The United Nations Office at Geneva
Multimedia Newsroom
Press conference ITU: COVID-19: The digital future is here
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1:22:23
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MP4
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- Wide shot: exterior, United Nations Geneva, main entrance with UN flag and building in background- FILE
- SOUNDBITE (EN) Houlin Zhao, ITU Secretary-General: “Digital new society already came into our life, but we never imagined that we could be forced to stay at home and to use the digital worlds to connect ourselves and make our business continue. So that is something absolutely new.”
- Medium shot: UN Geneva and UN flag alley behind gates at UN Geneva, filmed from the Place des Nations. A motorcyclist passes from left to right – FILE
- SOUNDBITE (EN) Houlin Zhao, ITU Secretary-General: “We should also recognize that ICT services and ICT networks are not so easy to manage, because nobody could imagine, that under such circumstances that traffic could to some extent triple,”
- Medium shot: flag alley, UN Geneva- FILE
- SOUNDBITE (EN) Mario Maniewicz, Director, Radiocommunication Bureau (ITU): ““Additional spectrum has been identified,”said adding that such resources can be used by countries “for new technologies that can help provide coverage at affordable prices to underserved communities. These technologies are both satellite and terrestrial, and can cover large areas, and they promise to enable affordable broadband access in rural and remote areas.”
- Medium shot: UN Geneva flag alley-FILE
- SOUNDBITE (EN) Doreen Bogdan-Martin, Director of the Telecommunication Development Bureau (ITU): “ There’s a lot of talk about defining the new normal in the post-Covid world and for me ‘new normal’ needs to include broadband access for all.”
- Wide shot, UN flag alley, UN Geneva – FILE
- SOUNDBITE (EN) Doreen Bogdan-Martin, Director of the Telecommunication Development Bureau (ITU): “The COVID-19 crisis has also resulted in a huge surge of online criminal activity.”
- Wide shot, UN flag alley, UN Geneva – FILE
- SOUNDBITE (EN) Doreen Bogdan-Martin, Director of the Telecommunication Development Bureau (ITU): “Bad actors have been exploiting fear and uncertainty, and my own cyber-security team has set up an online repository to really help countries be able to protect their network, businesses and of course their users. And then linked to this is of course the risks for children,”
- Medium shot, UN flag flying at UN Geneva.
COVID-19 makes universal digital access and cooperation essential: ITU
As the COVID-19 pandemic reshapes the way in which we work, keep in touch, go to school and shop for essentials – across the world – it has never been more important to bridge the digital divide for the 3.6 billion people who remain off-line. This according to top experts from the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), who outlined the implications of the new coronavirus pandemic during a digital briefing to correspondents accredited to the UN in Geneva.
“Digital new society already came into our life, but we never imagined that we could be forced to stay at home and to use the digital worlds to connect ourselves and make our business continue. So that is something absolutely new,” said the ITU Secretary-General Houlin Zhao, who said that we should all be grateful for work being put in behind the scenes of the pandemic by workers in Information and Communications Technologies (ICT). Workers of the ICT sector were described by another ITU official as “unsung heroes” of the pandemic.
“We should also recognize that ICT services and ICT networks are not so easy to manage, because nobody could imagine, that under such circumstances that traffic could to some extent triple,” Mr. Zhao said, referencing the massive surge for videoconferencing and mobile telephony traffic that the health crisis has engendered.
One important challenge has been the massive shift in the need for broadband away from urban office buildings, toward the suburban and rural where people are now telecommuting from their homes.
“Additional spectrum has been identified,”said Mario Maniewicz, Director of the ITU Radiocommunication Bureau, adding that such resources can be used by countries “for new technologies that can help provide coverage at affordable prices to underserved communities. These technologies are both satellite and terrestrial, and can cover large areas, and they promise to enable affordable broadband access in rural and remote areas.”
Mr. Maniewicz added that now that spectrum has been allocated governments must make use of these existing allocations to enable the telecommunications providers to do their job of servicing this “universal need” for broadband access.
