 on the way how we will use the platform. Hello to everyone, my name is Marco and I will be your IT support for today. Just a couple of brief notices for this event is provided simultaneous interpretation option. So in your menu bar of zoom window, there's an icon like a globe that says interpretation by clicking on it, you can choose the language that you want to listen. And you will hear only that language during the entire time of the meeting. Please keep your microphones muted until you need to speak. And for any further assistance, please do not hesitate to contact me via chat. Dami gospodo doberdan, my name is Marco, I will be your technical support for today. For this event, you will receive a simultaneous translation in the menu bar of zoom, where you activate and deactivate your microphone and camera. You have an icon that is mentioned on the globe under which it says interpretation. When you click on it, you can choose the language that you want to listen until the end of the meeting. Please do not include your microphones, you do not want to turn around and talk. And for any assistance, you can turn around in the chat option that is available. Mr. Ponder, thank you very much. Please proceed. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Marco, for this introduction and dear ladies and gentlemen, I'm very pleased to welcome you to this virtual ITU Equip Regional Regulatory Forum for Europe on Universal Connectivity for a Post-Pandemic Digital Europe, which is jointly organized by ITU Office for Europe and the Agency for Electronic Communications and Postal Services of Montenegro. Over the past two years, the role played by connectivity was crucial to ensure resiliency of our societies. This can be said without a doubt. The challenge now is about adapting to a new normal where connectivity has become a more fundamental cornerstone of social and economic activity. And also to ensure that the benefits of meaningful connectivity are extended to all groups of society. This great leap forward has generated pressure on all stakeholders operating in this area, from different areas of government to regulators, from operators to equipment vendors, and to ensure a greater reach and quality of connectivity for all. In the 46 countries of Europe region, surely the situation is better than in other continents with the continent leading on many areas. But hidden gaps needing action remain. According to digital trends in Europe 2017-2020 report, still seven European countries are below the global average of 75 mobile broadband subscriptions per 100 inhabitants. And still a few countries are missing the full 4G coverage. This means that for various reasons and despite prices being the lowest globally, millions of people in Europe do not make use of mobile broadband services. With regards to uptake of mobile and fixed broadband services, all countries in Europe find themselves above the global average of 15 fixed broadband subscribers per 100 inhabitants, though a high degree of heterogeneity must be noted. In such scenario scarce guarantees of return on investment combined with generally higher prices limiting uptake are also obstacles that need to be addressed and proactive. We believe that sound policies and reduced regulation can not only help address these challenges in a reactive manner, but also ensure a proactive approach with objectives, KPIs, targets that go beyond feeding the gaps, but also raise the bar. Today and tomorrow we'll focus on how public authorities can address these challenges, what strategies and policies they can deploy, what regulatory incentives, what tools and methods they can use to ensure that broadband reaches all and everywhere. In the words of the United Nations Secretary General just last week, digital divide is one of the six grand canyons on which the international community must increase its efforts. ITU is already doing a lot in this field and through capacity building as done with the ICT business planning training which trains over 30 officials across Europe. Knowledge development, with for example the 5G implementation in non-EU countries report that is due to be published over the next couple of weeks. The collaborative regulation case studies which you can find on the events website or the forthcoming ITU guidelines on the establishing a broadband mapping which are based strongly on the European experience and align with BEREC, the European Commission and the experience of manner and a race in Europe and which we hope will provide useful globally. Then we have of course technical assistance we are currently supporting Bosnia Herzegovina in reviewing its enabling environment with broadband systems and finally fostering exchange of best practices and experience like we are doing here today. These are only few examples of the work we have been doing recently to support countries in the region and we look forward to expand this work in the year to come. This also on the example of the activities which are doing at the regional level but the number of those activities, global initiatives and initiatives which are affecting the all nations is really numerous. We invite you all to study and to join our efforts in order to make sure that digital divides is a history. As you may know next year is an important year for ITU. With the three conferences coming including World Telecommunication Development Conference up which will set the framework for the following four years. Europe is seen by many stakeholders as a point of reference. So I encourage you to actively participate in your capacities and to ensure the process benefits of the widest geographical representation. But going back to today, I see many friends of and distinguished delegates in the room. I'd like to thank the European Commission which from which we will hear in a moment for a continuous and strengthened collaboration with the ITU and for continuously raising the bar when it comes to the connectivity in Europe and beyond. Let me also recognize BEREC, IPREC, MREC and Regulator for their work and wish and them all goods summit on Wednesday. Let me also thank the high level representatives of national regulatory authorities present here today from Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, North Macedonia, Serbia, Slovenia and Montenegro and thank them for their excellent progress in the region. Dear ladies and gentlemen, before I conclude let me thank also our partners, the Agency for Electronic Communication and Postal Services of Montenegro with whom we have been collaborating for many years on this event and other matters. This year, ECHIP turns 20 years old and even though we would have all preferred to meet in Budva to celebrate this important milestone, I would now like to call for a virtual round of applause for the extensive work done by the ECHIP and its management in Montenegro. Dear ladies and gentlemen, I sincerely hope this conference and the over 20 Eminence speakers will enlighten and provide insights in the action needed and to address the challenges and proposes of the universal connectivity support to support the implementation of regional initiatives for Europe. Thank you very much for your attention and I'm looking forward to the great discussions during these two days of event. Without further ado, let me now give the floor to Mr. Branko Kovjanić, President of the Council of Agency for Electronic Communications and the Postal Services of Montenegro. Mr. Kovjanić, the floor is yours. Good morning, everybody. I will talk in Montenegro language. Good morning, Mrs. Wesenbeck. Good morning, Mr. Ponder. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. It is my pleasure to welcome you to the ECHIP and the Postal Services of Montenegro and my personal name. I congratulate and wish you successful work during the course of the regional regulatory forum, which this year's focus is on universal connectivity and the post-pandemic of digital Europe. I would like our agency and the International Union for Telecommunications, the traditional organization of this renewed group, in Budva, the Metropolitan Regional Tourism, but due to the outbreak of the pandemic, due to the spread of the virus from COVID-19, last two years we were forced to use information and digital technology to maintain continuity and tradition and, I can say, our connection in the goal of changing the experience. In the past two years, our discussions in the regulatory forum have been a future regulation for all digital connections and a regulation that supports digital transformation. So I believe that this year we have made the right to the export of the topic and that our discussion and idea will be adopted in progress and further development of the entire ICT for the unification and transformation in the post-pandemic period. I hope I will start soon. We have noticed that after the outbreak of the pandemic and the lead lockdown, the key role was in the digital technology that enabled us to preserve our society and the economy, which has continued to function in this difficult situation. In these conditions, the pandemic came to the fore and the existence of digital gas, the lack of electronic services, the lack of quality infrastructure or the lack of digital writing showed itself as obstacles that led to one part of the population in the environment from which we come could not afford to satisfy their own needs or learn from home, which was a problem. We all know that there is no universal solution that would solve these challenges, but I believe that today and tomorrow we will discuss and change the idea from land to land, from region to region. We have found a solution that will have an implementation of effective post-pandemic models and a way of financing the private and public partnership will achieve a wide-ranging approach. I am sure that this is the very beginning of the discussion and the exchange of experiences on this important topic, and after these two days we will continue to work in order to achieve the best policies and regulatory decisions in order to achieve the goals of the universal connection of all the citizens of our region. Thank you for your attention. Mr. Ponder, please unmute your mic. Thank you very much, Mr. Kovjanovich, for this opening statement. And now it's my great pleasure and honor to invite Ms. Rita Wesenbe, the Director of Connectivity Department at the DigiConnect of the European Commission. The floor is yours. Yes, good morning, everybody. I hope you can hear me. I think yes, yes. So good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you very much to the ITU for inviting me to take part in today's events and allow me to say a few words during this opening session. I think the subject matter we are all here to discuss could not be more important for the ITU's members in this region, universal connectivity for a post-pandemic digital Europe. And this is because we have now all seen just how important digital technologies and networks have been in ensuring a successful response to the pandemic. The good news is that the existing networks proved to be impressively resilient in the face of unprecedented demand for connectivity from home workers and people separated from loved ones during the last 18 months. It is difficult to imagine a more demanding test of the existing communications infrastructure, but in many ways it came through in flying colors. We've also seen proof of the ingenuity and the excellence of engineers and public health experts in designing all sorts of innovative technical solutions to help fight COVID. If I can mention one in particular, the European Commission is particularly proud of the development and rollout of a PEN-EU digital certificate for vaccinations in only a few months. Today, more than 400 million certificates have been generated across Europe, 42 countries and four continents are plugged in. I know that the ITU has also worked closely with the WHO to examine the requirements for digital certificates at the global level. This really is an example of best practice in countries coming together to help each other in times of crisis. In the EU, we have decided that digital must play a central role in the recovery process as far as the economy is concerned. Indeed, in her recent State of the Union address to the European Parliament, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen underlined the twin emphasis that the EU places on digital and green policies to define a successful pathway to economic recovery. And in this context, she identified digital as the make or break issue for the coming decades. It was already agreed that member states should target at least 20% of the recovery funds they are allocating to supporting digital initiatives. This 20% target is a minimum figure. We expect that in many EU members, the final investment of EU funds in digital will be higher. This means, amongst others, that the EU will invest in 5G and fiber in an unprecedented manner, sorry. However, the need for increased investment in digital skills is equally important. As the president said, now it is time to show leadership to encourage this. So with respect to the digital decade then, I said already that the COVID pandemic has demonstrated once more the importance of digital technologies in our daily life. It has also articulated the daily divide between people and businesses who can leverage the full potential of digital environment and those who cannot. President von der Leyen has announced in her speech of the union the publication of a policy program that is called The Path to the Digital Decades. This digital decade represents our vision for a European digital transformation according to European values, freedoms and our socioeconomic model. We want a human-centered digital society of innovative and competitive businesses and empowered citizens. To achieve this, we need to boost our digital capacities and capabilities and ensure that all Europeans can leverage the digital transformation for a better and more prosperous life. Cooperation between the commission and the member states, between public and private stakeholders and between Europe and its international partners lies at the heart of the policy program. Joining forces and pooling resources will lead to unprecedented impact and scale we are looking for to rise to the digital decades challenges. So in the proposed policy program, the commission has identified concrete targets that should be achieved by 2030. First and foremost, there should be a digital-skilled population and highly skilled digital professionals to make use of the technologies that are there and are there to come. There should also be secure performance and sustainable digital infrastructures. Furthermore, there should be a digital transformation of businesses and all businesses and there should also be a digitalization of public services. The development and deployment of strategic digital capacities and infrastructures is key to European digital sovereignty. We need to invest in world-leading infrastructure in order to remain competitive. That is why we need concrete targets for 5G, but also Edge Cloud, Quantum and Microelectronics. In this context, performance networks are of course the condition or sine qua non for the digital decades, strategic capacity capacities and technologies. It is only through networks that offer sufficient capacity that we shall be able to develop, for instance, smart cities, remote patient monitoring, remote AI-supported diagnosis and healthcare and sustainable energy options through smart metering. Therefore, we aim to have gigabit connectivity for every office and every household in Europe and mobile 5G coverage of all populated areas in the EU by 2030. In my directorate that deals with connectivity, we are working with important regulatory tools to stimulate investments, such as the newly implemented European Electronic Communications Code, which encourages joint investments and the connectivity toolbox through which member states have agreed to reduce obstacles to the fast rollout of networks. We also work with comprehensive European funding programs, such as the digital part of the Connecting Europe facility, which offers a 2 billion euro budget devoted to 5G corridors, cloud federation, quantum communication, high performance computing connectivity, submarine cables, and last but not least, 5G communities. This is welcome also because the infrastructure targets of the path to the digital decades have a much wider scope than only connectivity. We have set a clear target for instance to deploy 10,000 edge nodes by 2030. So the availability of secure and trusted cloud capacities will also spur