 Hello, good afternoon. Good morning. Good evening again. My name is Jeonghee Kim. I'm the secretary of today's meeting. We are now off start the meeting and I would like to invite our call today's webinar call host, Ms. Boreen Dokdam Martin, the director of the Development Bureau, ITU. Please, Doreen. Okay, thank you so much. Jeonghee, we're off to a very punctual start here. So good afternoon, good evening, and good morning everyone. It's a great pleasure to join again my colleague and friend, the Undersecretary General Fabrizio Hothschild, for this second in a series of five webinars on global digital cooperation during COVID-19 crisis. Last week we looked at the vital importance of undertaking connectivity assessments. This week we're going to dive into the issues of best practices. So we're going to be looking at the actions and the initiatives that the digital community is taking to keep us all connected. We're going to look at what's working and what has proven less successful. COVID-19, as you all know, is taxing global networks to the limit. Operators and platforms are reporting huge, huge surges in traffic as the world has transitioned almost overnight to online working, schooling, shopping, and socializing. We heard during a high-level dialogue yesterday organized by the World Bank, ITU, WEF, and GSMA that some providers are reporting demand spikes as high as 800 percent, surge levels that would surely quickly have knocked out other kinds of infrastructure. It is enormous credit to the global digital community that they are able to continue to make these networks and services available but also at the same time that so many operators are working to expand services to people who now needed more than ever. Recognizing that digital resources were going to be absolutely critical in this cycle, in this crisis, we moved very quickly on our side to set up a reg for COVID platform that has served as a global repository of emergency actions that the digital community around the world is already taking to ensure availability, accessibility, and resilience of networks and resources. And the list of actions and initiatives that we are compiling in this repository are really impressive and continue to grow. We also commend the outstanding spirit of camaraderie, of innovation, and collaboration that the digital stakeholder community has demonstrated during this time of crisis. And I think it's fair to say that we are all trying to play our part from the Broadband Commission's three-pillared agenda for action which outlined immediate and medium term actions that governments and the digital community can take to the ITU, WHO, UNICEF, and global operators partnership to deliver health messaging via mobile phones to billions of people that still lack access to the internet, as well as to the Giga partnership that ITU, UNICEF, and many others on this call have joined forces to connect every school. And of course with over a billion kids that are out of school, this effort has really taken on a new level of urgency to bring meaningful connectivity and key digital services from education to finance and health services and not just to children but also to whole communities. Last week Mozilla's Mitchell Baker advised us not to waste a good crisis. And in our discussions today I'd like us to look a little further ahead because first response actions is just going to be one part of the story of harnessing digital to help the world weather this shock. The media is warning of an economic impact equal to that of the Great Depression and we're all going to be living with the fallout of COVID-19 for some time to come. Our task today is really to look at what digital can do not just in getting us through this emergency but also to get the world back up on its feet. Will it be the same world as before? Well we want to hear your views this afternoon on how we might leverage this crisis to create an environment that is less focused on profit and much more focused on on protecting our planet and its people. So let's look at best practices relating to urgent actions but let's also try to coalesce our thoughts around a longer term vision. A longer term vision of how we can leverage the recommendations of the secretary general's high level panel on digital cooperation to get our economies and our societies back on track with the agenda 2030 in focus. So in short let's try to develop a plan of action of what we need to do in the aftermath of COVID-19 so that we can rapidly bridge the digital gap and ensure that our societies as well as our networks are afforded the resiliency that they need to flourish. And with that Zhang Yi I'm going to hand over to my friend under secretary general Fabrizio over to you. Thank you so much Doreen. And thank you so Zhang Yi and thank big thanks to all those who are joining this. It's it's really clear that if we're to make any progress on the the challenges Doreen so eloquently outlined it needs this sort of multi-stakeholder ad hoc alliances to work very well together and in a manner that is mutually supportive and coherent. I mean I think Doreen said it all I just wanted to add three brief points. One in looking at the increases in traffic and Vodafone spoke about them eloquently last time but I'm struck that if you compare the statistics that we're getting from many internet providers on increases in insecurity attacks and in phishing attacks and you look at the increases in in demand and traffic the increases in security attacks are outpacing this at least is my impression the increases in traffic so the hackers are even working at a greater a more intense rate than the rest of the world and that's clearly a concern. Then coming to the big issue which is you know connectivity of course the increases in demand and the what that means for problems with services that were not built for such high demand and the increases in security and what my teenage kids would refer to as a first world problem. I mean it's a privilege problem to have in that sense and of course the absence of connectivity will lead to a great aggravation of inequality as Doreen said. I mean and it's not just a question of inequality among those countries on the other side of the digital divide but it's great inequality among those who have jobs that cannot be digitized. I mean even in New York at this moment there are those who have who could continue work continue receiving their salary because their jobs can be digital. There are those who continue working in the analog field most notably health professionals and people in supermarkets but there are those whose jobs cannot be digitalized and are not deemed essential workers who will come out of this much poorer than everybody else. So these are these are problems and I agree many of them we need to think medium long-term and short-term about what can be done about it. I think there are some quick fixes that perhaps we need to look at more in more detail. We had last time round that many of the problems were related to regulation. Now presumably regulation is something that can be overcome relatively quickly. Some of the problems relate not to the presence of infrastructure but to the presence of affordable access. Well that theoretically could also be overcome. My understanding is some of the problems even here in New York City relate to absence of hardware. I mean there's no problem here with connectivity but apparently there are tens of thousands of students who simply don't have devices that can connect and allow them to have access to their studies that way. So I do think we need to think along those three time horizons and think what we can do and how we can work together. And as Doreen said it's also the subject of the Secretary General's roadmap following the high-level panel on digital cooperation which should come out in early May and where we've worked very closely with ITU and many of you are on this call in putting together the strategy there. But I have no doubt that this debate will enrich it and hopefully also lead to early action where that is possible. So once again thank you for joining us on this in this crucial series of webinars. Back to you, Zhongyi. Thank you under Secretary General Fabricio Hoshild. Now we'd like to invite our moderator Steve Maddens. They had a regulator division in ITU. Please Sophie. Thank you Zhongyi and thank you to everybody for participating. I will be your moderator today. My name is Sophie Maddens. I'm the head of the regulatory and market environment division working directly with Doreen and that's a great pleasure and honor. Today we have a wonderful group of speakers who will join us and kindly agree to kick start our discussions. I really look forward to their interventions which I'm sure will help shape our discussions. To the speakers