The call for universal access to broadband has never been more keenly felt, said Doreen Bogdan-Martin, Director of the Telecommunication Development Bureau of the International Telecommunication Union: “ There’s a lot of talk about defining the new normal in the post-Covid world and for me ‘new normal’ needs to include broadband access for all.”
With 1.5 billion children currently out of school, Ms. Bogdan-Martin pointed to the desperate need for digital partnership such the initiative ITU is currently undertaking with UNICEF, known as the GIGA initiative, to ensure that schooling everywhere can be provided through online platforms. At the same time, she said, the ITU saw a need to accelerate the provision of global online child protection guidelines, which are now expected to be issued in the next two weeks.
A worrying development has been the massive spike in cyber-crime that has accompanied the shift to digital in the COVID-19 crisis.
“The COVID-19 crisis has also resulted in a huge surge of online criminal activity. Bad actors have been exploiting fear and uncertainty, and my own cyber-security team has set up an online repository to really help countries be able to protect their network, businesses and of course their users. And then linked to this is of course the risks for children,” said Ms. Bogdan-Martin. One telecoms company, Vodaphone, was cited as having reported 300-fold rise in phishing attacks through its systems since the pandemic started.
For all the dangers that current scenario presents, and for basic challenges such as the unavailability of electric power the ITU officials remained optimistic about the opportunities that are afforded by the present crisis to leverage new-found political to deliver connectivity for all.
In addition to expanding access globally, the ITU has been studying different technologies that have been submitted to it for contact-tracing during the pandemic, although Dr Reinhard Scholl, the Deputy Director of the organization’s Telecommunication Standardization Bureau, said that the world would have to wait for the “dust to settle” before recommendations could be made as to which works best.
The ITU’s top official, Mr. Zhao, said that as the world contemplates the post-COVID future, the global development of 5G networks would be absolutely essential to deliver such services as remote surgery and autonomous driving. Plans for 5G would have to be included in national development strategies, he said.
Teleprompter
So welcome to this press briefing of ITU, of IT US response and the response of the ICT community to COVID 2019.
I'm very pleased to see you all here.
This webcast is live for journalists accredited at the UN and it will be archived on the UNTV website later after this conference so you have access to it.
We have with us today Mr Hulin Zhao, ITU Secretary General.
Mr Hulin Zhao has been elected by ITU Member States on 1st November 2018 for a second term and he started his second term 4 year term on 1st November 2019.
He has served on several positions, senior positions at ITU beforehand, including Deputy Secretary General and the Director of the ITU Telecommunication Standardisation Bureau.
So Mr Zhao today has brought with him some colleagues which I have the pleasure to introduce as well, who will speak up if there are questions coming up relevant for them and they will also give a little opening remarks.
We have Missus Doreen Bogdan Martin, who is the director of the ITU Telecommunication Development Bureau, We have Mario Maniovich, who is the director of the IT Radio Communication Bureau, We have Mr Malcolm Johnson, who is the Deputy Secretary General of ITU and we have Doctor Reinhard Scholl, who is the deputy to the director of the ITU Telecommunications Standardisation Bureau.
So I have the pleasure to welcoming them all.
And I would first give the floor to Mr Zhao, who for his opening remarks and then later hand over to the other speakers.
Mr Zhao, this is your floor.
[Other language spoken]
[Other language spoken]
Yes, That's great.
Thank you very much, Monica.
[Other language spoken]
And you know, it's our pleasure to have a chance to address to you.
I would like to take this opportunity to wish you and all your family members and your loved ones safe and aware during this unprecedented situation.
COVID-19, as you know that COVID-19 really give us big trouble.
This is, you know, natural disaster.
You know, we suffered over almost a century and you know, all the sudden people are forced to stay at home and we have a lot of troubles, however, over the last couple of months and we see great coordination among our people with authority to try to fight together against this COVID-19.
So I'm very pleased to have a chance to talk to you today to brief you what IG has done so far and what IG activities is this year.