the digital transformation of businesses. Furthermore, we aim to double the EU's share in global production of cutting edge semiconductors. We want to also ensure that businesses become stronger and benefit from digital transformation and that they can compete globally. This is why we have said that by 2030, three out of four European enterprises should use cloud computing services, big data, and artificial intelligence. In this context, we also want to help more than 90% of European SMEs to reach at least a basic level of digital intensity compared to 61% in 2019. This digital transformation of businesses requires building the necessary digital skills in the workforce and among customers. Our goal is to see that everybody is equipped with digital skills with at least 80% of the population with basic digital skills and 20 million of ICT specialists by 2030. And we hope to see convergence between genders there. Now, of course, setting targets is one thing, but achieving them is another one. And for this reason, the digital policy program will be the first ever digital governance tool putting the digital decade on the same level as the Green Deal. It will introduce a framework for cooperation to ensure consistency and synergies among all policy initiatives, actions, and measures in a digital sphere. The framework will be based on an annual cooperation mechanism with member states to discuss collective progress, to take joint and targeted actions and invest in large-scale projects with other public and private actors. So it will consist of, first, a structured, transparent, and shared monitoring system based on the well-known DESI index to measure progress. Second, there will be an annual report on the state of the digital decades in which the commission will evaluate progress and provide recommendations for actions. Third, there will be multi-annual digital decade strategic roadmaps for each member state in which each member state will outline adopted or planned policies and measures in support of the 2030 targets. There will also then be a structured annual framework in which the member states and the commission will discuss and address areas of insufficient progress through recommended actions, recommendations, and joint commitments. And finally, we also feel that that is really important. There will be a mechanism to support the implementation of multi-country projects. And those are large-scale projects that allow member states to pool investments from EU and national funding resources, including from the recovery and resilience facility as well as other public and private entities. So we feel that this is particularly important to allow the EU with 27 member states to compete with other areas at global level where there's only one member state that needs to decide on investments. At this moment, the Council of the EU and the European Parliament will negotiate the proposal and they will hopefully agree on a final version of the legal text in the coming months. In parallel, the commission is also finalizing its proposal for what we call a joint declaration on digital principles with the European Parliament and the Council of the EU. These principles will provide a reference framework to guide policymakers when making decisions on digitalization and also inform users about their rights in the digital environment. The aim is to ensure that everyone can enjoy the benefits of digital opportunities such as universal access to the internet, algorithms that respect people and can have a secure and trusted online environment. In the context of the digital decade, we also aim to enter into international partnerships. So the digital decade stands for the ambition of digitally sovereign Europe in an open and interconnected world. So the EU will be a stronger international partner thanks to reinforced internal strength and capacities. So by 2030, international digital partnerships should result in greater opportunities for European companies, increased digital trade via secure networks, respect of European standards and values and a more supportive environment internationally for the kind of human-centric digital transition we and other partners want to see. We're looking forward to working closely with our international partners to advance a global human-centered digital agenda which promotes our common interests, ensures the security and resilience of our digital supply chains and delivers global solutions. So with this, I have given you an introduction to the important plans that have been launched by the European Commission and will be discussed by the Member States and the Parliament in the coming months. And I would like to thank you for allowing me to give you this short tour d'horizon of where we are. And I will not take any more of your time as I know that there are many interesting speakers to come. So I wish you a very successful conference. Thank you very much, Madame Wesenbeck. And thank you very much for raising so many items where the Commission and the EU institutions are working on to support digital transformation across the region. So with this, let me turn to our distinguished high-level guests of the opening segment and to end the first whom I have the pleasure to invite is Mr. Zlatan Akiko, Director of Agency for Extra Communications from the North Macedonia. And the floor is yours. Hello to everyone. Distinguished Mr. Jerozlav Ponder, Head of ITU Office for Europe. Distinguished Mr. Branko Kovianic, President of the Equip Council. Distinguished Ms. Rita Wesenbeck, Distinguished Directors and Presidents of the Regulatory Bodies Responsible for Electronic Communications in the region, Distinguished Past Disciplines. It's a great pleasure and honor for me to attend this Regional Regulatory Forum, which is traditionally organized every year by ITU and NECIP. This event is an opportunity to conduct a high-level dialogue between all interested parties on strategies and policies, aimed at further developing broadband access, as well as to discuss the challenges and opportunities offered by high-speed networks, all supported by regulatory activities that need to be flexible and cooperative. The composition of the participants on this event provides an excellent opportunity to enhance cooperation in the direction of integration of the entire region into the pan-European digital market and, of course, the development of the regional economic space. All this implies improvement of the condition for development, especially the electronic communication infrastructure. The forum itself, entitled Universal Connectivity for Post-Pandemic Digital Europe, clearly highlights the period in which, like the rest of the world, our region is affected by the pandemic of COVID-19, and it is to be expected all participants to make maximum contribution to the debate on regulation and challenges of the ICT sector in the context of economic recovery from the effects of the coronavirus pandemics. As every year, I will be actively involved in this forum by participating in the following sessions, and I hope that we will make a significant contribution. I wish you all a successful job, and thank you very much. Thank you very much, Mr. Kiko, for these introductory remarks. And now, let me invite the chairman of agency for electronic communication and also for public of Albania, Mr. Tomi Fracheri. Yes, good day to all of you. I'm very pleased to share some thoughts as they stem from the Albanian context in the light of the ITU GSR best practices guidelines. I'm very grateful to our ITU and ACIP colleagues and friends for giving me this opportunity. Due to the prioritization of innovation in the digitalization process in recent years, Albania was not caught off guard when faced with the blocking or slowing effects of the pandemic. The use of electronic communications showed up as an asset to continue working and intensify social interaction in a country like ours, where expanding digitalization through a whole of government collaboration and coordination has been the main top priority and will remain such for many years to come. Needless to say that in 2020 and 2021, access to electronic communications became just as critical as the supply of food or healthcare provision in specialized facilities. Therefore, ACIP paid particular attention for the pandemic not to become a cause for digital fracture and made efforts to enable every citizen, including those with modest income and disabilities to have equal and affordable access to all telecoms facilities. From another perspective, ACIP was committed to reshape the main development strategies, the broadband national plan and the spectrum strategy, which were entirely updated by the Albanian government last year. The above mentioned documents are based on action plans focusing on a whole digital decade which requires meaningful investment, especially by electronic communication operators in super fast and future proof broadband networks. An encouraging sign in this aspect is the fact that regardless of decreasing revenue resulting from falling fixed and mobile classic telephony use, operators were committed to improve networks and introduce new technology with investments in considerably higher amounts in 2020 compared to 2019. Albania has closely followed the global trends in both internet connectivity quality and speed. In the latest ITU report, Albania is recognized as one of the countries with the fastest growth for internet from fixed networks per 100 inhabitants. Broadband internet traffic from fixed networks reached some 600 million gigabytes or 32% more than 2019, which shows that subscribers to the services have used the network to regularly access their financial, information, social and health services. ITU GSR best practices guidelines fairly states that the post COVID digital world needs a new take on regulation, especially by extending the exposed approach to regulation, but also through a range of co-regulatory and self-regulatory patterns as well as through smart tailor-made solutions. In this regard, the steering board here at Akep has concluded and finalized a series of analysis of mobile telephony wholesale markets and has adopted a series of critically important regulatory documents, among which of note is the regulation on the protection of public electronic communications, services, consumers and subscribers, which for the first time focuses especially on promoting the rights of persons with disabilities. To promote a multi-stakeholder policy dialogue, Akep has worked and continues to work with of course the Ministry of Infrastructure and Energy here in Albania, ITU, the industry and other international experts to vacate the 700 megahertz broadband frequency by the 1st of July, 2022, which will be exclusively used for digital purposes and which will pave the way for 5G implementation in Albania. At this moment, Akep and our consultant are developing the 5G strategic plan for Albania. Working with our operators to ensure the optimum balance between regulatory requirements and an environment that supports investments, our goal is to have a secure 5G roadmap in place for 2022 and beyond. However, because of the technology and its use in enterprise infrastructure, the government and the military, 5G will also require more security than present commercial 5G standards. Hardware and software supply chain integrity and cybersecurity will be critical for data sovereignty and the true secure 5G. In addition to telecommunications, critical infrastructure such as the power grid, financial markets and banking with, of course, their countless numbers of sensors and controls will require advanced information and network security to include continuous monitoring for intrusion and personal privacy. Therefore, secure 5G remains one of our top challenges ahead. So thank you very much for your attention. Thank you very much for this opening remarks and now it's my great pleasure to invite Mr. Drasko Milinovic, General Director of the Communications Regulatory Agency of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The floor is yours. Good morning. Distinguished IT representatives, European Commission representatives, regional colleagues, ladies and gentlemen, it is both my honor and pleasure to greet you all and deliver my first official address in my capacity as Director General of Communications Regulatory Agency of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The first year of my tenure was marked by unfavorable and challenging circumstances caused by COVID-19 pandemics which made both policy makers and regulators rethink, adapt and respond swiftly and adequately to the new and positive requirements of the digital ecosystem. As we know, digital transformation can only be fully realized if high quality access to communication networks and services are available at affordable prices for all people, no matter who they are or where they live. However, for developing countries achieved this goal is not an easy task and requires strong collaboration between the policy maker and the regulator. Speaking of connectivity as a precondition for successful digital transformation, penetration of fixed broadband in Bosnia and Herzegovina raised 22%. By the end of 2020, mobile operators achieved coverage of 82% of the population by 4G networks. According to license condition, operators are obliged to achieve extended 4G plus coverage to most urban and rural areas, covering 75% of the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina and 95% of roads by mid-2024. As one of the key priorities in the future is 5G planning and licensing. Furthermore, together with the Ministry of Strategic and Communication Agency is actively working on transposing the European electronic communications code into the new law in electronic communications. We also participate in drafting of broadband strategy for Bosnia and Herzegovina and urge for its adoption. Since COVID-19 provide that reliable broadband and affordable access is of the vital interest for our societies. And last but not least, fully recognizing that research and data analytics capabilities are necessary to adapt regulatory decisions, monitor policy implementation and identified emerging regulatory challenges. We are pleased to be supported by IT experts and in establishing an effective broadband mapping system. This would enable to agency to collect relevant data and develop regulatory tools to address identified flaws in ICT and digital markets. For this and other regional initiatives that ITU is fully engaged in supporting its members, I express my application and dedication to the continuation of good cooperation. Finally, I assure you that under my leadership, agency remains dedicated to fostering strong original cooperation and exchange of experience and views on the future regulation that will support development of emerging technologies. And I very much look forward to meeting you on in person. Thank you for your attention. Thank you very much, Mr. Milinovic, for this opening remarks. And now let's us move to the next speaker, Mistania Mouha, Director of the Agency for Communication Networks and Services of the Republic of Slovenia. So, Madame Mouha, the floor is yours. On my side, it is my pleasure to participate at today's event. And I also this occasion, I would like to congratulate all, also the whole ACIPs team for your anniversary. So, yeah, in the post pandemic time, the connectivity become even more important. It is crucial to ensure inclusion for all. Constructions and geographical coverage of high capacity networks, mainly FTTH and 5G networks, are one of the fundamental building blocks for reaching that goal. Availability of air service and formation literacy also play an important role. A cybersecurity and privacy get bigger importance in the era of digitalization. However, Slovenia is one of the most rural countries scattered settlement in Europe and we are faced up with many challenges in that story. So, on geographically divorced areas with low density of population, there is very low commercial interest from stakeholders to build high capacity FTTH and 5G networks as there is low rate of return of investments. So, ACOS as Converged Regulator has one of the most crucial role in ensuring connectivity for all and information literacy for end users. Therefore, we establish three important porters. This is first one is Geoportal. This is portal for geographical mapping of all public and telecommunications infrastructure on house number precisely. The second one is investments portal for announcing of planned constructions to express interest for co-investment. And the third one is portal MIPI for media and informational