable development goals I wanted to ask what's a Iridium's perspective on the SDGs and how important do you think they are and and how do you think they should be best implemented? Obviously they're super important I look at the sustainable development goals and Iridium probably relates to a few of them maybe nine eleven thirteen fourteen fifteen if I remember correctly and what I mean by that I'd say at least three main things I think about development I mean it's hard to imagine development in 2018 and beyond with it without a really sophisticated internet of things and I think in a Iridium in a low earth orbit satellite system can deliver IoT in real time anywhere on the planet so connecting people in places and and things to help help lead to smart development is something that that we take very seriously. Perhaps even more compelling when I think about sustainability and specifically in in covering areas that don't have terrestrial coverage things like you know fishery management so you have vessel monitoring catch monitoring protected endangered species and at the end of the day we're talking about you know food security I mean a lot of the lot of the world depends on protein from the sea and to be able to manage that responsibly and to have you know protein security food security for today and frankly for tomorrow I think that's something that a company like Iridium can can really help with and then maybe I just mentioned is you know kind of at its most basic just safety and and and security in the sense of Iridium provides connection to tsunami buoys and a number of countries so early warning of a tsunami coming for you know safety of life for coastal communities but also we provide search and rescue services for ships and distress aircraft and distress or just a lone worker who who needs assistance so like that all relates to those STGs. And what does the future hold with the world and connectivity and Iridium enabling that? Well I think good things I think you know as we get increasingly connected I think the demand for smartphones that we all use so much has I think confirmed the need to be connected wherever you are even if you don't have smartphone coverage so to a system like Iridium you can you can be connected and I think less at risk and more likely to be able to live well and have a prosper in a developed economy. Now you said you're gearing up even though it's a little bit of a way away for the WRC conference next year what are your main priorities then? I think it's just protecting spectrum for satellites I mean we have less than eight megahertz for a worldwide system so that spectrum is important to us like it is for all companies but I think we Iridium has recently had a completed a six-year effort to be recognized for maritime safety service by the ITU sister organization the international maritime organization and so that agency has made a decision to recognize Iridium for maritime safety service there's an agenda item next year that will simply implement that into the radio regulations listing Iridium frequencies for GMDSS service no additional spectrum requested but simply helping extend a global service to parts of the globe that don't have satellite maritime safety service today and and so that's something we'll be working with delegations on and helping make sure that they understand it and help address any questions they might have about it. Well Thomas Ikewell thank you for joining us in the studio and we look forward to catching up with you again soon perhaps in next year at WRC or before then. Great thank you for all your interest. Thank you