please do remember to limit your interventions to four minutes or less so that we really can have the opportunity to listen to all these examples because as the as the introductory remark said we really are looking to share experiences watch learn and listen to each other so that together we can make a difference in the short medium and longer term. So I already explained I have a red and a yellow flag. The yellow flag is you have one minute left. The red flag is that we will intervene and stop you. I am going to be the bad cop today and already apologize in advance but we really want to hear. Our discussions during this part of the webinar will be focused on two questions. The first one is how our countries and regions responding to the immediate needs for broadband connectivity in the COVID response to promote network resilience because as Doreen said we had the spike of 800% what we heard yesterday. How can we ensure availability affordability and accessibility of digital infrastructure and services? The second question is really how can we use the lessons learned for the future to prepare better and to and to get better. Are there any lessons to be learned in terms of cross-border regional and international collaboration for preparedness response and recovery? So without further ado keeping to my own rules I would like to welcome her Excellency Ursula Ousu-Erikufu, Minister of Communications Ghana. Your Excellency please share your with us your experiences from Ghana. The floor is yours. Thank you Sophie. It's a privilege to join you and I'll endeavor to be as brief as possible. It's been a challenging time for all of us but it has brought into sharp relief. It's made us all realize how important the digital world and the digital infrastructure is for business continuity and even the continuity of life and social services around the country but the traffic jams have moved from the streets online as we've seen increased traffic online and data usage and so what we've done in Ghana is to provide additional spectrum to the telecoms companies which needed it which are two of them for free on loan for three months to enable them to increase their capacity and provide functions functionality for video conferencing and better connectivity for government agencies businesses and individuals. We've also given them the regulators giving them approval to use UMTS technology over 2G to provide data not just for the rural areas but for all other sectors of their network and so UMTS is now enabled for 2G data functionality. We've also provided connectivity with zero rated all educational sites and health related sites as well for health messaging and provided zero rated infrastructure for virtual office working which we were utilizing a smart workplace for public officials to be able to continue working from their homes virtually and that has also been zero rated to make it possible for government workers to work from home. Transaction fees for mobile money has also been waived for up to 100 cities which is like 20 dollars and so that can be sent and received free off charge and the supplement fees have also been waived for electronic payment services used by all financial digital financial services providers. We provided to free access to emergency services and inquiries on COVID-19 and the ministry has helped set up an emergency call center and a national information contact center as well for general information on COVID-19 and general emergencies as well. We've also launched a tracker app for some people to report their symptoms themselves to facilitate a contact tracing and even more importantly we've set up an emergency communication system which has linked all the telecoms operators in one network to enable us to send and receive information disseminate information quickly and use mobile telephony and data for contact tracing. So I believe that that is an example that the others can look into using instead of going to the individual telecoms companies to assist for their assistance to disseminate information. We have one central location from which they can all do that and we we are working actively on cyber security as well as the the cyber criminals also take advantage of that. So in a nutshell those are some of the things that we're doing in Ghana. Thank you so much and you win the star your excellency because you are under four minutes. Thank you so much. I have a challenge for you for the end of our discussion and that's a challenge to all the speakers in this session which is when we come back after these speakers I will ask you for a tweet size comment on what has worked and what has not worked in Ghana. So some example of a success so I'm giving you time to think about it. Thank you. Thank you Sophie. So next we move to Steve Spengler CEO of IntelSat and a broadband commissioner. Steve please share with us your experience on IntelSat and indeed satellite's role in ensuring connectivity during emergencies and also in the medium and long term. Steve the floor is yours. Okay thank you very much Sophie and I'd like to thank also thank Under Secretary General Cox Child and ITU Development Director Bogdan Martin for inviting me today and for facilitating this you know very important conversation. I also would like to note and apologize in advance that I will have to leave the webinar a few minutes early. The global corona pandemic has demonstrated that internet connectivity is critical to ensure that hospitals medical institutions especially those located in rural remote areas have vital access to global information and resources and likewise educational institutions must have the option to use distance learning platforms and students can no longer physically attend school businesses of all sorts must continue to provide essential services using remote access technologies and organizations such as the UN must be assured that their critical peacekeeping and refugee missions around the world remain connected to serve those in need. We in the satellite arena are proud to collaborate with governments regulators and private sector entities to enable a resilient infrastructure in emergency situations such as this as well as in normal times in rural areas in small island states in hard to reach geographic regions to connect refugees schools and hospitals this mission is even more relevant today as we face the pandemic. This pandemic has imposed a new urgency to providing broadband coverage to the hundreds of millions of people who have limited or no access satellite networks have unique capabilities working as an integrated service with other telecom technologies to fill this gap hybrid networks of terrestrial fiber fixed in mobile wireless and satellite technologies are essential to enable connectivity to the unconnected. The 5G world that is now emerging will further facilitate these hybrid technology solutions to solve the most difficult communications challenges so how does the pandemic inform how we look at these future networks what lessons have we learned from this situation I I just have three brief observations first and the first is very obvious internet and telecoms connectivity is essential the gap between populations that have robust networks and those that do not has never been more stark this should propel us to redouble our efforts between government governments regulators and industry to close this connectivity gap. Second observation is that we're learning on a daily basis that we as a world we're not prepared for a crisis of this type preparedness applies to the telecom networks as well and while services have expanded dramatically all around the world it hasn't always been able to expand as much as we would like. All of us have to imagine crises of this type and make sure that our networks are sized properly for a surgeon demand and critical equipment is available for rapid deployment. Likewise regulators and governments have to be ready to accelerate administrative action just as we heard is happening in Ghana to support rapid deployment. Third some things will permanently change as a result of the coronavirus we have gained new insights about how we interact with each other how we work how we educate our children the technology exists today to facilitate these new ways of interacting and educating but it's not widespread and it's not always optimal. I foresee a wave of innovation in this area we need to be flexible enough to embrace these new approaches and enable them in our lives and our networks this could have a huge benefit in closing the education gap for instance around the world which brings me back to my first point ubiquitous broadband connectivity is essential the pandemic has been a tragic and wrenching event for societies addressing the coronavirus itself and the economic impact has to