literacy for bigger general public awareness of the importance of critical and thoughtful use of media content and informational technologies. Transparent and publicly available information are essential and needed. So, ACOS is very active to make dialogue and educate owners of infrastructure about their obligations and options or opportunities they have to reduce their costs. The common use of infrastructure is increasing the utilization of networks. For instance, at the beginning of regulation of access to telecom Slovenians FTTH networks, in 2011 the utilization was 24%. And today it is 43%. Furthermore, ACOS imposed in 2018 also broadband as part of universal service. And now the minimum speed of connections for all households in Slovenia is 10 to one megabit per second. In addition, at the beginning of summer we also successfully finished multiband auction and allocate also frequencies for frequency bands for 5G technology. We imposed also obligations to ensure timely implementation of 5G network and to ensure also the coverage with this kind of network. So, the results of ACOS involvement are already seen. We have penetration of broadband connections in 85% of households and FTTH homepast coverage in Slovenia is almost 66%. The number of plant constructions and interest of co-investments is growing significantly. In Slovenia, we also noticed increasing of demand for broadband connections with higher speeds on retail market. The majority of demand is for connection with speed at least 100 megabit per seconds. So, nevertheless investments in high capacity networks are essential for deployment and achieving a high level of connectivity. I think that the regulators has important and responsible role task to encourage investments with smart combination of regulation. So, I wish you all successful conference and fruitful discussion. Thank you for your attention. Thank you very much, Ms. Mohal, for these insights and also congratulations on the anniversary of your agency. And now let's ask to move to the next hour speaker, Mr. Tonko Obulian, President of the Council Creation and Regulatory Authority for Network Industries, HACOM of Croatia. The floor is yours. Thank you, Mr. Ponder. I'm honored to be here with all of you and I hope that next year we'll see each other in person finally. In the meantime, I would like to share with you some recent Creation Regulatory Experience. As you probably know, we had a very challenging period in Croatia during this pandemic time. In addition to COVID, we faced also the consequences of two major earthquakes. One happened in Zagreb in March and the second and much stronger in Banovina region in December 2020. Cities of Zagreb, Sisak, Petrinja and Glina and their surroundings were heavily damaged. So many families had to leave their homes and were transferred into temporary accommodation. Therefore, we had to ensure seamless connection for online education. Well, in this very sensitive and very challenging period, HACOM had an excellent cooperation with all of our operators and they provided new capacity for the endangered areas and it was done in rather short period of time. We also agreed about some relaxed consumers protection regime where operators enabled modification of existing contracts with consumers. In the same time, data traffic grew exponentially as we all have seen and we learned about the resilience of our networks as well. I'm sure that this situation also helped people to understand the importance and benefits of broadband connectivity. We had also to delay the transition to DVBT2 system and therefore the 5G auction was also postponed into this year. My colleague, Mr. Mazur will speak more about it during 5G session tomorrow. I just wanted to mention that we did it, well, I guess successfully. We promoted investments with reasonable reserved prices. We put some obligations for rural coverage and we left 80 megahertz for regional use. So we are now happy to see that we have smaller regional players in most of the Croatian regions, at least in most of those very attractive regions but also in some other regions. We also allocated one gigahertz in 26 gigahertz band, although major operators at first proposed not to put it in auction. We are currently active in deploying the measures from the mentioned EU connectivity toolbox and I guess many of those measures are in fact similar also to some of GSR's best practice guidelines. For us, currently the most challenging issue is a deployment of 5G network as we face some obstacles in local physical plans. Hakom is trying to speed up the process of construction permits granting and we are engaged with the local communities and also with the ministry for construction. We also plan to do a road show which was unfortunately delayed because of health limitations so we'll go around Croatia and try to promote the broadband even more. Very important moment on our market was the decision of our third mobile operator Telemach which is owned by United Group to buy an operator Optima Telecom which was to this point under incumbents governance. So we are now looking forward in Hakom to the more dynamic market in the years to come but to be ready for that we also changed our system of cost models and also the methodology of the margins quiz test. And of course we soon expect the new electronic communications act which is unfortunately a little bit delayed but we are looking forward to its implementation as well. So that was the most important. I believe I'm now out of time so I wish you all to stay healthy, stay safe and to have a successful event today and tomorrow. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Avulyan. And now let me turn to our next speaker, Mr. Dragoliu Stefanovic, the Chief Operating Officer of Regulatory Agency for Electronic Communication and Postal Services from Republic of Serbia. Mr. Stefanovic, the floor is yours. Thank you very much, Mr. Ponder. I hope that you can hear me. Yes. Okay, thank you. Dear colleagues, let me start by greeting you on my own behalf and on behalf of Bratislav Draganbevich who is unfortunately unable to attend events. I would like to share with you the most important developments contributing to connectivity in Serbia since the pandemic began. The experience of COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the importance of having reliable broadband available to citizens, businesses and the overall economy. Investments and incentives made by the government to roll out very high capacity networks able to meet the future needs for high quality internet access are vital to the further digitalization of the society. Through its everyday activities, RATEL continues to contribute to digital transformation in collaboration with state authorities which is also shown by its active involvement in preparing draft law on electronic communications which will be fully aligned with the European Electronic Communication Court. In the spirit of engagement of digital infrastructure by the end of 2020, the Ministry of Telecommunications issued free public calls for operators to jointly build the broadband communication infrastructure in the rural areas. The program involves provision of infrastructure to 600 settlements in rural areas to ensure the internet access. Through the Rural Broadband Rollout Program, the government of Serbia in partnership with EBRD is making significant investments in infrastructure upgrades and promotion of the internet access for all in order to deliver more reliable and safer high capacity internet to schools, households and offices of the local self governments and business firms. When it comes to implementation of GIS systems, RATEL uses several such tools. For instance, the map of electronic communication infrastructure intended for shared use is available to all interested parties as well as the map of high access points. The planned GIS system upgrade is expected to enable a comprehensive or rural broadband infrastructure available in the territory of Serbia. Indeed, the introduction of 5G technology in the Republic of Serbia is a priority for further development of telecommunications. In order to meet this objective, RATEL prepared regulatory basis in four since 2020 and 2021, which include RF band allocation plan and relevant auto plans. A public call for expression of interest to pace and the analysis will serve to have a more accurate picture of the needs for additional frequency bands for 5G implementation and to help further preparation for the ocean. I would also like to mention an important breakthrough. As you know, as of the 1st of July 2021, the Western Balkans region is benefiting from the raw market home policy based on the agreement of the price reduction of the roaming services in public mobile communication efforts. And let me also say a couple of words on digital literacy and cyber security. Since the beginning of the pandemic, digitalization has increasingly entered our lives, leading to greater exposure to cyber attacks. The national computer emergency response team for national cert established and operating within RATEL has been actively informing the public on current attacks and misuse on the internet. We have published brochures with safety recommendations for working from home, on adequate defense from different types of cyber attacks and on the procedures in case of the attack occurs. As part of the development of e-government, information technology and e-government office has been established with objective to centralize and coordinate development of IT and e-government services on a national level. Also, a new state data center was built in Kraguevac city in central Serbia, which serves for storing the equipment of the state administration and provides government cloud services, supporting further implementation and development of e-government. Under the project Nori for you, financed by the Kingdom of Nori, a cyber-age platform was donated, designed for cyber exercises focused on capacity building of the national cert community, local self-governments and ministries. The strategy for the development of information society and information security in the Republic of Serbia from 2021 until 2026 was also adopted. One of the set activities involves providing education for citizens and establishing the platform for raising awareness and educating the public on information security through interactive programs. As we encounter new challenges, Rattle will continue to stay committed to promoting connectivity and making modern communication services available to all citizens. Thank you very much and I wish everybody very successful work these two days. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Stefanovic. And now, ladies and gentlemen, it's my great pleasure to move to our last but not least speaker of this opening segment, Mr. Darko Grugorovic, Executive Director of Agency for Electronic Communication and Postal Services of Montenegro and our host of this meeting. So with this, I am handing over the floor to Mr. Grugorovic. Thank you, Mr. Ponder. Good day to all of you. It's my pleasure to welcome you, Mr. Pedagenci for Electronic Communication and Postal Services of Montenegro. Thank you for your participation in this meeting. I would like to thank you for the support and the support of the International Regulatory Conference that has been working with the International Telecommunications Union for many years. I would like to thank Mr. Jaroslav Ponder and his colleagues from the International Telecommunications Union who are together with my colleagues from the team have organized this and many previous regulatory conferences. With this opportunity, I would like to thank the support and support of the International Telecommunications Union for the support of the team and Mr. Grugorovic for the development of electronic communications. Due to the inability to maintain the International Regulatory Conference in Budva, in the meeting with representatives of the International Telecommunications Union, we decided that the Regional Regulatory Forum for Europe will be organized in online format. As the previous one, this year we have been encouraged for the pleasure of being your home in Budva. This year is not because of that, especially because this year the team has spent 20 years of existence and regulatory activities on the Montenegro market of electronic communication and postal services. The pandemic, caused by the virus of COVID-19, has made a great impact on the way life and work of all of us. In the area for which we are professionally connected, there has been a significant increase in the use of electronic communication services and the pandemic has particularly marked the recognition of the wide spread of the Internet. The electronic communications network in Montenegro has successfully responded to all the demands and challenges on this and shown social responsibility in the previous period and in this case, I will share the honor and gratitude to the operators of electronic communication in Montenegro. Through the presentation of my colleagues, you will be more detailed and familiar with the state of the market of electronic communication in Montenegro, which we have so far taken into account in advance and what we plan to do to improve the connectivity. If I had planned to get some data from this opportunity, I would have left it to stay in the planned time. I hope that this regional regulatory forum in Europe through exchange experiences with international institutions and other regulators will bring great success to the work of all of us. In the hope that next year we will not see and personally I wish you a good health and a successful release of the regulatory forum. Thank you very much, Mr. Grugorovich, for this opening statement, which brings us to the end of the opening segment. I would like to thank you very much for... Thank you very much to all speakers of this opening segment for your contributions, in which we have received very good understanding of the top developments in several countries. One is clear, COVID has caused a lot of damage to all of us, but put also the ICTs in the center of our attention of all. We have heard a lot of amazing progress made in this part of Europe and a lot of efforts which regulatory authorities made in order to make sure that ICTs are in the center of attention, but also this development is used in positively in order to advance the digital transformation in the region, building the Gigabit Society. We're very pleased to hear that ITU services, such as REC for COVID, best practice guidelines, GSR exchanges and many, many more were useful for you and we're looking forward to the continuous collaboration and ready to support whatever we can provide the value. But ladies and gentlemen, this brings us to the end of the opening segment. I would like to one more time thank you very much for taking the time. And in order to conclude the opening segment, I would like to request all speakers and all participants to switch on the cameras in order to take the picture, the group picture, even though we cannot this year enjoy physically the being together in a beautiful Budva and Montenegro. We hope that this will be possible next year and in order to commemorate this year, we recommend and we invite you all to switch on the cameras and we'll take a moment with the support of our technical moderator to take the picture photography. So colleagues, now is the moment to switch on the camera. I would like to invite you to do so and I will ask my colleagues to reconfirm if everything is clear and provide us the guidance when this moment will be of taking the screenshots. Thank you, Arsap. I will just ask the market to reconfirm that pictures have been taken. Thank you. Only from the speakers can we just wait for a minute or so just to take pictures of all the participants as soon as I remove all pinned videos. Is it OK for just another 30 seconds, please? So please have the patience, ladies and gentlemen. Imagine that we would be just now in Budva on the stairs and we would be guided by our official photographer. Today we are doing this differently, but still next year we'll be viewing this picture to have the good memories of the past. So make sure that you are on the picture. Thank you very much. This is it. Excellent. So ladies and gentlemen, this brings us to the end of the opening segment. One more time. Thank you very much. And we would like to invite you for now six minutes of technical break when we can refill our cups of coffee and a little bit of stretch. So we see just in six minutes at 11.10 at the next session. And it will be our great pleasure and to welcome with us Miss Solina Abdullah, Chief of Digital Knowledge Hub Department of BPDT, who will provide us the intervention on global trends and the ITUGSR 21 best practice guidelines. So for the time being, thank you very much and see you very, very soon. Thank you. Yeah, ladies and gentlemen, and this is already 11.12. We gave a little bit of time for those who would be a bit of late. And so we are just now joined by our colleague Miss Solina Abdullah, the Chief of Digital Knowledge Hub Department of BPDT. Welcome to this meeting. And with this, I'm handing over to you for your exciting presentation. So Solina, the floor is yours. Thank you, Yaroslav. