 Thank you my good friend dear friends all over the world and as we said we have a real full house today Mr. Geraldo Ruiz Esparza secretary of communications and transport of Mexico Mr. Jose Antonio Meade Curibrena minister of foreign affairs Mexico Mr. Gabriel Contreras Saldivar president federal institute of telecommunication of Mexico this is the newest member of our family I would like to give you a very warm welcome and thanks for the very strong collaboration with our team I would like to really especially mention that Dr. Geraldo Rojo Garza Alpare president national institute of statistics and geography Mexico my good friend Ignacio Peralta your excellency Makan Tanzania excellency professor Makan minister of telecommunication of Tanzania my good friend Dr. Sam Pitroda advisor to the prime minister of India Brahima Sanu director of BDT excellency's distinguished guests ladies and gentlemen it's again a real pleasure for me to be here in Mexico in this opening of the 11th world telecommunication and ICT indicator symposium I want to thank his excellency Geraldo Ruiz Esparza secretary of communication and transport Mexico for inviting us to this great country which is well known for his hospitality last year at the same time I was here for another symposium and we're another full house and of course we will remember our pretty potential conference in Guadalajara in 2010 which has re-elected me as secretary general I'm very grateful for that and my good friend Brahima Sanu was elected director of BDT and we very much appreciate the hospitality we think there is a inspiration there is a good luck that brings up that we can get here in Mexico and therefore it's always a pleasure to come back here excellencies as we meet today we should be celebrating the incredible progress that governments and industry have made over the past decade or so in 2003 when the WISIS process began where we were with just 1.4 billion mobile cellular subscriptions worldwide and there were only 780 million people using the internet today there are now almost as many cellular mobile subscription as there are people on the planet 6.8 people 6.8 billion people have mobile subscription and there are some 2.75 billion individuals using the internet through there are still this leaves us still with two-thirds of the world population still excluded from the extraordinary benefits brought by the online world but looking at the trends I'm personally confident that over the next decade or so we will see every household village school and hospital fully connected to the internet and that and the internet will be affordable this resonates with the targets that we have set in the broadband commission for digital development namely target one making broadband policy universal target two making broadband affordable target three connecting homes to broadband target for getting people online this is not just a pipe dream but a reality we need to achieve some of you might have already received and read the manifesto that the broadband commission released last week signed by 48 members of the commission last month I should say in September in New York or we are in December now just a month ago in 12 on 20 of September we released the manifesto and we presented this to UN Secretary-General Mr. Ban Ki-moon along before the president of the General Assembly in New York we are very pleased that some members of the broadband commission are here namely Dr. Sam Petroda who is one of our very prominent members of the commission and we are very proud of his participation here today at this conference some we you came a long way we all know the very strong contribution you're making in this industry and your presence here gives us a real real boost the manifesto explicitly states that broadband infrastructure applications and services have become critical to driving growth delivering social services improving environmental management and transforming people's lives the vital role of broadband needs to be acknowledged at the core of any of post 2015 sustainable development framework to ensure that all countries developed and developing a life are empowered to participate in the digital global digital economy I think all of us here gather in Mexico this week recognize the importance of measuring the information society before measuring we cannot we cannot track progress or identify gaps which requires more attention and we cannot identify new goals in underscoring the importance of the work and taken by the WTI s let me borrow the wise words of James Harrison James Harrington who said measurement is the first step that leads to control and eventually to improvement if you can't measure something you can't understand it if you can't understand it you can't control it if you can't control it you can't improve it I want to say that we can measure I cities we understand the technology and we can control it so we can improve it and that's why we're here today this thing is colleagues I'm gratified to see that this symposium has grown big and successful for the first time it has brought together ministers CEOs the director general of both telecommunications and national statistics entities and high-level regulatory authorities as well as high level United Nations officials this is a great milestone ICU relies on the cooperation of member states industry and experts in ICT measurement to ensure the production of comparable adequate and reliable ICT statistics our data I choose statistics for 200 economies and over 100 indicators comes together as a result of strong commitment from our member states administrations I say this guided by the lessons we have learned since 1889 when I choose started to collect and process telecommunication statistics I would like to congratulate Mr. Brian was unknown director of BDT our development sector and his team who have worked hard to transform what used to be a small technical meeting into such a great annual symposium I want to assure him that of my support as he continues to innovate for development as you may know he also recently launched three initiatives that have a far-reaching impact to the post 2015 sustainable development agenda and one of those is again chaired by some betrothed the M M help empowering initiative which comes at the right time for ITU doing just the right thing with our members and taking the leadership role and this is really have to be commanded excellency ladies and gentlemen this brings me to a very important issue the revolutionary potential for ICTs was not properly foreseen in the Millennium Development Goals as we must not and we must not let the opportunity slip away this time around as we are thinking of the post 2015 development agenda and sustainable development ICTs must be given much greater prominence in the UN's post 2015 development agenda as catalysts for broad social and economic development and that will means setting new goals and new targets and measuring these with new indicators I have personally been addressing this within the United Nation family just last September I was in New York in strongly advocating the need to use ICT as a sustainable development goal it's a tool for all the other sectors to move forward but he said it's an industry in itself that therefore he has a dual role that needs to be very much highlighted so let me ask this community to achieve to actively engage with this issue here in Mexico and to send a strong message to the world and to those who are directly involved in setting the post 2015 development agenda it is essential that everyone recognizes that ICTs will continue to play an even greater role in the post 2015 agenda then they have over the past 15 years and we need to ensure that they are specifically included referenced and measured as we move forward the WTIS this year is particularly important coming as it does as we are preparing for the final reviews of the MDGs the million and development goals and the world summit on information society which is plus 10 and as we look at the development process for post 2015 it's good for the developing countries in setting the targets for post 2015 million and development goals and it's good for the developed countries for setting the sustainable development it's good for all of us for the environmental sustainability we are here at the tipping point that is in gentlemen in our global society a tipping point where the pace of technological innovations has the potential to change the world for good and for the better our discussion here at the WTIS are an important part of that change and I'm very grateful to the governor of Mexico and the federal Institute of telecommunications for accepting to share the Mexican experience and they will tomorrow take us on a tour to showcase some of their successful ICT projects the Institute is newly formed and I personally followed the very thorough process that's the government grant went through in selecting the seven people top people in this in the very transparent process that has been set there and putting for the first time a real non-political known but national nationalistic with different backgrounds that are complementary as a commission and I can only see success coming in this and you can be assured of my full support and the full support of ITU in accompanying you not assisting we're not assisting anyone we are accompanying you in what you want to do best we're bringing the additional flavor of international experience of the good and bad experiences that are happening everywhere we are after all in the information society no one should make a mistake that was made elsewhere for lack of information in this information society and no one should reinvent something that was invented already for lack of information we are here to cross-factor lies to exchange best practices lessons learned good and bad so that we move fast so we all win that's the beauty of our industry we're all winners in it ladies gentlemen let me again for a express my gratitude to the government of Mexico for inviting us here I look forward to interacting exchanging views and debating with many experts in the room for the next two days I thank you very much