be the top priority of governments at this time but we all of us on this webinar will learn new things from this experience I'm optimistic that it'll be a catalyst for innovation in new ways to address our challenges including acceleration of our efforts to close the broadband connectivity gap around the world. Thank you. Thank you Steve you may almost made it you were seven seconds behind but thank you very much for your great insights and indeed I think you have lots of material for your tweets I sound white after all the speakers so looking forward to that now turning to Craig Labovitz chief technology officer of Nokia I know you have many figures you you really have many figures on what the impact of the pandemic is could you please share with us some examples and experiences and some of the figures you have have together have put together Craig the floor is yours. Yes thank you and I'll try to be brief. Nokia has the privilege of working with telecommunication providers around the world including the largest providers providing the majority of the global Atlantic Trans-Pacific transport as well as regional providers in Africa America's Europe and Asia. Overall over the last several weeks now becoming months it's clear that the internet has continued and accelerated its role as critical infrastructure as important as water, electricity, highways, and other utilities. In general we have watched the networks perform well over the last several weeks and resilient in the face of absolutely massive traffic growth. We have seen growth in a period of days and sometimes less than a week growth that usually occurs in a year occurring over a matter of days. We first watched the traffic in the network changes begin in China followed by Europe and later the Americas. Individual applications grew such as WhatsApp by 40% in a matter of days. Some telecommunications and video conferencing grew by 700% in the same time period. Weekday traffic grew 40% or more at peaks. In general the overall network growth has been just completely unprecedented in the types of things we've seen particularly seeing growth of 60 to 70% during the peaks over the weekends when typically video and other usage is at highest. While many of the changes to internet traffic on an individual level such as an increased usage of video conferencing telelearning remains to be seen whether these changes will be permanent what is clear is that within the core of the internet we've seen significant changes to the way the network is being built literally watching the internet evolve overnight as providers, as content providers, as content distribution networks, as governments have made changes to networks. We have seen tens of thousands of individual vendors, engineers making changes to add capacity, adding additional links, adding additional hardware to the network, risking of course health during the time of the pandemic to keep the network going. So in general we've seen really dramatic traffic growth but we have seen really due to the significant capacity of the network, due to the contribution of governments, of thousands of engineers, the network has continued to have capacity added, continued to meet the demands. As some of the speakers know we do see some issues such as security where we do work with a number of providers around the world protecting the critical infrastructure. So going forward there while the network has been forming quite well they do continue to be a number of threats and concerns that we continue to work with the providers on and that's basically a quick summary so thank you. Thank you so much I was unprepared you stayed under the four minutes thank you so much and also please think of your tweet size soundbite. Next I'd like to turn to Miss Jane Lim, Assistant Chief Executive of Sectoral Transformation of the Information Communication Media Authority of Singapore. Miss Lim could you please share it with us some examples and experiences from Singapore. The floor is yours. Thank you. Hi dear friends and colleagues I'd like to express my appreciation to the Office of the UN and the Secretary General, Special Advisor and the ITU for initiating this because I think in these times is that we need to stay connected more than ever before. So the COVID-19 virus outbreak has become a global emergency and it's affected many countries in the world. Singapore has not been spared either so without a doubt the virus has presented a stress test for governments worldwide with the need to manage the impact on three fronts public health, social economic and information. So Singapore has been tackling COVID-19 very seriously from the start our top priority has always been the lives of our people and supporting and protecting their livelihoods as well so we've had to take unprecedented measures like many countries to mitigate the immediate impact. We set aside nearly 60 billion Singapore dollars or about 12 percent of our GDP to support businesses workers and households during these turbulent times. Digital connectivity and technology have played a critical role in our pandemic response I think first to curb the transmission of the virus second to ensure that accurate and timely information is readily accessible by people and third to enable people and businesses to manage the great disruption as best as possible and a resilient and robust telecommunications infrastructure is a critical utility for modern service society no different from electricity or clean water I remember Craig just mentioned that as well so with the majority of officers and schools shut businesses have moved to enable employees to work from home while students and teachers have been moving to home-based learning not to measure parents. Singapore has been fortunate that our past investments in high-speed broadband and fiber to the home have built network and telco resilience so nine in ten Singapore households today enjoy high-speed fiber connectivity while the local internet data traffic has spiked by 60 percent as much as 60 percent our systems have been able to support the search and we've also announced that we will continue to work closely with the telcos to make immediate investments to upgrade the networks and further bolster our nationwide network capacity as part of our smart nation strategy but we must also pay attention to those who are more vulnerable and lack ready access to digital resources in partnership with companies volunteer groups and schools we have significantly ramped up the assistance for low-income families who need digital access so they can get subsidized personal computers actually free personal computers laptops and also free fiber broadband connectivity the digital are turning to the business front digital technology and capabilities are becoming the lifeline for small and medium-sized enterprises or SMEs to keep their business going so with this in mind in Singapore IMDA has launched a state healthy go digital initiative to help businesses adopt solutions digital solutions that are relevant to COVID-19 so these include things like telecommuting online collaboration visitor management e-commerce and e-invoicing and e-payments so these solutions can be offered free due to partnerships with the tech companies or subsidized at up to 80 percent by the government and this is critical to help small businesses maintain operations and deepen their digital capabilities more importantly i think economies need to connect and forge greater interoperability of our digital infrastructures and systems share information and better mitigate the disruptions to supply chains and lastly i'd like to express that we have to resolve and the resources to overcome this difficult period and we need to work in partnership with all the stakeholders especially with the international community to build a shared knowledge asset through discussions such like these and so we can coordinate a more decisive and innovative action together so i wish everyone good health during this period stay healthy and go digital that's our motto you can see it on the thing as well thank you yes you did finish under the four minutes thank you all i had the great speakers now we come to the next speaker Miss Jane Coffin unfortunately Mr. Andrew Sullivan the president and CEO of the internet society could not join us so i would like to give the floor to Jane Coffin who's a senior vice president internet and growth Jane please share with us some examples and experiences that you have seen with the internet community Jane the floor is yours yes thank you very much Sophie and thank you very much to USG and special advisor Hoshild and to BDT director Doreen Bogdan Martin for your leadership and to your teams for setting up these webinars we are very excited to join and my apologies our CEO had a sort of a