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. It's good to be here among so many regulators. In Southeast Asia, we used to say that regulators are the most overworked and the least appreciated people on the planet. What more, give me one second, I'm sorry. Well, I was going to say, what more now when regulators and policymakers have to deal with the surge in internet demands and making sure that communications is always on more so during pandemic times? So digital technologies are now powering the way we live. Individuals, communities, and economies are very future. If we had not known this before, the COVID-19 pandemic has clearly shown the world how important reliable broadband is to people and businesses. We need continuous investments to keep rolling out and upgrading ICT infrastructure to deploy super fast broadband networks to meet future needs. This is vital to ensuring affordable access and expanding digitalization for social and economic good. Digital policies and regulation hold a threefold promise. As a tool for driving the digital transformation of the economy, as a framework for the digital transformation of regulators and regulatory governance, and as an interface for cross-border collaboration and coordination on sticky issues related to digital markets. Regulators and policymakers are the master builders of the digital transformation. And today, regulators recognize that there is no single comprehensive blueprint for best practice and that regulatory patterns for the digital transformation will be rooted in local circumstances while addressing regional and global challenges. The Global Symposium for Regulators held annually since 2000 provides a unique neutral discussion platform for regulators and policymakers to share experiences and best practices. Since 2003, regulators have collectively identified and endorsed GSR regulatory best practice guidelines. And in doing so, they continue setting the goal standard for digital regulation. And are more than ever engaged to put these to work, to build the digital momentum in the decade of action. New and revisited approaches to digital and collaborative regulation are the key to transformational leadership. Let's move on with the slides. Thank you. Next, please. Every advancement in technology brings with it a potential challenge or challenges. Today, ICTs have moved far beyond the realm of simple communications. They have become the foundation for every economic sector, indispensable for business performance and national and individual growth. The change is overwhelming. Next, please. As demand continues to spike, government and private industry are making significant investments to upgrade digital infrastructures and promote access for all. To deliver more reliable, resilient, high capacity internet homes, government offices and businesses. However, achieving universal connectivity will require new enablers and holistic perspective. Regulatory tools need to create a positive environment for investment, innovation and inclusion. All this while addressing emerging issues on competition, jurisdiction, consumer safety, protection of miners, online fraud and privacy among others. The role of government, both policymakers and regulators, is to clear the way to investment and support vibrant competitive markets towards future-proof broadband and digital services. At the same time, regulators and policymakers may need to adopt alternative approaches to stimulate investment in non-commercial or challenging areas. Next, please. As digital technologies are thrown sharply into the spotlight, regulators and policymakers are playing an instrumental role in defining the new normal for a post-COVID world, a digital world which needs a new take on regulation. Regulatory processes and tools need to be fit for purpose and proportionate, allowing rapid response, yet in a considered and coherent manner. New approaches may be needed to enhance regulatory foresight, harness data to target interventions and create space for regulators and industry to experiment together. This is key in finding market solutions to new challenges as new technologies, business models and players continue to test existing regulatory paradigms. Such new approaches will build sound solutions that protect consumers while encouraging market growth and innovation. We offer you three points. Innovative regulatory tools can unlock the power of new and emerging technologies. Spectrum innovation is key for the digital future and data is the silver bullet of digital regulation. Next please. So what are the best practice guidelines and how do they matter? Next please. Focusing now on the best practice guidelines published annually since 2003, the GSR best practice guidelines build on the experience and acumen of the global community of regulators, helping to guide users through uncharted territories. Today, it is digital transformation. The guidelines lay out the key features needed in regulatory regimes to first keep digital markets switched on, secondly, accelerate market uptake and thirdly, deliver easy access to more people quicker. Such best practices if widely adopted could help developing economies leapfrog ahead with governments, businesses and citizens reaping the full benefit of digital technologies, optimizing them towards meaningful value creation. The contributions we receive from these guidelines continue to grow and are extremely insightful, rich and sound. On behalf of ITU, I take the opportunity to extend a heartfelt thanks to all those who contributed in one way or another to this important process throughout the years. Next please. The 2021 consultation focused on inducing new, effective and HL financing mechanisms to digital infrastructure access and use. Again, contributions we receive from stakeholders from across the board with the following main topics raised. There is still a need to enhance regulatory capacity. The COVID-19 pandemic has underlined how important resilient broadband is to people and businesses. Achieving universal connectivity will require new enablers and holistic perspective. The role of government is to clear the way to investment and support vibrant competitive markets for future-proof broadband and digital services and the need to adopt alternative approaches to spur investments in non-commercial or challenging areas. Next please. The 2021 edition of the guidelines highlights the imperative to introduce HL financing mechanisms for digital infrastructure access and use. What's more, policy and regulatory tools are already at hand to bridge the financing gap in digital markets. Appropriate finance can turbocharge regulatory progress, foster collaborative digital regulation, otherwise known as the fifth generation regulation or G5 and unlock digitally transformed inclusive economies. This year's edition is more than ever community-owned by the regulatory community and for the regulatory community across regions and globally. Regulators everywhere need to adopt and implement a globally agreeable approach in a manner relevant to their particular national circumstances. The sizable toolbox is available for regulators to leverage evolving market dynamics, adapt in the aftermath of COVID-19 and seize the new digital opportunities. For example, innovative financial instruments and targeted incentives can be tailored for traditional and new players in infrastructure deployment, especially in underserved areas. Dedicated national funding instruments such as infrastructure and innovation funds alongside universal service funds could drive infrastructure development across economic sectors. Strategic policy, including tax incentives or tax deductibility for new investments and the removal of sector-specific taxes on digital services, devices and equipment can go a long way in fostering digital economies. Safe spaces for regulatory experimentation allow innovators to fine-tune new business models and build resilience of new digital services. Regulatory sandboxes reflect to the complexity of new digital technologies and services, reducing time to market and helping secure funding for broad rollout to new consumer groups and previously unconnected. The GSR 21 best practice guidelines also call for a sharp focus on policy implementation to ensure wide sustainable impact. Policy and regulatory measures must be designed and applied to make digital devices available and affordable. This includes connecting schools, local government offices and health centers, creating e-government applications and promoting local digital content. Next, please. So ladies and gentlemen, regulators all, what happens next? Please, next. We invite all regulators to contribute to the next GSR best practice guidelines. Engage in our GSR discussions. Take the GSR 21 recommendations home to be adapted to your local context and even those before 2021. Engage in regional association processes. The guidelines have guided the research and services developed by BDT to support digital transformation in countries. They also feed into metrics, the ICT regulatory tracker in particular and most recently the G5 benchmark. Next, please. And here's a snapshot of the BDT team. I'm not sure if we are as last there. There are more of us literally behind the publications, best practice guidelines, discussion papers and platforms that you see on your screens. We have developed to the suite of tools and references to support the work of regulators and policy makers across the world. In working towards leaving no one behind, we have to bend together to make sure that everyone gets to go online. Thank you very much for your time, Yaroslav. I hand the floor back to you. Yaroslav, you're muted, my friend. Great, thank you very much, Selena, for this great presentation. And we hope that a lot of our colleagues and a lot of members of the regulatory authorities will be able to use more often our services and the products, but also we'll be able to engage meaningfully in the processes leading towards the GSR but also towards the other processes which you are depicted. But with these, let me now move to the next session, special session. And now I would like to hand over the floor and to our colleague, Sophie Madens. This session will be focusing on the policy and regulatory incentives for affordable, introduced connectivity. So, I'm handing over to you, Sophie. Thank you. Thank you very much, Yaroslav. I'm delighted to be here with you today. I also wish we would have been in Budva and hoping for next year. So this session will focus on the new business models that are needed to ensure better affordability and uptake of connectivity with particular attention to the last mile. We've heard about the extraordinary measures that have been taken, that have been put in place during this pandemic. And we are interested and excited to hear about emerging solutions in terms of policy actions and regulatory incentives to increase affordability and uptake. Let me also say that tomorrow we will be launching what was a discussion paper at GSR on financing universal service to digital or universal access to digital. So I really do encourage you to look at our new publication. As universal access in the digital era goes beyond extending networks to bolster use and adoption, as we did indeed hear from many of the interveners, we also know that the level investment is huge. So we need a considerable shift in the approach to funding and to regulatory approaches towards universal access as we did in the highlight, but also to business models. Financing connectivity is recognized as a key priority in the United Nations Secretary General's roadmap for digital cooperation and for the attainment of the sustainable development goals. And it goes beyond just extending networks. It also concerns the use of the networks and frames broadband as a key enabler of digitalization. So governments will have to find way to ensure development of digital for social well-being, economic growth, and productivity by harnessing innovative business models, partnerships, strategies that support the expansion of these broadband networks as well as digital adoption, usage, and inclusion. Before giving the floor to the panelists, let me put something out there. It has to be worth the risk. So we need to rethink the concept of an institution and provide a way forward for a more collaborative universal service 2.0 to extend its scope beyond infrastructure to digital transformation and with the ICT and economic policy, strategy, and legal framework of a country. It's also about setting priorities in policy, strategies, and recovery in stimulus plans and considering alternative mechanisms, both policy and regulatory, as well as financing models for universal access and service. So let's think how we can extend the source of fund and funding and how we can use a combination of monetary and non-monetary contributions, how we can make smarter investments or enable smarter investments and move away from funding to financing, collaboration, and impact investment. Pay or play policies, for example, can be implemented as an alternative to financing universal access goals. So let me now turn to our distinguished panelists. And please do excuse me if I do mispronounce your names. I will make a great effort. And thank you, Julian, for coaching me on the pronunciation earlier this morning. So let me turn to Ms. Vladana Radisavilevich David, head of group for planning and development of electronic communications, networks, and services of the Ministry of Trade towards and telecommunications of the Republic of Serbia. I hereby give you the floor to give your first intervention. Ms. Vladana. Thank you. Thank you very much, Ms. Madens. And thank you for the introduction and for the excellent pronunciation of my name. So allow me to say at the beginning that to express the gratitude to ITU and the agency for electronic communications and postal services of Montenegro for organizing this event, we are all aware of the importance of connectivity in our everyday lives and especially today. And now in the COVID-19 pandemic and after that in post-pandemic period. So it is my pleasure to be here today and to present the broadband development in Serbia. I will now share the screen with the presentation in a second. OK, so allow me just a brief introduction at the beginning. I would like to say that Ministry for a few years now is continuously working on the broadband development. And we have the opportunity to participate in several broadband development projects, which were supported, for example, by EBRD and the Korean Institute for Korean Information Society Development Institute. Even since 2016, we are working with the EBRD in accelerating the rollout of the broadband infrastructure. And even today, we have their support. Other activities, some of the other activities of the Ministry include broadband mapping and development implementation of a phase rollout plan incentive schemes and all in order to provide the rural broadband development. The first thing that we have to do in order to be able to introduce incentive measures and to start with deployment of broadband in rural areas was to conduct the broadband mapping. The broadband mapping was finalized and completed in the fourth quarter of 2019. And today, we have these data and maps that were gathered from all electronic communications operators with the market share above 1%. Our regulatory agency keeps the record and updates the record of all electronic communications operators in Serbia. The data resolution level that we used was the settlement level. And it was slightly above 4,600 settlements in Serbia that were addressed. Settlement level resolution actually provided us enough data to determine white and gray areas and to start the incentive schemes. Here are some of the results of the broadband mapping. All the results are publicly available. And for example, from this table, it can be seen that approximately 500,000 households in Serbia actually has a broadband availability less than 30 