[Other language spoken]
And of course, I also like to talk about the ICT business, ICT Industries contributed to the World War against COVID-19.
And together with me today, I have my deputy city General Malcolm Johnson, and three directors, Madam Borden and Mario, and also Reinhardt, who replaced his director because chastity is not available today.
So we will give you some information about our work.
So let me first give you some general ideas.
What is COVID-19, You know, give us challenge the trouble.
So you know that over last decade the whole world, you know, made a enormous effort to build up a new the digital society taste.
The new society already came into our life, but we never imagined that we could be forced to stay at home and to use the digital world to connect ourselves to make our business continued.
So that is something absolutely new.
And if up to now the first focus the whole world in a pay and the medical workers.
I think that we should also appreciate great contribution by ICT workers to help us to connect our human beings and to facilitate our local community to fight against this COVID-19.
Just imagine if there's a no social media, there's a no ICT infrastructure which should connect ourselves over this difficult.
[Other language spoken]
So I always try to to highlight that today people may consider this is grounded as water and air route.
We do not really talk too much about the importance of this ICT infrastructure service who facilitates for this difficult.
In our life.
But however, that is really something we should appreciate our worldwide ICT workers who make ICT systems services available to us to have you know this potentials of ICT to connect ourselves to offer all those services, you know, like e-commerce education you has you know everything.
If we already talked about the importance of a digital society over a decade, but the people today we are fully appreciate the ICT and cyber services, you know, who help us to deal with this unprecedented situation.
But on the other hand, we should also recognise that the ICT services, ICT networks are not that kind of easily managed because nobody could imagine that under such circumstances.
You know that the traffic is to some extent tripled in volume of voice traffic and by video traffic, you know, that also increased dramatically.
And I noted some statistics that like teams like Zooms and all these new tours, we never heard about this.
Now over the last two months that traffic increased by 800%.
And then I, I know that the users of Zooms now already during the first two months of this year already reached about 13 million.
But two months earlier, nobody knows this kind of, you know, tours.
And our telecom operators, they also face enormous challenges because their business is not designed for such situation.
And voice traffic increased about trip out and the data traffic also increased from 50% to 80% in many places.
And all the sudden, you know the people we have to rely on our E services like E education and then you know that the e-commerce.
So how can we deal with this situation?
And according to one report I just noted that by Nokia that, you know, the current system seems to, you know, get this kind of increase in one day corresponding to the increase they expected for one year.
So this is something really, you know, new to us, but thanks to the goodwill of our ICT and the telecom workers, including our, you know, industry workers and also those, the administrations, they really work together, you know, to give a lot of efforts to help us to fight against this COVID-19.
For example, in many countries, authority and our operators, you know, give, you know, some kind of 0 rate to traffic for E education to help students and children to receive their education at home free of charge.
And many operators also offered the free transactions for money transfer within their systems because they never happened to the if they stop this one, if they ask them to pay first, they will not have such kind of services.
And many operators or already, you know, lift their cap of data traffic and offer, you know, some free, you know, traffic increase so that the system will not be stopped.
So all these I think that we really have to appreciate.
Of course, on the other hand, we noted that, you know, this kind of COVID-19 give us some kind of new lessons to learn and how can we do our business better, more efficient.
I think that the many people will take lessons from this one.
And also I consider that this is opportunity for us to review our strategy to see how can we make the best efforts to invest on the ICT and digital technologies.
And recently I participate the G20 digital economy and ministerial meetings.
I appreciate very much of their joint statement.
They're talking about the first concerns on the infrastructure and the connectivity.
They talked about working with the private sector to maximise the ICT services application and in particular, they pay attention to those not connected yet.
Not connected yet means what?
We still have 1/2 population not connected online yet.
So we're talking about E education.
But those who cannot be connected, how can they benefit from the E education?
And we talked about the e-commerce and for those who cannot use E services, they cannot order their data food from the web.
And I talked to some industry leaders just over the last three years and tried to collect the good storage information to share with you today.
