 Welcome to the ITU Plenipotentiary Conference 2018 in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates where I'm joined in the studio today by Maria Victoria Sukkhanik who is advisor for the Secretariat for Information and Communication Technologies for Argentina for ICTs. Welcome to the studio. Hello, thank you very much for letting us speak here in the Plenipot 2018. Believe me, it's our pleasure. I just wanted to start off by talking about some subjects that you've been involved in recently. One in particular has been SMEs and a resolution at this Plenipotentiary Conference regarding small and medium-sized enterprises. I wanted to ask you what role should small and medium-sized enterprises have in the work of ITU? Yes, Argentina has been involved in a lot of issues related to membership and in this Plenipot, fortunately, we could have a new resolution to encourage the participation of SMEs. This is really important especially for developing countries where our main industry, our main workforce is mainly SMEs. So we would like to bring them with a special membership in order to their capacity, in order to have their revenues so that they could be included and participate, bringing all their requirements and all their work mainly to the standardization sector. But also they will be able now to choose to participate in different study groups with differentiated membership and exceeding to all the rights that associates have. Why the focus on SMEs then? As I mentioned for developing countries SMEs is really important. Our industry is mainly, I can say that almost 90% of our industry is composed of SMEs. We do not have big companies and we realize that if we want to bring our main request, our main work here to ITU, we need to include them. In terms of academia, I know it's another subject that you've been discussing here at the Plenipotentiary Conference. As the role of academia is increasing in ITU, how has Argentina helped this rise? Well, we also started pushing academia in ITU, trying to bring them here. We also agreed on PP10 I guess to have a new membership for academia. At first it was a trial, now they are already members and Argentina has now 15 universities associated to ITU, they are working really, really good, they are participating a lot. They are taking leadership roles as associates, as associate reporters, also in focus groups and they are really interesting and another topic that we could advance in this Plenipot related to academia was a new resolution on the ITU Journal and that is really important for them too. It's a scientific publication that ITU has already started one year ago and now we could have a resolution from Plenipot to support this new publication and academia will be really, really interested in collaborating on that. And what kind of topics are being covered in the Journal? The Journal is one topic per publication that is chosen between the three sectors. They have been working on big data I guess or this new issue will be on big data, also they work on learning machine, artificial intelligence and they select one topic in order to have a publication. And how different is this publication to others that have come in the past? Because it's scientific, it has to do with papers, it has a committee that evaluates those papers that are supposed to be published. And this is reference material for academia and written by academia, is that right? Yes, yes. What about smart sustainable cities? I know that smart sustainable cities are another topic that you are also involved with. They are becoming increasingly significant in today's world. How is ITU and its member states helping to make cities smarter and more sustainable in your opinion? Yes, I'm also involved in chair of ITU study group 5 and also vice chair of the Initiative United for Smart Sustainable Cities and as we all can see nowadays, ICT is a tool that we are using in all different areas of our lives and smart sustainable cities are that and what ITU do is to help with standards, with recommendations. Also with the radio communications area, helping to make all these smart cities work and work fine and try to bring solutions to people. But smart sustainable cities at last they are like connected cities or where cities are implementing new developments, innovation, new technologies in order to better the life of people. What makes a city smart and in particular sustainable? Here we have two things, one side the smarter one that not always means using technology but using smarter or intelligent solutions in order to make things work better and on the other side making sustainable. For example, in ITU study group 5 we work on circular economy and there we are developing several recommendations on that, trying also to involve our ICT industry in this matter and trying to make ways also related with energy efficiency, trying because we are speaking now also 5G and all these new technologies and this will consume a lot of energy so we also need to think if we want things to develop and to develop fast how we will also make give solutions or give tools in order to administrate all these new demands especially on energy. And sustainable? And sustainable, well speaking about circular economy we cover the whole cycle not only e-ways that is one important topic in which ITU works a lot both in the T and in the G sector but we cover the whole cycle in order to attend also the reuse of materials and the different parts you can reuse in not only devices but also in the whole process we have in our industry and how ICTs can contribute also to reduce for example the missions in other sectors. You come a long way from Argentina to be here obviously we appreciate your presence I just wanted to give you the opportunity here for diffusing a message to both the participants here at the Plenipotentiary Conference but also our wide audience as well. Well I would like to thank you for giving me this time to address everybody and I will put focus on this new resolution on SMEs I think that now we will start working hard in order to promote this new decision we took here in Plenipot in order to explain all SMEs how the ITU world is for them to bring them here and to contribute to our work. Very victorious to connect. Thank you very much indeed. Thank you. Thank you.