megabits per second. So these data enable us to determine what are the settlements and the targeted areas where there is a necessity for state intervention. These are the same data just visualized. And this suggests a screen shot of the interactive map that is publicly available. So on our website, you can zoom in the map in order to see the detailed information regarding the settlement. So regarding the rule of broadband incentives, we had to put incentives in some kind of state-aid rules and incentives in place. And we did taking into account the EU guidelines on the application of the state-aid rules in relation to the rapid deployment of broadband. And we adopted the necessary regulation in Serbia. And we enabled the state incentives in order to deploy faster and further broadband networks. So currently, the ministry is working on the rural broadband development project. And this is the project that consists of two phases. And the first phase is on the way. And the targeted end date is the end of 2022. Approximately a number of settlements and households covered by this first phase are here listed on the slide. There are around 475 settlements and around 80,000 households. I apologize. So the part of the project is that the ministry will be the one to finance and deploy the mid-mile segment while the operators will deploy the last-mile infrastructure. So this is the way that we thought that it is the best and it is the way the last-mile investment in targeted areas become financially viable for operators. Because without these incentives, it won't be just the case. For this project, we have the financial support from the WBIF grant. And it is the support for the technical assistance and for the solar development and the deployment of infrastructure, Serbia has the EBRD loan. As a part of the first phase of the project, ministry conducted open public calls, three public calls. And they were already mentioned in the introductory part by Mr. Stefanowicz from our regulatory authority. And these public calls were conducted in the end of 2020. Approximately 700 settlements were addressed by these public calls. The role of the ministry is to conduct the mid-mile segment. And this way, we are going to connect targeted areas to the optical backbone. Actually, we are going to connect schools or public objects to the optical backbone. Infrastructure that will remain the property of the ministry will be given to private partners to the operators. And they will be able to use them for the period of 25 years. So what is the role of the operators here? Within the public calls, operators were invited to express their interest, enjoy the deployment of the infrastructure. That means, as I already said, the ministry will deploy the mid-mile segment and the operator should deploy the last mile segment. All operators were invited any way to inform the ministry if they had plans to invest independently without the incentives of the ministry in deployment of broadband networks in one of the most or more settlements listed in the public call. Selected operators will have the obligation to deploy the last mile infrastructure and to enable the connectivity of at least 95% of households in targeted areas. Also, operators have the obligation to provide broadband services for connected public square or institutions. The second phase of the project is divided into two parts. And it will start in 2022 or 2023 with the targeted end date in the fourth quarter of 2024. So here on the slide, you can see the number of settlements and households that we are planning to cover with the second phase of the project. And the difference between these two parts is in the first phase of the project. The ministry is going to be the one that will deploy just the mid-mile segment and the operators will deploy the last-mile segment. While in the second phase of the project, the ministry will be the one who will deploy both mid-mile and last-mile infrastructure. And once when we deploy the infrastructure, it will be consequently made available to interested operators. So just one concluding remark at the end that through continuous activities regarding the broadband development and activities taken to identify targeted areas for state incentives and implementation of rural broadband rollout project serve behind the Ministry of Traderism and Telecommunications to recognize the importance of ensuring better connectivity with focus on last mine. Thank you very much for your attention. Thank you very much. Very fascinating presentation. And thank you for sharing that. I'll now turn the floor to Ms. Sophie, my namesake, Tvalavatse, who's the head of Department of Communications, IT, and Innovations in the Ministry of Economy and Sustainable Development in Georgia. Ms. Sophie, the floor is yours. Thank you. Thank you, Sophie. I believe you can hear me well. That's perfectly. Thank you. Thank you. Dear ladies and gentlemen, it is an honor to be here at the Regulatory Forum for Europe 2021 on universal connectivity for post-pandemic digital Europe. I would like to extend my deep gratitude to the ITU and the Agency for Electronic Communication and Postal Services of Montenegro for organizing this important virtual event. As a matter of fact, and my previous colleagues also mentioned, we are living in a constantly evolving digital world and information era where the connectivity has an impact on nearly every aspect of our lives from working and learning to entertaining. The COVID-19 pandemic shows us the importance of the information and communication technologies. During the lockdown, we have adapted quickly to new ways of working, new methods to engage with our workforce and the community. Both the public and private sector started working online by usage of various online platforms and digital channels. But to give the possibility of usage, the online platforms to our population, very important role plays the connectivity with the high-speed broadband internet and bridging the digital divide between rural and urban areas. COVID-19 crisis has strengthened our views on necessity of development of digital technologies and broadband connectivity in a fastest way. In recent years, Georgia took active steps to accelerate development of digital economy in the country. A number of important reforms have been undertaken. Therefore, the usage of modern technologies and services have become an integral part of daily life of our Georgian community and entrepreneurs. Bridging the digital divide is one of the main challenges worldwide and for Georgia as well. The government of Georgia has undertaken lots of measures for supporting the development of broadband infrastructure. Due to some legislative changes, I think in 2015, related to technological neutrality, the Georgian mobile operators were given the opportunity to start providing the mobile 4G broadband services. For the time being, 100% of the population of Georgia is covered by 4G signal. In 2020, the density of fixed broadband subscribers per 100 households composed 86%. And the density of mobile internet subscribers per 100 inhabitants composed 94%. And as for the 5G, it is completely new technology that Georgia plans to introduce in parallel with leading European countries. For that, Georgia's strategic plan preparation process, coordination of frequencies with neighboring countries and other activities are underway. Within the framework of EU for Digital Program, with the support of European Commission and the World Bank Group, was elaborated recommendations on national broadband development strategy of Georgia and its implementation action plan for 2020-2025. The government of Georgia officially adopted the national broadband strategy on 10th of January 2020. The key objectives of NBDS are to enhance the legal and regulatory framework for broadband development in line with the EU norms and overcome digital divide across urban and rural areas, the targets of which are in line with the EU gigabit society objectives of 2025. For the implementation of some directions of NBDS, the government of Georgia, with the support of World Bank, started the Logan Georgia project, which has three components. These are increase access to affordable broadband internet, promote the use of broadband-enabled digital services, and supports the project implementation itself. And the most important part of this, I think, is the component one, which supports the construction and activation of fiber optic networks under the program for broadband infrastructure development that will bring high-quality, high-capacity services to the selected rural settlements. Other policy and regulatory activities under this component will improve the enabling environment for digital development. The development of broadband infrastructure will enable private operators, especially small and medium-sized, to provide broadband services to the population where such services haven't been yet available before, or to improve the quality of existing services. Under this program, 5,000 kilometers of fiber optic infrastructure have changed plans to be deployed. And around 170,000 households or in rural areas will have access to at least 100 megabit per second of broadband internet services and administrative bodies and enterprises at least will have one gigabit per second. Mentioned log in Georgia project also will help to boost the use of digitally-enabled services through training and capacity-building programs across the country to promote digital financial services and e-commerce, as well as online and government services. Here we will also help to promote some remote e-learning and telemedicine. The project will contribute to improve the affordability of broadband services through policy and regulatory reforms, enabling internet service providers in rural areas to provide competitive, high-quality broadband internet services at lower cost. At the same time, special activities will take place in order to boost the use of the internet and digital services by women, ethnic and social minorities, and persons with disabilities in targeted settlements. Here we are in order to accelerate deployment of high-speed electronic communication networks. Our ministry drafted the law of Georgia on sharing physical infrastructure used for telecommunications, telecommunication infrastructure, and telecommunication purposes. And it has been submitted to the Parliament of Georgia. The draft law considers measures such as the sharing and reuse of existing telecom-ready physical infrastructure, which are expected to create conditions for most cost-efficient network deployment. The government of Georgia also continues to support the deployment of community networks in less densely populated areas, where lives under 200 persons and are out of scope of logging Georgia project. With the support of the European Bureau of Internet Society, ISOC, in mountainous and remote regions of Georgia, the two community network projects had successfully completed in 2017 and 2019. Mention networks are handed over to the local community members. And launching of next community network project is planned in the mountainous settlements of Agara. I have a bit worse to say. And I will finish my word. And just to say that all the above mentioned measures will play an important role in the electronic and economic development of the post-pandemic era and have the critical role in the resilient recovery and achieving UN sustainable development goals. And we should work together for all this. Thank you. Thank you very much. Very fascinating intervention. And again, I see you really have focused on determining the enabling environment, the strategy, the vision, and very interesting examples of the implementation as well. Thank you very much, Sophie. Now, if I could turn to our next intervener, going to the other side of Europe, going to Portugal, my adopted country, Luiz Manica, external affairs office of the Autoridad Nacional de Comunicaciones. Luiz, the floor is yours. Thank you very much, Sophie. And good morning to all the participants. I think my screen is shared. Yes? Yes, we can see it. OK. Thank you. So let's begin my intervention by thanking ITU and ECRIP for the invitation to participate in this forum, which came at a time of moment. I will try to answer to the session team, which is what are the policy and regulatory incentives for affordable and robust connectivity focus my intervention in the Portuguese experience? But first, let me say that state aid has been a central instrument all over Europe to achieve full coverage of the territory with very high capacity networks. Between 2013 and 2020, member states notified to the European Commission almost 63 billion euros of total state aid spending. This amount was not immediately used. And for the period between 2014 and 2019, only 8 billion euros of aid were actually used. And this represents only 14% of the approved amounts. Despite this huge amount of aid spent, there is still a gap to be covered, as you can see in the figure in the right. In terms of fixed very high capacity networks coverage, there are still more than 50% of the households that are not yet covered in the European Union. And the problem is that the remaining 56% of the households that are not covered yet are the most costly to connect. In this map, we can see all the population is located in Europe. In the map, the red dots represents the areas with 250 people or more per square kilometer. There are some countries where there is more or less a uniform distribution of the population all over the country. And other countries where the population is on one hand was infected in small geographical areas, and on the other hand dispersed in large areas. The latter is the case of countries such as Portugal, Spain, and France, and also the Scandinavian countries. You can see that in these countries there is a lot of white spaces, which means that the population density is very low in these areas. So the economies of density are of paramount importance regarding network deployment. And in these countries, it will be economical efficient to cover the high density areas. But this will not be the case for the less dense ones. I think said this, where does Portugal stand in terms of digital connectivity and adoption? And what were the major drivers for network deployment in Portugal? I think a single significant challenge for the country is digital. Regarding the Portuguese position in terms of very high capacity network deployment, I have just presented this figure before, where Portugal is the seventh member state with highest coverage achieving in 2020, 83% of households covered with this type of networks. And more recent data from the first half of this year indicates that the very high capacity networks coverage in Portugal is 91%. And are these networks being used in Portugal? The answer is positive, as you can see in the figure on the right. In this figure, the percentage of households subscribing to fixed broadband of at least 100 megabits per second is very high in Portugal. In fact, Portugal stands only after Sweden as the EU member state with the largest percentage of very high speed subscriptions. In Portugal, 56% of the fixed broadband take up is supported in very high capacity networks. And this is more than two times the EU average. So regarding the tools used in order to achieve this metrics, I will highlight two of them. The first one is a targeted regulation focusing on incentives to fiber deployment and reducing the horizontal and vertical barriers to deploy very high capacity networks. In Portugal, even before the year 2000, we had in place access to backs and polls of the former incumbent operator. And this obligation was made more transparent with mandatory publication of a back access offer in 2006 and the poll access offer in 2010. Also since 2009, we have imposed access to civil infrastructures of other telecom operators and of other utilities. At the same time, since several operators were able to deploy their fiber networks using the backs and polls of these entities, we have concluded that imposing asymmetric fiber access obligations under market analysis was not proportionate. So these regulatory framework has led to co-investment agreements resulting in high network coverage levels by several operators. The second tool was state aid. State aid measures were defined in 2009 in Portugal when the private investments started in our country. And this was made taking into account that in most rural areas, private investment was not foreseen at that date in the long term. And at the same time, we had a political engagement with the Council of Ministers Resolution defining