I also know that in Africa, for example, education could be extended to those families who have broadband connections in the capitals of Africa countries.
But for remote areas, there's no such kind of a possibility.
So some operators work with authority to use the television to offer the broadcasting courses obscure that it works for her students, children in the villages, but it's not the best way.
So, and this morning I talked to the CEO of MTA and they keep telling me that in South Africa, you know, that 80% of the families don't have guaranteed power supply and even you have this connections, you may not have power, so it cannot work.
So this is a really challenge.
And for Africa, I heard from my friends, you know, from Zen, from MTA, from seminar, that they try to encourage operators to, you know, to disseminate the information through SMS because not many people have smartphones.
So you use all the means to try to connect the people with latest information we could offer.
So this is something we really appreciate.
But of course, on their hand, our operators, our Internet service providers also have a lot of challenges.
They don't have enough spectrum.
So they ask the authorities, you know, to quickly free some spectrum.
And I'm very pleased to note that in many countries they already offer temporary offer the spectrum needed by operators to offer their service to the public, to the authority.
And also we know that there's a very good, very efficient cooperation between operators and service providers with telecom authorities.
So we have to continue to, to, to encourage them to come to, to, to do that.
But on the other hand, again let me repeat, half population today has not connected online yet.
According to ITU statistics at the by the end of the 2018, we have Internet connectivity up to 50% of population.
In 2019, we improved after one year effort, we improved this connectivity from 53% to 54%, which means what?
Which means that one year we got the 1% increase and we still have more than 46% not connected yet.
So how can we connect to them?
How can we, you know, benefit provided the benefit of this ICD to everybody, not leave anybody behind.
I was challenged by a media, by some of your colleagues, lastly in parapis and Mrs Oh, you talked a lot and not leave anybody behind when please tell us when you could just see that happen by 20-30.
[Other language spoken]
Unfortunately, I cannot still a lot of challenges like for example in Africa also my friend told me many, many, many families don't have even electricity that, you know, this kind of proper connection will not to work at all if you don't have electricity.
So that is a real challenge to us and we have to work together and I have, you know, highlighted this importance and to encourage the public supporter to our you know, supporter this morning, my friend told me that if we today of working at home with this digital world and then we still have physical world.
Now, I I told him that the people consider that this kind of digital infrastructure is considered the granted like water and air.
And if he reminded me that be careful, you know, for the public world and you have a lot of public, you know, financial support via for the cyber world, more than 90% of investment coming from private sector.
So how can we create a good environment to encourage investment in this field?
That is one thing we have to work.
And other hand, I also highlighted the, the importance for our member states to look at the their national strategy.
For example, today many countries give, you know, from a financial minister, give funds to their ministers of education, minister of agriculture, minister of energy, you know, minister of you know, health.
So each of them can use that money to improve their system normally with ICT.
But how can we do better, You know that if we have a general national strategy to make a best use of this limited resource of financial, you know, investment to have a national, you know, strategy to not to avoid some kind of overlapping or to avoid those not the most efficient way to invest.
So that is something I think that I highlighted this at my invention at the G20 Digital Economy Ministerial meetings recently held invited by Saudi Arabia and twenty 30th of April and earlier 19th of April, I was invited by Saudi Arabia again to join the G20 Health Minister meetings.
I was very pleased to be invited because I realised that the Health minister consider the digit technologies absolutely important technologies.
They like to they invite the ICT industry to help them to establish digital health.
So that is great that they recognise the importance of ICT and the inside ITU.
We recently worked very hard with our sister organisations like you know, we worked there with UNESCO for the e-learning and we worked there with IO for the digital skills for use.
And in particular we started from Africa recently and we worked there with WHO and UNICEF to launch messages to children and to those parents starting from you know, Asia regions.
And you know that I also noted that many Africa operators, you know, consider in Africa, we don't have a smartphone that many.
So that here, you know, a lot of people use two GS.
So they use SMS to send them messages and encourage them to, you know, to to work together.
And this kind of efforts, I think that we are really pushing to, you know, to mobilise everybody, come together.