last-minute board meeting and he had to take that call i want to thank you all for the great collaboration we've seen to date we know that the internet is a force for good it's become our lifeline we've got to live up to the challenge that people are putting and the trust that the trust that people are putting in us to live up to the challenge for our organizations to call for change we've been working very closely with our communities of interest and we've been hearing great things from the field and some of those things are the following let's keep those networks up at all costs the shutdowns we've seen in the past have been really detrimental for socioeconomic development so thank you all let's continue that best practice of keeping our networks on let's also continue to support internet exchange points we've seen their criticality during the last few weeks and this big month that we've all been living through they've been providing more statistics about traffic movement and exchange of traffic let's keep them open and keep that them neutral as well and continue that best practice of supporting community networks and internet exchange points and on that topic of community networks which are complementary forms of access in local areas we've been seeing from South Africa to Kenya the importance of these community networks keeping data out on COVID to their communities in New York City we're seeing community networks connect people for the first time we need that flexibility of those complementary networks to exist and to connect people some examples for you on that connectivity we've seen one household go from three gigabits yesterday to about 83 today thanks to a network called Althea Networks in New York City New York City Mesh has been running across the rooftops connecting people so that kids can actually study at home because they did not have connectivity before this is a key thing for us to remember that in urban communities we need to take a look at where people are not connected the community network in LQE Patagonia nurses and doctors and police officers are using this network for the first time connect to connect to the internet this network was stood up it's a 4g community network last year so again these community networks very very important and important for us to get access to spectrum I'd like to congratulate the minister from Ghana for her fast move to provide more spectrum to the mobile operators we'd like to see also the 6g band opened up a little bit more we saw the FCC do that last week I believe it's been crazy to see what's happening so fast with respect to spectrum and access to it let's continue that tradition to see where we can help operators and the small community networks get more access so they can provide more connectivity to people for funding we've seen our governments open up their their pocket books right now it's been amazing to see where the funding has come in to support more connectivity let's think about changing universal service as well so that that funding goes out to some of the connectivity providers that need it most right now we've got to change the game on universal service there as well and to think about licensing easier licensing right now and flexibility for some of those providers for schools and libraries I know this may seem like a strange thing to bring up but we've been seeing the role that schools and libraries are playing right now even though they're quote closed the wi-fi has been left on in many communities and those libraries are also spinning up maps of where wi-fi connectivity is in their cities and towns this is a call to action for all of us for better measurements and to continue this action to provide more open data about where we can find connectivity and where there isn't connectivity so mapping this is one thing I'd like to leave us with is that we all need to figure out how to map better we know that 49 percent of the of the planet is not connected so our question and sort of call to action right now is if 49 percent are unconnected in 2020 what is it that we can do by 2030 can we bring this number down so that we are at a 20 percent of the planet that's not connected we of course would like to see everybody connected by 2030 but can we give ourselves a challenge so I'll stop there with that call to action we'd like to see more data we'd like to see better measurements more funding and other thank you thank you Jane and maybe you want to keep that thought for your tweet I want to go back to everybody on one more round and so minister we heard all the wonderful initiatives that you have undertaken in Ghana our research from our rig for covert platform that Doreen already mentioned we saw the mobile industry has collaborated with the bank of of Ghana to implement free mobile transactions to promote digital forms of payments the mobile industry has committed to zero rating as you said websites that provide covert 19 awareness and also further packages for educational websites so I really was thrilled to hear all your initiatives and congratulations to you because we do need strong and courageous policymakers so what's your tweet what's your sound like digitally connected we'll continue innovating and sharing our resources beyond covert 19 for a better healthier safer world I like that thank you very much thank you Steve uh thank you for your intervention and indeed for highlighting the need for cooperation and collaboration that stuck with me in the points you made and to highlight the need to think of those in more remote and rural areas and those that really need to be we really anyone behind so what would you say in your tweet style response what would you say your top action is I know you already gave three so you already have the material up your sleeve but what would you say your top action is to ensure this happens in time of crisis and in the meeting and long term well it's a matter of of collaboration so we have the technology to close the connectivity gap Jane Coffin mentioned complementary networks I talked about hybrid networks it's the same thing it's using all the technologies that are available to us to to do amazing things for the most disadvantaged situations it's it's available today we just have to have the will to work together and and put together the the projects and the funding to make it happen so that is our challenge and it's an opportunity as well I think you need two or three tweets there for all those words because yeah sorry but in tweaks but but no indeed jokes apart collaboration is key and that came in the different in the different interventions and has come in the different fora so and indeed what you said we need that all the to use all the technology that is available to us so I thank you very much for that turning to Craig you gave us some really amazing figures some really amazing facts what were your what would your sound bite be what would your tweet style response be my sound bite would be the networks were made for this over my career I've watched the network grow from an academic and research network to now a global mission critical platform I think given the criticality it's important as a global society we continue these investments in the infrastructure and in the coordination of building out and interconnecting the different networks thank you very much so that now I talk to I turn to miss jane lem and I did see again in the research that you on the 8th of April you published a series of proactive connectivity content and accessibility initiatives you announced that to support the nation through this emergency in collaboration with the telecoms the media industry you mentioned that collaboration so what would those bite-sized pieces be what would your tweet be your twitter feed so mine would be we must fight the immediate crisis while keeping an eye on the future and move decisively towards a new digital normal that is more resilient more connected and more sustainable for everybody thank you very much I like that and last but not least my friend Jane Coffin you mentioned some very significant and I think you also have some tweets up your sleeve there but you mentioned some very significant points you talked about community networks you talked keep networks up at all costs you need to continue to support solutions such as IXP such as community networks we need to change our game on a number of policy and regulatory issues so what's your tweet Jane I'll pick the one on the call to action I'd say the internet is a force for good our collaborative call to action is to reduce the connectivity gap by 20% by 2030 nice that is a definite call to action so thank you very much I think we've we've stuck to our time we were in the time frame that we had set aside for our discussion and I really want to thank