the promotion of a very high capacity network investment as a strategic priority for the country. So this seems too good to be true, but in fact, we have many issues that have to be tackled. I will highlight three of these issues. The first one is high prices that we have in Portugal compared with the prices of broadband offers in the European Union. The second issue is excessive banding where consumers are paying for service items that they do not value or that they do not need. And the third problem is the loyalty offers where I will point out the high charges borne by consumers in the case of fairly termination of contracts with loyalty periods. And finally, what are the most recent developments post-pandemic in Portugal in order to address the digital connectivity gap that we still have both from the supply side and from the demand side? The pandemic has shown that digital economy and in particular, high quality connectivity is of the utmost importance to economic activity. With this in mind, it is important to ensure that no one is left behind, be it due to the lack of coverage or to economic reasons, namely affordability. So these two factors are being addressed in Portugal. The lack of coverage is being addressed once again in the context of statehood and the full coverage of the country with very high capacity networks. And the problem of affordability is being dealt with the definition of a social tariff for internet access, lowering the costs of subscriptions to broadband services to low income users or those users with special social needs. So in a nutshell, this was what I have prepared for sharing with you. And thank you very much for your attention. And I would be glad to answer some questions after all the presentations have been made. Thank you. Thank you, Louise, and definitely we'll come to our round of questions after we have the final speaker. And I think in Portugal as well, going back to the year 2000, I think Portugal was also very visionary in using the regulatory tools that are available. You talk about state aid, but I remember in 1999 when coverage of unserved and underserved areas, rural areas, government institutions, government administrations was actually part and parcel of the 3D licensing process, where in the evaluation criteria, bringing in innovative projects for the information society as it was then called gained additional points. So I think we're seeing many, many examples of how you really tackle the closing of the digital divide. But let me turn to Mr. Pavle Mijuskovic, the deputy executive director and head of department for electronic communications and networks. And services at the agency for electronic communications and postal services and keep Montenegro our hosts. Sir, the floor is yours. Thank you very much, Mr. Mijuskovic. I will give, like a short overview of the market in Montenegro. And I proposed on mention that we in Montenegro should implement to increase the connectivity just to share my screen first. Okay. We can see it, thank you. Okay. So I will talk first about the revenues in the sector. So revenue of the sector in the last years is about 230 million, except in the 2020 when it's dropped to 211 million. This is also was the following by the, that I say the high investment, the high investment in the market was in 2016. When they invest 160 million was a present actually almost 50% of the revenue. And even in 2020, we have invested from about 61 million which is a present about 29% of the revenue. In Montenegro, we have four fixed operator, three mobile operators and 236 is the interest that it's provided. When we talk about the people and subscribers, the number of people and subscribers continuously growing. So at the end of the June, 2021, we care about 187,000 people and subscribers. Also the, it's expected that the traffic is also growing. So it from year to year. So in 2020, it was a broadband traffic about 342 enterprise and also look in the forecast that it continue to grow also in 2021. When you look at the average of the traffic per subscriber, we see that the, we will see this that I don't see them on my slides. When we see that it's the average per subscriber, it's at the end of 2020, 154 gigabits. And in June, it will grow to 163 gigabits, gigabits. Okay, and on this picture, actually, we saw the coverage by speed on the left side and the right side. We also see the coverage by the settlement in Montenegro. On the left, photos, the different colors represent the different speeds range. And on the right, we will see that is the coverage of the settlement in Montenegro. There is 1500 settlements. The light blue, it's marked the settlements with the broadband and the rest is actually it's not covered. And the different shades represented the different density of households in the settlement. So now we will see how it's looked this in the numbers. So we see that within through the household covered by speed. By speed, we see that it's about 27% of households has access to the speed over the 100 megabit per second. And we see that about 40% of households, there is no broadband access. When you look this by technology, we will see that it's about 67% of households have access to the fiber. 26% has access to this hybrid fiber coaxial network and about 37% of households have access to XDSL. When you look this for about the mobile internet users, it's almost the same story like for the fixed broadband. We permanently have increased in number of the users. So at the end of June 2021, we have about 573,000 users. And also this chart, you can also see the interest user by the operators. Also the traffic from the mobile internet users also is growing continuously from year to year. So at the end in 2020, it was about 52,000 users. So we have about 2,000 terabytes of the traffic and also the average Monday traffic per unit, it's about 944 gigabytes. For the mobile internet, we see what is our network of radio based stations so that we have a very dense network, but still we also in our territory, we have some gaps with no coverage. On the right side, you can see the picture from our software which give prediction of the coverage of LTE, there is a threshold 10 megabits per second in download. Looking this by the numbers, we will see that is from UNTES about 90% almost 81% of territory is covered by UNTES and about 78.6 is covered by LTE. But when you look this in population about almost 98% population is covered by UNTES and about 97.5 by LTE. When you look this compared LTE in this LTE with threshold 10 megabits per second, it's almost the same. So what we should do to increase connectivity in Montenegro, we have instrument of universal service but this instrument didn't give desired results. So we probably try to implement the new European electronic communication code, we will make some changes. And what actually we are doing right now, the first for sure we have to analyze the current situation. So by this it's now it's comprehensive study is preparing for the Ministry of Economic Development. And this study will actually be defined and determine the gray, white, gray and black zones. And you know the white zones are the area where is no global network present or plan to be operational in the next three years, a gray area, it's area where is only one network present or to be planned to be operational within three years and the black areas, area where is two networks present or to be planned to be operational in the next three years. So also this study should give code benefit analysis for different models. So this study actually we hope will give you the answer which model to use to cover this mostly the rural areas. Also this study proposed some measures. This study should be finished very soon. When we talk about, when we talk about some measures that we should do in, we are talking about broadband cost, broadband cost detection directive which is not a fortunately, which is not implemented in the regulatory framework of Montenegro. So this by the last information, this law was actually adopted by the government and now it should be passed to the parliament for final adoption. And this law should make improvements in the following areas. Deliming parenting procedure, increased transparency in the reforming scenes or the single information point, expanding the right to use of access to the political infrastructure and improve the dispute solution mechanism. In addition, this law also should identify measures that would have reduced the environment impact of electronic communication networks. Besides this, besides the speed up of procedure to obtain the civil war permits, also in Montenegro, I think we need to highlight different laws relevant for protection and employment of infrastructure and probably to lower the fees for the plumbing infrastructure alongside the state and the local roads and also to lower the fees then used to the land owned by state municipality. In the near future, beginning of the next year, we have the auction of a power frequency for 5G. So I think and it's supposed to be commercially available by the end of the next year. And to achieve all of this, it's supposed to be introduced different measure but about the 5G it will be the session tomorrow. Also, we are doing different kind of strategies for digital transformation and probably this strategy will give us some measure and some road map how to achieve this connectivity. So thank you very much, it will be all for me. Thank you very much. And again, we're seeing the enabling policy and regulatory frameworks really looking at the EU framework but also looking at where you need to tweak your legal and regulatory frameworks to be able to ensure that access. But we're looking at the different interventions. I think we're all looking not just at the connectivity and the infrastructure but really the affordable access and use, so the affordable access and use and having the necessary skills to be able to use the digital tools. So let me come back to all of the interveners now with a round of questions with just some short interventions. I ask to get to the second question if we can stick to two, three minutes but obviously if you have much more to say I won't interrupt you. But all of us have been dealing with a pandemic. We've seen our operators, we've seen the stakeholders step up to realize how important digital is and for somebody who's been in the area for over 30 years, it's a real pleasure to see that there's the recognition at senior level at political level of the importance of digital. But like Louise said, there are challenges. There are still challenges, the high prices, the need to still cover the unserved and unserved areas. And those that are not connected today that digital divide is even more important because they cannot participate in the schooling and work. So what for you is the single most pressing challenges in your countries when it comes to ensuring that resilient connectivity? We've already heard some points but let's just summarize it again. And what in your view are the potential solutions? So I'll go first to Vladana and Vladana, the floor is yours. Thank you, thank you very much Ms. Madens. So thank you for this question. It is really important and interesting for all of us especially having in mind how it is important how resilient connectivity is important today in our everyday lives, in our work and during the COVID-19 pandemic. What I consider to be very important is to continue to work and to develop and to deploy electronic communications networks, broadband networks, very high capacity networks not just fix the diet rest in my presentation but also mobile networks. This is the way to ensure the resilient connectivity but also to address the bridging of digital divide as you mentioned as well as to enable good quality connectivity countrywide. What could be the possible solution for that? So for sure there are a lot of possible solutions not only one that can be correct. And what I think that it should be done is to let's say to do our best in our fields. So what does it mean? For operators, for example, they should do their best to ensure time realization of their business plans and for us as a policy makers and for regulators that should be to ensure the policy and regulatory measures in order to improve actually the business conditions for our operators. So this can be all way to overcome this challenge and a lot of other challenges in the field of electronic communications and that's it. But I think the distress is to just to keep and to try to keep the development and deployment of electronic communications networks to enable connectivity and after with our interventions with our measures, I think we will be able to ensure better affordability and uptake. Thank you. Thank you very much. So indeed it's continued to develop the high capacity broadband networks to really provide that enabling environment. And what you say policy makers and regulators must provide that enabling environment to improve the business conditions for operators and operators must also have the timely realization of their business plans. And for that a role of policy makers and regulators is also to monitor and evaluate efficient efficiently. So that together all the players work together to ensure that resilient connectivity. So I'm turning now to Georgia, to my name's sake Sophie. What is your view on the most pressing challenge? First of all, of course, I should agree with you and with my previous intervention. And yes, absolutely. I think the same because we are, I think challenging the same. It's a significant challenge for the country and for Georgia as well is digital. And for digital economy development and not only for the resilient connectivity, I should say is still existing digital divide and still existing gaps in digital skills development. And I think that the challenging situation is partly due to under investment in broadband infrastructure and poor affordability of services, especially in rural areas. The expected financial returns are lower from rural areas where population is more dispersed. As for the potential solution, I think, or closing are the most important, the closing of digital divide and development skills which needs a mixed efforts, many of which have been identified in our case in NBDS, what I've mentioned during my intervention. And as I just heard, there was mentioned about the Universal Service 2.0, which we are going also to introduce. And we think that it will help to somehow minimize this digital divide to the minimum and all the telecommunication services should be affordable to all the population. And with the focus on this, I think we should somehow overcome this challenge to everybody. Thank you. Thank you very much. And so yes, indeed, really be resilient connectivity is key and you have your national broadband, NBDS, National Broadband Strategy. But I think one of the things, so Vladana addressed the fact that you need to have that enabling environment to improve the business conditions for operators. And what we've seen in our GSR best practices guidelines and what you mentioned in your first intervention, Sophie as well, is the innovative regulatory approaches. So the regulatory sandboxes and those innovative regulatory approaches, you mentioned that you built out community networks with other maybe non-traditional stakeholders. I think that is something that can be considered as well and that has come up in our GSR best practices guidelines. And Luis, I think that's something that in Portugal as well, you always try and stretch further to see how can we get Portugal connected in a more effective efficient way. And I mentioned 1999, but you mentioned some of the measures you've taken since 2009, 2015, the access to ducks and poles, you're one of the first. So really bringing in that innovative thinking in regulation. So what do you think is still the most pressing challenge in the country? You address the high prices, the excess of bundling and the loyalty offers. But what are some of the solutions? Luis, the floor is yours. And Sophie, sorry for interrupting you. I'll come back to you in a minute. Thank you very much, Sophie. I will focus this intervention in a particular issue that we had in Portugal related with the network resilience and which is also related with the access to ducks and poles. So in 2017, we had multiple wildfires in the central and northern regions of the country with heavy impact in terms of human lives and assets including the telecom networks. And there were large areas in the country where the poles and the cables were burned, affecting the communication needs of lots of communities, mainly