 Mr. Chairman, Excellencies, Distinguished delegates, ladies and gentlemen, I bring to you warm greetings from India. I am happy to be here with you all in this August gathering. This brings to us nostalgic memories of WTDC 2010 that took place at Hyderabad where India had the privilege to host you four years back. Going through the Development Bureau's reports on the activities since 2010, it gives me great satisfaction to see that the contributions made by each one of you are taking shape into tangible results through the Hyderabad Action Plan and Hyderabad Declaration. Broadband as an ecosystem requires support from all quarters to prosper and bloom and to become a vehicle to deliver health, education, governance, trade and commerce in order to achieve sustainable socio-economic growth. ICT literacy is an important factor we need to focus on in order to distribute the fruits of information society to everyone. We know that mobile revolution has caused wonders, but broadband penetration is capable of causing bigger miracles. Innovation has a big role to play. There is a need to develop applications of relevance to the average user in developing countries to provide user interfaces and to overcome language barriers. This alone will make broadband services accessible to the people with little ICT literacy and people who are physically or otherwise challenged. In our view, developing strategic partnerships is the mantra to bridge the digital divide. Considering the catalytic nature of ICTs in every developmental activity, every agency with development agenda and all stakeholders including private sector have to be taken on board in ICT initiatives. We have an ambitious plan to roll out national optical fiber network aiming to provide optical connectivity to all rural and remote areas of the country. This will reduce the access, divide among the urban and the rural population in reaping the benefits of broadband and the services related to that including e-governance, e-health and e-education etc. Ladies and gentlemen, and dear delegates, India seeks a renewed opportunity to continue to work with ITU as a member of the ITU Council and seeks your support. India will be happy to work with ITU and its members for the realization of our common dream to use broadband for building a world free of hunger, poverty and disease. I wish this development conference all success in its deliberations and thank the government of UAE for their impeccable arrangements and the people of Dubai for being such gracious host. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you.