all the speakers especially since I didn't have to be rude and interrupt any of you so thank you so much very much appreciate it with that we'll move to the next session the connectivity best practice too we want to turn to participants to hear from you what has worked and what has not and through various technological means we got a number of speakers that have already asked to intervene what would you see are the major areas of digital cooperation being able to support the COVID-19 response and as everybody had said let's not think just in the short term how can we take this and these lessons learned for the medium and long term again here I'd like you to stick to one to two minutes maximum and I'll start with Mr. Maximo Torreiro Cullen who's the chief economist and assistant director general of the economic and social development department of FAO Mr. Torreiro Cullen are you online the floor is yours thank you very much and I would be very brief the priority that we are looking is in several specific sectors one is on education and a best practice we have identified is that the country of Peru for example they have decided to purchase 600 000 tablets with a cellular connection to deploy to rural areas so that kids can do online teaching and they have developed a pretty sophisticated way of online teaching so that's one the second one is how we can develop a mechanism to assure that individuals that don't have access to to cellular or to internet at this point can access for it for free and that's an option that we have seen in something called free freemium services where basic information could be accessible for free and we believe that it's also essential and finally the last thing that we have seen which is working pretty well is using extension services for extension through services for farmers which have to make very tough decisions today like for example mechanisms of storage bringing science not only the traditional mechanism but adding science to it so that they can be more efficient in the way they store the foods through tablets with cellular with cellular mobile mobile lines attached to it so if we can find ways to provide access to these options in a cheaper way or even free in many cases that that is an example that we have been seeing in several developing countries thank you thank you so much and thank you for sticking to the time as well I just want to check because I know Mr. Lacina Cone the director general and CEO of smart africa also wanted to intervene on this particular question thank you very much particularly one I would maybe on the top of what the honorable minister mentioned about gana with regard to the countries you know that what have been doing in terms of supporting broadband connectivity we have a gana of course in addition to what the minister said gana also release additional spectrum by the way for mobile network operators of three for a limited time to augment the network capacity due to the high demand we see the same thing in South Africa which release also additional spectrum for mobile network operators for three to augment their radio and network capacity due to the high demand for Tunisia Tunisia is making all the international mobile telecommunication IH spectrum tech neutral short-term basis to give MNO flexibility in these nine in Rwanda occasional website and the move the cost for mobile money transaction to encourage the citizen to shift to cashless transactions to avoid the virus spreading and paying safari come actually waived fee one and PESA for transfer under ten dollars and has also waived all the charges on all their child money money mobile money so moving forward you know the biggest lessons learned and has been really the need to accelerate the development of digital infrastructure by one for example investing the universal access funds towards digital skills literacy and extending connectivity unconnected for affordable services number two is encouraging network infrastructure sharing as a way to increase deployment program connectivity number three will be encouraging the council of african regulated the smart Africa posting on the needs to promote spectrum reforming and neutrality for quick deployment of services and the last is to review spectrum licensing strategies for 4g to be more liberal and cost effective that's what we have at thank you thank you very much lasina and a lot of the issues you mentioned are issues that we see coming back in a lot of the of the initiatives we see affordability the universal service funds the licensing we see it coming back in many of the initiatives and the action plans that have been adopted i also had a request from Robert Pepper the director for connectivity policy of facebook so several things very quickly one you know to reinforce Greg was saying i loved his network for me this um networks seem to be and there's actually wide evidence that the networks have been amazingly resilient we've seen the increases in traffic um but the networks are all um uh they're beyond coping they're actually as Craig said um upgrading um and and doing very well um along those lines and i want to come back to some lessons um we and some of the other internet companies almost immediately were voluntarily working with network operators to um manage and limit bit rate traffic bit rate limiting some video to in the um near term on some of the surges help the network operators deal with the the surges um in the short term very importantly some of the things that we've seen and we've we've done that go to broader issues beyond just network is providing real-time updates from national health authorities and who um because people need really good information on how to cope uh and and how to address uh the the virus crisis we've directed about two billion people um on the various facebook applications to expert health resources and over 350 million people clicked through to those national resources at the same time uh we're removing uh misinformation over 100 000 pieces of covid 19 misinformation including crazy things like people you know telling people to drink bleach i mean this is these are terrible things um and we're also blocking ads that are exploiting the situation uh selling uh false test kits and so on and then finally all we're doing things to support small business because we can't just uh uh ignore when we're as we're going to be trying to come back small business is critical so a real quick lesson learn going forward thank you for the red um we can't wait until a crisis hits right we need to be able to be prepared to respond quickly and one reason we were able to respond very quickly on the network issues is the existing relationships with all of the operators and so we were able to respond within hours thank you very much thank you very much for your intervention and for the points raised uh next on my list of questions of raised hands and questions that came through what's up etc is mr ravi sukhchak the president of public affairs of american tower company thank you good day on on behalf of americans our corporation atc i'd like to thank you for allowing me the opportunity to share some insights from an infrastructure perspective with such a distinguished audience as a leading provider of wireless telecoms infrastructure and a proud itv sector member as an organization we're committed to supporting global efforts to help maintain and increase the resilience of telecoms networks they're both during this current pandemic and beyond the infrastructure is an integral part of the mobile ecosystem globally around 70 percent of cell phone towers are owned by independent tower companies such as atc to ensure networks remain reliable and robust in the during these unprecedented times which we are going through the strategic importance of telecoms infrastructure can't be overstated and it's for this reason that atc is working closely with national regulatory authorities and policy makers across the 19 markets in which we operate to encourage the implementation of policy measures that facilitate the maintenance of telecoms infrastructure and the timely construction of new sites help reduce the huge strain on networks and minimize service disruption and i'm pleased to report that in a number of the markets in which we operate governments have implemented measures such as flexible permitting regimes better access rights and helping dispel conspiracy theories around 5G and COVID-19 that help achieve this objective you know we believe the adoption of such measures during the current crisis will significantly assist in ensuring the resilience of telecoms networks in these difficult times and as an organization we are firm proponents of multi-stakeholder collaboration between the private sector and government and right now we believe this