in rural and remote areas. So in the aftermath of the pandemic, in the aftermath of these critical episodes, a working group was set up to propose some solutions to improve the protection of telecom networks in the event of forest fires. And the government, the group has proposed 27 measures from which I will only name three of them. The first one is the use of radio links as an alternative to overhead cables or to ensure the redundancy in the network and which should be activated in the event of the failure in the cable network. The second one is the change from aerial to underground cables using existing simple infrastructures or deploying new ones. Of course, these involves high costs and it should be duly steady before implementing it. And the third one is the creation and the maintenance of a fire protection band of suitable lead along the aerial pathways of telecom cables in areas of high forest fire risks. So with the 27 measures that were proposed, we think that network resilience will be very much improved. And in fact, after these fires and the cables that were burned, these were copper cables that we are talking about rural areas. And the substitution was by fiber cables. So in the end, we had much better coverage but still using the poles. So I think it's a problem that we have to think about and to address in the future. So thank you, Sophie. Thank you very much. Yes, indeed, we must all be prepared for emergencies and we must plan for emergencies to have that resilient network before moving to Mr. Mijuskovic. Sophie, is there anything more that you wanted to add to the previous point on the regulatory sandboxes and indeed the enough to regulatory approaches? No, no, nothing. Thank you. All right, then I'll turn to Mr. Pavel Mijuskovic. Where do you think are some of the most pressing challenges when it comes to ensuring the resilient connectivity? For us, also the pressing, the most pressing challenge is to deploy the network to this area. And you see this is, look on the map, it's a huge area but over days just leaving about 40% of the people from the health world. And I think in this period, what we live under Corona about a year and a half or something like this, I think the good job was done from operator from our side, our network show resilient very and we just in this all this period, we can maybe just one major interruption which affected a larger number of subscribers and the agency did that in the good job. We all adapted the regulation and force the infrastructure sharing. Also, I think to make it more connect, more health schools, we did the good job by allowing the area networks and this area networks uses the power grid poles and also use the street light poles. And even if you didn't adapt this law from based on the broadband cost direction directive, we, all these, let's say network operators actually already registered in Montenegro, so we have the good relationship with them and it helped us to develop the networks because as you know, it actually it's almost everywhere and using this grid of power poles increased a lot of accessibility of the very capacity network, especially in sub-urban areas. And this is actually in Montenegro is good because this is the only part it's in sub-urban but you have area networks in the cities all the cables underground. So it's our, I think it's advantage and also what we probably in Montenegro what we should do maybe we finally, I think we make the list of the critical infrastructure and this is the way to protect the structure which already it's built because usually during the some severe walks this is the infrastructure, it's the damage and after you have some kind of the interruption or services in a very large area. And one thing with agency insist for years and then probably I hope the next year will finally be over it's that all operators which satisfies some threshold should implement disaster recovery sites. I think it's very important because in some cases you can have interruption of services in the main locations. So after you can switch to the secondary one and also we really see that all this secondary to a disaster recovery location can be connected between themselves. So this is I think what I have to say this was the biggest challenge to deploy this infrastructure and this study was actually it's undergoing. I hope that will give us the answer of the model which is the best to apply in Montenegro. Thank you. Thank you very much. And you provide the perfect segue to the next and final set of questions. But I think what came out of the various responses the broadband mapping knowing where the infrastructure is is critical so that you can plan on how to address where the critical infrastructure is and what the alternatives are. And also I think through our rig for COVID platform where we've been gathering the responses and the views on how the different countries and regulatory community and ICT community has been responding to the pandemic. We see that there is also that need for collaboration that operators have really stepped up and that there has been that collaboration with regulators and policymakers because everybody has really seen the importance of digital. So again, turning to Vladana, can you give us some examples or how do you see the increased collaboration with the private sector and geo's academia civil society to find those new ways to foster connectivity affordability and uptake over to you. Thank you very much, Ms. Maddens. This is again a very interesting and important question. My answer will be brief because I think that only joint work and efforts can lead to good results. As we all know the universal solution for connectivity for fostering connectivity affordability for the uptake doesn't exist. So that's why it is important that all stakeholders work together and to try to find together the most appropriate solutions to the specific situation and to stress again, it is important to work together. Let's say private sector, non-government organization like a part of civil sector academia regulators as well as us policymakers, we are all together in this. We are all together on the path to overcome challenges imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic and we'll be facing the same thing in the post pandemic period. It is important to boost the digital capacity and connectivity and things that you were mentioning today. And I think that the basis for this and the way to achieve this is actually the increased cooperation. It is important that we all work together. And just one thing at the end that I would like to stress and I would like to say is that in the period of COVID-19 pandemic that we're still living, there is no matter how isolated or distant we are from each other, the connectivity is the one that still keeps us together. So that is why it is important that we stay together. Thank you. Very correct, absolutely. It's what it helps us stay together but it helps us also be able to continue our life, our work, our studies and our social interactions. So Sophie, back to you. What do you see? You gave us some examples of collaboration. So can you get, how do you see an even more even more and better and increased collaboration with the regulatory community or the ICT community? Over to you. Thank you, thank you. It's a very important question. Our ministry has huge success stories in this regard in the process of ICT policy making, elaboration of legislative frameworks, strategic programs and projects, all interested parties, private sector, civil society, academia are involved. With the support of the ministry, Georgia and internet governance forum carried out with the equal collaboration of all the stakeholders and aimed to facilitate the public consultation process and to identify problems in the Georgia and ICT sector, which helps the ministry to determine further actions, priorities, including in the direction of broadband connectivity, affordability and uptake. As we already mentioned, two community network projects which had successfully completed with collaboration of NGOs, local community, private sector. And here with our practice has shown that the implementation of any successful project and initiated is impossible without the involvement of all stakeholders. The full ministry will continue to cooperate in this way with all interested parties in the future on ICT development issues. So, thank you. Excellent, thank you very much. We must all indeed work together. So that brings me to Luis. You showed us the very impressive figures. How do you see an increased collaboration across the board? And how can that collaboration lead to new ways to foster that digital connectivity and affordability and uptake, Luis? So, very important question here. In fact, this is one of the priority areas for Anacom, this is to improve the collaboration with other stakeholders. And for example, in the area of 5G, there is a lot of misinformation, also in Portugal, and collaboration with academia could help to disseminate evidence-based scientific knowledge on electromagnetic fields and its impact on health. So, this could somehow mitigate social resistance in the department of 5G networks. And the promotion of scientific research in this area is therefore very important to improve the coverage of 5G and to improve connectivity in Portugal. Also very important is the collaboration between the local authorities and the national regulatory authorities. And there are issues like the procedures for renting rights of way and civil work permits that are complex and lengthy. And thus, in this area, collaboration could result in lowering barriers to network deployment. And one of the relevant important regarding this issue is the common unit toolbox for connectivity that hit us already mentioned in a presentation that was developed by member states with the commission and that was published in March of this year. And a third example of collaboration between Anacom and other stakeholders is in the topic of submarine cables. As you know, we have some islands in Portugal and there are some national submarine cables that are reaching the end of life. In its substitution, Anacom is promoting within the industry and academia the development of smart capabilities in the system. For example, the capability to detect seismic activity and to be able to transmit warnings and alerts of earthquakes and tsunamis to the population. Concluding, in my opinion, the collaboration between the national regulatory authorities and other stakeholders will increase in the near future and will become more and more important. Thank you very much, Luis. Very concrete and interesting examples of the collaboration. And then I move to Pavle, if I may call you Pavle. I've been addressing everybody else by their first name and I hope you don't mind that. So, can you give us some examples of that increased collaboration you mentioned the aerial network, so. Yeah, I can say it was for us when we start to work online in the March last year, it was, I think, nobody thinks, I think it will be fixed online so fast and everybody did their part. So, I can say that also I see I see this society, especially for school, they developed some platform for the students and also a lot of materials were recorded. It was, I think, a big success and also operators, they showed this social responsibility. So, they include, they increased the number of the traffic in the, especially in the mobile offers and also they do postpone the, if you postpone the time to pay the bills and actually it was, it was very good step for them and there are also offers that have people with vulnerabilities in the social vulnerabilities to offer maybe some laptops and stuff like this. So, it was very, very good collaboration and it is the only way that we can bridge this divide gap and especially as my previous speaker said about 5G, we will need to include all the parties and all the society to develop the 5G network and maybe it will be one, it will be opportunity to maybe to faster cover these rural areas. And I forget many previously to say that the agency to for this deployment and increase the connectivity, we have the probably like everybody else, the mapping platform, we map all the infrastructure and also we map the problem by also the problem. So, it's now you have the map and you can see which technologies and which infrastructure it's a very, very certain area. Unfortunately for this area, it's not covered that you have to build the new ones. So, this will be probably the highest cost. Thank you. Thank you very much. And thank you to all the panelists for a great discussion. I personally learned many new things and really was very interested to hear your contributions and your interventions. And again, apologies if I addressed you by first name, but rather than massacrating your name, the pronunciation of your names, I wanted to just make sure that I got it wrong, right? So, thank you very much, Julian. Yaroslav, back to you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you very much for this great session. And let's move to the next session in part. And this session will be guided by Julian. So, Julian, first yours. Thank you very much, Yaroslav. Yes, so before closing today, there has been already a lot of discussion. So we foreseen a special session on emerging challenges in the post-pandemic Europe. So as it was mentioned by many speakers and distinguished delegates this morning already, infrastructure is only part of the picture because there are many other challenges that regulators and ministries are facing on a daily basis, particularly focusing on the demand side to bring not only connectivity, but meaningful connectivity to all. So for this reason, as it is tradition of the regulatory forum, since many years we offered the possibility to regulators to raise some challenges. And this is why we are here in this session today. And so without further ado, I would like to invite Croatia, which has submitted a contribution and will now deliver a presentation. So Mrs. Gordana Kulisić, a senior customer protection expert from the Creation Regulatory Authority for the network industry, HAKOM. The floor is yours, Mrs. Kulisić. Good afternoon, everyone. I am here from HAKOM. I am more involved in the protection of users. And today's talk is about the digital transformation of the web and on the presentation. Next slide. HAKOM is a regulatory non-procurement body for the protection of user communication. It is part of the interest of everyone interested in the group, in cooperation with the law and under the law regulations for the use of HAKOM in the future. So this is the law of user communication, which has been arranged in the framework of user communication. This is the protection of the right of the user. And so, under the law HAKOM, the right of the way to implement the part of the user communication of the network and the service, which are clearly described in relation to the user and the operator, that is, the requirements for the operator and the right for the use of the other slide, but what are the requirements for the operator? That is, the operators are required to have access to universal systems. In a specific case, the application is received by HAKOM, and it is carried out in a conversational way. And in addition to the sale package, the speed is required by date, from the least of four megatons per second, which must be available to all users, who do not have a technical experience of using a standard package. And so, the package is intended for a socially endangered group of users, who will have at least a limited amount of data, from four megatons per second, to make the right of 50% of the package, maximum minimum, and 50% of the access to the option of unlimited access to the Internet, and 50% of the access to the public service, in a very special package, HALO Super 30, without any corresponding requirements, for the reason that the users could, at some point, pick up some other package, which is available to all users, and distribute it to all users, and to all users of the country. Next slide, please. What are the requirements of the operators, and that they must be maintained, in which, in their technical capabilities, the users must ensure that they have the opportunity to access public services, which, in addition to the specific needs of the person with the protection of the service, can be limited to the limited motor capabilities, the possibility of understanding the corresponding conditions and calculations in alternate public services, as well as the access to public services, and, in particular, public services, with the protection of the services, with the availability of the services, with the access to public services, with the protection of the people, and so we have made the steps further, and the operators must ensure that they have the next slide, they must ensure that all the information about prices, tariffs, characteristics, and the availability of the services in public services, so that, in such a clear way, they can read themselves what the tariff means, or what services they can buy from the tariff, and so, in a way, with their own services, in a way that, within the services, there will be more linear controls, which would allow for a smooth and safe movement, just within the services. Web analysis, actually, the analysis of the existing operators' pages, what we have done here, we have selected five operators, and in the future, we will analyze their pages, and the reason why we consider that digital access is very important, so digital access is a legal responsibility of the public authorities, but it is a kind of moral responsibility for all of us in society. Operators of that, as one of the manufacturers of digitalization in society, should make efforts to ensure that their services will also be available to everyone, and so, in some additional analysis, I will make some recommendations, and I will also make an analysis of the HACOM website, because as a public authority, it should be implemented by the law on the access of digital websites, and the analysis will include all the results of the specialized software methods in the subject of the person with the disability. This means that the person with the disability in society is involved in the analysis of the page, and so, in the subject of the person, how much are the pages available, and in the end, I will make some recommendations on what can be improved in order for the pages to be available to everyone, and how it would be easier to get information that would be needed for a discussion of the services or, in some other way, for the operator. I will link the link in the description. Here is one of the representatives of the website that we have created, so, in the application of digital representatives for access to information and new technologies, in cooperation with the faculty of technology and accounting from Zagreb, we created a website with the help of the operator, which was given as a reward a year ago, and, of course, created all the goals that were needed in order to improve the use of extreme benefits. The access to information from such an operator can be found on it in the form of a person with a disability, for young people and for elderly people, and it is every day, every month, and it is generated in the form of a telecom operator. The goal of the website is for people with disabilities, young people and elderly people to be able to find a better way of preparing and experiencing such an operator, and all of this above the definition of their life. So, we concluded that, in some way, before the big rush of the services that the operator offers, especially elderly people and elderly people, it is very difficult to find them, and then, on one of the websites, I can actually find all the services of the telecom operator. In the research and creation of the website, there were also others who gave their opinion. I will close, please. And so, we made a step further, we worked on the prototype of the application for mobile services, which is a theme of the needs of the strong user of the application. The prototype has above the service as a view of the application with the application itself, then using it for everyone interested in building the application following the new application, and it consists of a universal design. It is supported by the application website, it also supports the application for mobile services, it is supported by the application for special needs and for young people. In order to achieve a project with a certain methodology, you can see on this page, on this website, which allows for the development of the application with a program solution, it is available to everyone. The purpose of the application was to convey the knowledge that was spent on the development of this prototype, the specific needs of the user in the Croatian society on the access to mobile applications, and all those ways of implementation, all those who want to improve the access to mobile applications or develop some new ones without barriers for the user. Next slide. What is an access to mobile applications? We wanted to focus on increasing social networks with applications with which the access to mobile applications is based. The result of this is the choice of applications that are also developed on the project of the application and the access to mobile applications that are responsible for the access to mobile applications. All of these applications are based on education, students, teachers and students in special schools related to all of the individual applications in the modern society. In this way, the application will be created in another way, to address the issues of the specific needs of the individual applications and the increased awareness of this support will be one of the best ways to develop the application. Next slide, please. And finally, a conclusion to what we can actually say. The priority of HACOM is to create an environment for the use of electronic communication that includes the production of the user and the development and application solutions that improve the everyday life of the individual applications. HACOM provides an understanding of the activity of the application and the promise of the individual application in the digital community, but also the importance of HACOM to protect the topic of collaboration with the academic community in the civil society. These are different for the individual applications as well as for the protection of the users. And all in order to ensure greater access to the application in the digital community. One of these conclusions is actually the implementation of additional activities so that the operators can rely on the position of their mobile devices, so that they can be accessible to the people who are in the community and so that they have the information always personal, and not that they have to search for other ways to get specific information at the end of the day. Thank you for your attention. Thank you very much Mrs. Pulisic for this great intervention and for raising such an important topic and providing the overview of how you're tackling this challenge in Croatia. Maybe before we open the floor for comments I would just ask you a follow-up question which came from the chat. A very brief question on how you are integrating the European regulatory framework with the directives, the European electronic communication code and the European Accessibility Act with the national regulatory framework and also what is the process of engaging with the other stakeholders in this review and in this process you mentioned that the collaboration with academia and other members of society. So if you can please elaborate a little bit on this. That would be great. Thank you. Thank you very much for the question. There is currently a law in Croatia which is still unknown. We implemented all of these solutions. What we consider to be very important is what we have also announced through this presentation. That is the collaboration for the protection of the supporters and especially for the immobility. On the other hand, the collaboration of operators means that they are free to listen to the needs of their users in other words, to adapt to the situation and to help one another. On the other hand, activities that we do with the academic community which also has a close relationship with others for their own ability to follow their needs and at the end, these are the results of all these projects that I mentioned. Thank you very much again, Mrs. Kulisic for your answer and for presenting the case of Croatia. This is a very sound policy. I would like to congratulate you and I hope that this provides inspiration for others in this meeting to act following your example. As many of you may know, ITU keeps ICT accessibility in high regard in our program, in our policies and our implementation, both at the global level but also at the regional level. I would perhaps invite my colleague, Mrs. Ana Maria Meskurtie, who is program officer at ITU and oversees this work to say a few words about the accessibility workstream that we are currently implementing at the ITU office for your Ana Maria. Thank you very much, Julian and also thank you very much to Mrs. Kulisic who shared this very interesting work that you have done. Thanks for inspiring us with that. I will just be sharing my slide if you allow me. I just have one slide of the activities that we have. I hope you can see my slide. All right. So basically what we did with accessibility this year is we did a lot of activities but I just tried to put a couple of them here to really highlight some of the various activities, events, reports and country engagement that we have worked on. We started the year where we launched a series of self-paced trainings on accessibility. We really touched upon different topics like crises, emergency web access, inclusive communication and we received very good feedback and then this is something that we are also looking to continue doing as the series was very well accepted. Then we worked with Zero Project who is our partner as well in some of the accessibility activities that we are doing. They had a conference this year in February and we worked together to do a special session with our innovators of Accessible Europe where we presented there and really engaged with the community of Zero Project as well which is a very, very big community in this area too. Then of course we had our flagship event Accessible Europe 2021 in March. This was held virtually. It was hosted by the Government of Portugal and it ran across three days. We had many speakers, a lot of engagement and certainly we had our regional competition for innovations in digital solutions for accessibility and the competition received 97 submissions from 29 countries. This was a very good number and the submissions were of very high quality which of course gave difficulties to our panel of experts to really find the winners this year. Thanks to this competition we have created throughout the years a very big number of stakeholders that are engaged in our work and this is why this year we decided to do something a little bit different after the competition and we launched the curation program for these innovators of Accessible Europe where we really wanted the program to be something that we do together with them and we started with a number of consultation webinars where we really understood what they needed and how we could support them best and then we built the program on this. We also collaborated with Digital World in 2021 where we launched an SME master class on accessibility so really targeting everyone who wants to make their products more accessible and how you can go about doing that. Afterwards we also participated at the 14th Conference of State Parties again here we collaborated with Zero Project and we talked about this. Mrs. Meskorty, can I please ask you just to slow down a bit because of the interpretation. Sorry about that. I totally forgot that we have interpretation. Sorry about that. Going back to the side events on the 14th Conference of State Parties this event focused on the home office and flexible work environment. We worked there with Zero Project again our partner. This was on the 18th of June and of course this was a very important event due to the COVID as well more and more importance to the topic of home office and having a flexible environment of work and how accessibility plays a role in this. Also just last week on the 23rd of September we had a side event during the Regional Innovation Forum what we did at the side event was that the Regional Innovation Forum took two days 22nd to 23rd of September we really looked at a lot of innovators and then at the side event we talked about the importance of accessibility in innovation so looking at do innovators think about the work or the word accessibility at all when they are working towards creating solutions how do they approach accessibility is there something expensive for them and such discussions to place in an open environment where we had a lot of feedback from the audience and we also ran a couple of polls during the session. Of course next year we are aiming to do accessible Europe 2022 we will see if it's going to be virtual or face-to-face depending on the COVID situation and you will get more information on this. I just want to highlight two more things we have launched two key reports one on regional assessment on accessibility in the Europe region and I will put this report in the chat so you can have access to them and have a possibility and we also did an ITU study on assessment of digital accessibility policies in Serbia and this leads me to our country engagement where we had technical assistance on accessibility policy review of the Republic of Serbia so these are some of the activities that we have done this year and we have some more in the pipeline until the end of the year we will of course keep you all updated but I will also put links in the chat so you can follow our work on this. I will stop here and if you have any questions please don't hesitate to ask them or in the chat or you can contact me directly. Thanks so much Julian and again apologies for going very fast for the interpreters. Thank you very much Ana and my bad apologies for not reminding delegates that we have indeed interpretation. Thank you so much Ana Maria for providing this very comprehensive overview. As you can see there is a lot of work happening in the region on ICT accessibility and again thanks once again to Mrs. Kulisic from Hakom Croatia for her insightful presentation. So now is the time for the open discussion in case delegates wish to make some comments or make their intervention regarding this topic or other challenges that there might be facing in the region and that they would like to openly speak in the session please feel free to request the floor and go ahead. Tomorrow we will be having we are a bit ahead of schedule today. Tomorrow we have a very busy agenda also with the session 2 on 5G starting at 10 tomorrow morning and also the session on evidence-based regulation. Feel free to request for the floor. I don't see any requests for the moment I'll give a little bit of time there has been already a lot of content to be processed today but I will again maybe make the last call for any contribution or any any other contribution that delegates may have to this discussion otherwise I think it might be time to wrap up the day so perhaps I would thank once again all delegates and particularly Mrs. Kulesic and my colleague Anna Maria for really drawing attention to this issue which is one of the many building blocks of meaningful connectivity because we heard of a lot of discussions about infrastructure this morning but also demand side policies are really essential to ensure everyone is brought online so with that let me thank you once again and I would hand over to Yaroslav for closing remarks thank you. Thank you very much Julian for that already everything everybody is taking a look at at the clock one o'clock is the time where everybody is ready with the thoughts elsewhere but one more time thanks a lot for the great discussion and all panellists for their contributions I think we got really great reference point for the recent developments in the region and also identifying certain maps which we put together work on and to support each other in addressing them so one more time thank you very much for this and we will be moving to tomorrow so as Julian already mentioned please grab your coffee at 9.45 we hope that you will be able to join us already a few minutes before the login and to be with us for some short interaction in the virtual space compromising on the fact that we are not able to do this in the face to face. One more time thank you very much and we are looking forward to exciting two sessions tomorrow one focusing on the 5G implementation which is the key and very hot topics in our region and the second one is the market analysis and the mapping system so we hope that you will have a great evening and great for the rest of the day and see you tomorrow at the event so thank you very much and see you tomorrow thank you bye bye thank you very much thank you bye