is needed more than ever thank you thank you very much you just made the two minutes thank you so much i also see some hands raised before i raise the offer the floor to anybody who would like to intervene i see a couple of hands raised in the chat i have Mike Jensen from APC Mike would you like to intervene and remember we have two minutes thanks very much Sophie i think a lot of the points about the immediate activities that our organizations can undertake have been well covered already in this session in the one last week i'd just like to point out a couple of process aspects that might be worth considering in terms of how we collaborate best and i think it's been reinforced that there is a need for a multi-stakeholder process here which involves everyone civil society government and the private sector and in relation to this i think it's worth knowing or at least learning more about how the emergency telecommunications cluster works it's a global network of 24 organizations from the humanitarian sector to the private sector and government who globally work together to provide communication services in the case of of disasters and emergencies so clearly they must have a lot of experience in how this works together as a as a group that i think we could learn from in devising a a marshal plan for going forward for as Jane says to try and reduce the number of unconnected to a more reasonable number and in relation to that i'd like to also just point people to the crisis connectivity charter given the importance of satellite capacity in reaching the unconnected in a in the short order the charter is a set of commitments by the satellite community to enhance connectivity in times of crisis and to facilitate communications amongst all those responding to humanitarian emergencies so i think that that also could be something to be looked at and similarly on a more ongoing basis i think the internet governance forum is is an excellent vehicle for continuing these kinds of multi-stakeholder debates and its strength is that it's supported by the united nations but at the same time is not a decision-making body so that it allows a free flow of information and we've had a lot of success with discussing and sharing ideas for example in the dynamic coalition on community networks and i think there are many other areas of discussion that we could all benefit by learning in that multi-stakeholder context thank you thank you very much mike and you definitely made it within the two minutes so thank you very much i also have a number of other hands raised so i would like to call on nema your hand has been raised nema the floor is yours thank you very much my name is nena from the worldwide web foundation i want to raise something that i think we already know we have the cyber cyber conventions on security on one hand and we have the international humanitarian laws on the other hand however what covid-19 has shown us is that we're lacking in something and this is related to what happened in the Czech Republic the the hospital underwent a cyber attack and it was not just in the Czech Republic there have been other attacks at hospital infrastructure hospital digital infrastructure in France in Spain in Thailand and the United States and this brings the question what do we have in our regulatory framework what do we have in the spare of international law concerning the protection of critical health infrastructure in times of crisis we've been researching this within the web foundation we have not found enough and that is what i want to put on the table as we look forward to long-term digital cooperation as a global community thank you thank you very much nena much appreciated i also have had a request from the floor from miss benza gibria the senior policy council focused on us cloud policy at google miss benza the floor is yours hi everybody thank you so much so fiat and thank you for the organizers for putting on this important and timely webinar you know as some of the speakers have mentioned before certainly the covid-19 crisis is putting unprecedented demands on governments and businesses of all types around the world you know there have been sudden and widespread efforts to move to remote work and to use digital channels to deliver vital citizen and consumer services for many including in essential sectors such as health care finance and education being able to access secure scalable reliable cloud public cloud computing services has become critical to maintaining these vital services and making them available to the public and as we contemplate best practices and lessons learned from covid we would urge the consideration of strategies that allow for broader and easier adoption of of public cloud based services by governments and businesses globally some of those strategies have already been discussed by some of the earlier speakers including in ensuring continued interconnectedness of networks i'd like to put one more on the table which is relates to the flow of data and the implementation of regulatory frameworks that allow for the free flow of data that together with other measures intended to maintain a to allow for global networks are critical to maintaining reliability and resiliency of digital services so that's thank you for it for allowing me that intervention and we very much look forward to staying connected with this effort thank you very much for that i see a number of hands up looking at the at the chart i know that you've had your had your hand up for a while please take the floor thank you thank you sofi nice to see you way the way thank you for this opportunity i'm speaking on behalf of the uruguayan chapter of internet society and i would like to share some of the experiences here in uruguay i think that the the measures that are being taken now are very important but it's also important the development that has been achieved before and this is a lesson for the future because we don't have to wait until the next crisis in order to move forward in the digital development in the uruguayan case is is important to remark for example the government has continued working almost in its full capacity with most of the employees at home due to the the the tools that they have available and then the subsidized that the most vulnerable people has been asking some submitting requirements to the government hundred and fifty thousand dollars sorry hundred and fifty thousand people have required assistance from the government and everything has been implemented through online tools children are coming back to the school today starting to come back gradually today starting by the countryside schools and this is possible because all the students even in the countryside are connected to the internet and to their education platforms and rural doctors that have to support to provide the support in case of any problem in the rural schools are also well connected so the digital development is helping the health authorities to deal with the pandemic but also are helping to support the strategy to keep people at home and to support also the opportunities to continue the economy running in these special times one important conclusion those are experienced from Uruguay but so one important conclusion is that government services are very very important are becoming more and more important in these days and governments should consider to improve the access to their services through moving their services and applications and data to to the cloud and also to taking advantage of IXPs when IXPs are available it's important that there is no tradition of governments connecting to IXPs and they should do that in order to improve the access to their services. Thank you very much applying the rules to all so thank you very much for your intervention very interesting intervention. I also have Miss Guilcales the third secretary of the Andorra mission in New York. Well thank you for the meeting and for giving us the floor we wanted to refer to the Andorran experience which is modest because this is a small community but at risk from the situation between two highly affected areas Spain and France and for being a tourist economy in this crisis Andorra has placed health as a priority. The government has based its work on their responsibility of the people on the transparency and on the scientific and critical thinking this relationship has generated confidence. In terms of connectivity Andorra has a network FTTH of fiber to the home at 300 megabytes per second available for all households on more than 98 percent of the territory and with the capacity to provide 700 megabytes per second. The provision of such large capacity infrastructures has proved very opportune for lockdown and has allowed teleworking in many non-face-to-face sectors. Besides in education the internet has been installed and tablets tablets have been distributed to students who did not have them to follow online classes and a specific application for detecting cases of bullying has been deployed. It was not created in Andorra but has only been adapted and deployed. For individuals free cultural and leisure resources have been made available which has increased the usual internet traffic by 500 percent. A friendly platform has been created to update information and to auto-evaluate symptoms which has been used by more than 10,000 people. Antibody tests will be performed on the entire population to evaluate the epidemiological characteristics of over 75,000 inhabitants in less than 24 hours 27,000 applications have been received on the web and evidence of participatory will. Thank you very much for your attention. Thank you so much and I put myself on mute because I'm scrolling through the chat to see for the request for the floor very interesting contribution. Thank you so much for that. Next I'd like to go to Mr Giacomo Madzone if you're still online. I know you had asked for the floor as well. Big warm hug to everybody on the call. Yes simply to say that we are we are improving a lot capacity for the podcasters in the educational sector. I think that's probably this could be very useful. As you know some podcasters have implemented already their capacity online. I mean a huge website where there is a repository of educational material that can be accessed by the schools or by the single students. But also for the members that have not yet implemented the online capacity for distribution we are doing this through broadcast channels. Most of them are using the terrestrial digital connection. They are able to use satellite also via satellite. They have thematic channels that are made available. For instance some of our members have switched off the sport channels that at the moment that you know current sports live events broadcast and muted them in the educational channel. And we have seen that the performance of combined terrestrial distribution through television network and the online distribution is a very powerful tool that is able to connect also to be all connected and to create classroom virtual classroom environment even for those that are not able to have the devices to be connected through other means. So this is a topic that could be developed in in future discussion and I can am available to bring some best practice example that we are collecting from all our members. Thank you for this important initiative. Thank you very much Giacomo. Very important information there. I also see that we had a question on the in the raised hands. I see a question from Boca Boca my friend I hope you're well. Please take the floor. Thank you very much Sophie for giving me the opportunity and congratulations on such insightful meeting. I just wanted to intervene because we have been talking about the the supply side and I believe it's very important if we want to learn some lessons and in the wake of this digital corporation that also we spend some time listening to the to the demand side if we want to provide meaningful connectivity and on that point I'm speaking as a commissioner at the Broadband Commission it's very important we have seen some industries being very active during this crisis and I'm referring to the health industry I'm referring to the education and government services so it's extremely important in view of SDG 3 and 4 as a as a multistakeholder platform we we include in our dialogue and discussion the needs from these industries hence we'll be able to tailor the the supply. Thank you very much Sophie. Thank you very much Boca I think that's a very important point you raised. I see another hand raised Mr. Hovech at the Messian who's the head of innovation service at UNHCR. Sir the floor is yours. Thank you thank you for including us in this very important conversation and we come to you to highlight the importance of bridging the gap of inequality which was mentioned earlier on connectivity in favor for refugees and forcibly the space population who are some of the most marginalized populations in the world our call is to include refugees and displaced populations in national frameworks for universal access to connectivity we also call to include refugees and displaced in plans to bridge the gap of access to mobile devices globally and we have a few ideas that we can share with you on that one the COVID-19 pandemic should be an opportunity for solidarity with those in need and for partnerships. Our partnerships and collaboration with ITU, GSMA, governments, private sector and UN and humanitarian system agencies are yielding results but we need to up our game. I'd like to highlight the case of Uganda where directors from the telecommunications regulator with support of the office of the prime minister provided 600,000 refugees from South Sudan a legal pathway to access something that would have otherwise been a hard stop. This was really made possible through continued multi stakeholder engagement at national level with humanitarian aid and development actors linking closely with national panic. Now we are experimenting with digital communication platforms with refugees and displaced populations like WhatsApp groups and chatbots in order to improve the way we communicate with refugees and displaced. These advances would not be possible if connectivity is not guaranteed for these vulnerable populations. We are also exploring expanding our assistance programs and our ability to provide cash assistance remotely. Again, this will be possible if we bridge the gap of connectivity. Thank you again and we are ready to up our game with all of you. Thank you so much for your short intervention. I also had seen that her excellency Ms. Makikoko Yamada had asked for the floor. I know how late it is for you. I know you had asked for the floor and I was wondering if you're still online. Your excellency. Hello from Japan and thank you for giving me the chance to intervene. And concerning Japan, broadband infrastructure is comparatively well equipped and so we can control the traffic at this moment although we have 20% to 40% increase in the internet traffic. But yesterday, last night, I participated in the high-level panel and I learned that the situation is very serious in many countries. And I, at this moment, I record what we experienced during the natural disaster in 2011, 2011, earthquake and tsunami. And we established public-private partnership initiative of the government and mobile operators and provided small-sized base stations for mobile communication and satellite links and other equipment to those damaged telecommunications capacity. And also we shortened the period of issuing the radio license to local governments and many companies. And also since then, telecommunications operators in the government now have the equipment stocks in the preparation of certain natural disasters. So I think we can take the similar measures in the short-term measures during our battle with COVID-19. Okay, thank you. Thank you very much, minister. We have three more minutes in this particular question and answer session. I saw that there was also a request for the floor from Joanna Rubenstein, Childhood USA. Are you still online, Joanna? And you have the floor for the very last intervention before we wrap up. Thank you so much and thank you for this very rich discussion. I just would like to remember that although children are not terribly affected by the COVID virus, they are very much affected by the new situation and what their parents are experiencing and the isolation and going online with their education and socializing. As it was mentioned before, this also means that children are exposed to different risks and harms online. So I just want to urge everybody to think about some of the recommendations of the broadband commission in their agenda for action that we need to think at the same time how to keep children safe online and sometimes it's as easy as ensuring that parents know about parental settings and sometimes it's by simply using social media platforms or national networks to ensure that parents are aware that they should know what the children are doing online. That's it. Thank you. Thank you very much and thank you to everybody for a very rich discussion. I think we've heard many many good examples. I think we've also heard how key it is and that's as Doreen said right in the beginning of her welcoming introduction. She asked us to look not just at the short term but look at the medium and longer term. Doreen and Fabrizio asked us to look further ahead to really share concrete actions, concrete examples. We've seen concrete examples in terms of technology solutions for network resilience because that word came to me over and over again that network resilience how important that is but it's important to think of the businesses of the people of the children. We need that resilience and that strength of the networks and the safety and security of the networks for financial transactions to keep health information important to keep health infrastructure important. Those are all the issues we saw. We saw some concrete examples and on the chat I hope all of us can go back to the chat to see some of the very concrete and interesting suggestions. We really need to think about the enabling policy and regulatory environment. We heard about spectrum licensing. We heard about spectrum emergency and temporary spectrum allocations but we also heard about zero rating. We also heard about applications. We heard about emergency communications preparedness and emergency communications preparedness plans. We heard about collaboration. We heard about collaboration between the public and the private sector and we heard great examples of that collaboration. Mike brought up the the the ETC the electronic telecommunications cooperation is that correct Doreen I think so the ETC. We heard about collaboration between civil society and between governments. We heard about the public private partnerships. We heard about innovative financing solutions. We heard the word universal service come up and I hasten to say the universal access and service strategies and financing mechanisms that came up and we also heard time and time again the need to be agile the need to be flexible the need to be collaborative the need to think out of the box so that together we can make an impact and together we can help our children we can help our businesses we can help our governments find the solutions and share the solutions and as Doreen mentioned we launched this reg for COVID platform now three weeks ago. We've been receiving a tremendous of an amount of good examples and we call upon you please do share your examples because we are posting them up there so that people can share and learn. We will also be launching very shortly discussion boards so that together we can keep on talking because again this came up we need to continue our conversations we need to continue talking in these various forms these calls for action are not just paper they're calls for action so together we need to bring that together and that again we heard time and time again Doreen if I may I would like to hand the floor back to you so that you can make your final remarks so that you can make your closing remarks and that we can then hand over to Fabritio for the actual closing of this webinar thank you very much to everybody thank you to your for your inputs and we look forward to working with you. Doreen the floor is back to you. Super thank you so much Sophie for your excellent moderation and your brilliant time keeping. I saw just now come through on on the chat from Issoa about the ETC so the ETC the emergency telecommunications cluster ITU is actively engaged in that cluster which is led by the world food program and the work of that cluster which is usually to support countries when they face natural disasters is shifting to figure out ways that we can together help countries when they're faced with epidemic outbreaks as we are with the with the COVID crisis and of course ITU is also a proud member of the crisis connectivity charter I just wanted to to add that so Fabritio I don't know about you but I'm feeling like super inspired and like very excited by this conversation this afternoon I have found that you are all incredibly innovative we've seen lots of new partnerships that have been announced either orally in the conversation or shown on the chat I think there's an incredible spirit of collaboration as well as partnerships that solidarity I think is there and Steve as he mentioned before we have the technology today to bring everyone in the world online but what was missing as he said was the will the will was not there and I think what COVID has done has actually put the will right in front of us and we've rallied around that will we have come together in these very difficult circumstances and we have come up with innovative practices to actually connect better people that actually weren't connected before so we need to maintain that will and we need to as a as another speaker mentioned we got to up our game we can't wait as Pepper said for the next crisis and as I mentioned before we can't waste this crisis so I just want to really thank you all thank you for inspiring me thank you for inspiring all of us really there's so much to be done and and it's great to see what you are what you are all doing a big thanks to our incredible panelists our great discussions thank you Jung Hee for making this all possible thank you again to Sophie to to to my friend Fabrizio at one point I saw that we had 324 people on the on the call which is great we have lots of good information in the chat that we will we will digest I would invite you to join us next week we're going to be tackling the difficult issue of misinformation Pepper talked about that before so we'll dive into the misinformation issue and also my closing point would be don't forget tomorrow is girls in ICT day April 23rd tomorrow is girls in ICT day so join the celebrations we're doing a 24 hour round the clock celebration you can find information on our website we have a panel that we're leaving from Geneva 2pm but we're we're participating in global celebrations around the world so girls in ICT day tomorrow and with that Fabrizio it's over to you thank you thank you Doreenam thank you thank you for the excellent Sophie for the excellent time management and thanks also to the fantastic contributions we got from the many speakers mean I I took away from it four major points number one networks have proved much more resilient than I think any of us would have predicted and that is really a tribute to the to the states the industries ITU and others who who have built up their resilience over the years but two of course the many advantages of internet have also highlighted the disadvantages to those who don't have them but in that regard I think what was very striking in this call is there seem to be a consensus that the problem is not a technological one or at least not primarily there are hybrid technologies through which one can overcome the gap the problem is really much more one and Doreen mentioned there's a political will and that's what we need to address with as much if not more energy than the specific technological challenges and in terms of political will we had some very good examples and that's my third point one the need to map needs and that's happening in many places so we identify exactly what the gap is and how it can be dealt with to the issue of releasing more spectrum which many are doing three with making the licensing process easier and faster and four and I really like that example and I hope I wish it were practiced elsewhere Singapore's example of giving people free access people who can't afford it free access and free hardware and I you know you could think that that's only something that richer states can do but I'd like to remind everybody online that the very first state to give countries kids in countries free computers was in fact not at the time a developed country it was europe why so it's more a question of enlightened policies than necessarily the level of GDP but I think you know what this made very clear is the solutions are there it's not like challenges the world has faced at other times that the technology or the know-how was not there to deal with the challenge we have the solutions in hand so what we really need and I stole the phrase from one of the speakers is a sort of Baltic stakeholder Marshall plan to bring about those solutions and I must say I think the aspiration I hope we can do better than the aspiration of increased connectivity by 20 by 2030 I think we should aim for universal connectivity by 2030 and the many good ideas and more importantly the great spirit that was in this call leaves me also like Doreen very optimistic that that could be achievable thank you thank you and the secretary general Mr. Fabrizio Herscheld me again the secretary of this meeting now we are closing this this meeting today again we will have the third webinar which will take place next Wednesday and the topic of COVID-19 and misinformation we are looking forward to your continuous participation and if you don't have invitation please send me an email then I will add here on our mailing list so you can receive the invitation for following webinars thank you so much again now we are closing the meeting thank you so much have a good day thank you thank you thank you everyone