And I hope after this COVID-19, we could have a better strategy to look at the situation and to make, you know, seeing so much beneficial to our people.
I'm pretty sure after the COVID-19, the life will not be at before and the business will not be like before.
You know, we needed to have a new strategy.
We needed to to to work together to see how can we make the best efforts to improve our, you know, society.
So this is generally what I'd like to share with you.
And of course, let me just take opportunity to brief you on the IT activities this year and IQ.
From the very beginning of this year, we started with our council working group for various very important strategic issues and then we unfortunately could not have our wishes forum and we postponed that through September.
Now we found it's even difficult to have that physical meeting in September.
So we have a visual meeting for Wishes forum, which is supported by our partners from the families.
And we also plan to have AI for Good summit that, you know, scheduled at the end of May.
Now it's postponed through September.
Now we also realised that it would not be possible to continue so that we will have that one virtually held.
And we have our, you know, sector contribution meetings like radio advisory committee meetings, RAC and standardised plenary would telecommunication plenary scheduled in November that could be also virtually discussed this year, but we already decided to postpone it next year.
And then we have.
Our development sectors advise the committee meeting scheduled in March and of correspondent to June and then could be also, you know, virtually held.
And more importantly, we scheduled our annual meeting of concert 2020 we had in June.
Now it's difficult to have the physical meeting.
If we don't have that meeting, we may not be able to to, to to to, you know, continue our business as we expected.
So we are working with our members to see if we can have that meeting virtually held.
So basically you know that all the major meetings where the eyes are postponed or the virtual head.
I'm very pleased to share with my media friends that for those technical meetings we had from our standardisation sector, from our radio communication sector, from different sector, all successfully held and the technical study of business that will be continued as we plan so that there will be no major problems.
And we have another major event that we call the Telecom, Telecom 2020, which is invited by Vietnam.
Recently we discussed with V9 to postpone this to 2021 and of course you know that the IC T's contributing to COVID-19 and could be further exploit with various virtual meetings and we are working with partners to continue to work on that one.
And this last but not least, the major event we called Global Symposium for Regulatory Agencies, GSR's annual meeting supposed to be held, you know, in April now of course to September and again that could be managed virtually.
So this the major activities we'll be just ranked like that.
But we continue our business as usual and thanks to the IT staff and who all stay at home now, but they managed to offer their services to support IT functions as as normal.
And I noted that there are quite a number of media interest for our work.
So that is reason I invite my colleagues to join me and to provide you some information on their activities and then you can.
[Other language spoken]
[Other language spoken]
[Other language spoken]
So then I would very I will be very pleased to be at your disposal together with my colleagues, you know, for any questions you might have.
So, Monica, maybe I could stop here for for a while and then let you to manage the floor for my colleagues to speak.
[Other language spoken]
Thank you very much, Mr Zhao.
So I hand over to Mrs Doreen Bocton.
Marty now lady first, who is the director?
Remember the of the ITU Telecommunication Development Bureau.
[Other language spoken]
[Other language spoken]
Thank you very much, Monica.
And and thank you, Julian.
[Other language spoken]
Digital has really been the hidden hero of this crisis.
Global networks are being taxed to the limit.
Operators and and platforms are reporting huge surges in traffic as the world transitions almost overnight to online working, schooling, shopping and socialising.
Some providers have reported demand spikes as **** as 800%.
Those are surge levels that would have have surely knocked out other kinds of infrastructure.
We understood that digital resources were going to be absolutely critical in this global health emergency.
And we moved very quickly to set up our Reg for COVID platform, which is the global network resiliency platform.
And it serves as a real repository for emergency actions that the digital community around the world is taking to help to ensure the continued availability, accessibility and also the resilience of networks and resources.
The list of actions and initiatives that we have seen are really impressive and they continue to grow.
We think everybody's really playing their part.
From an emergency session of the UN Broadband Commission that recently announced A3A3 pillared agenda for action for governments and the digital community focusing on access to resilience and online safety.
To the World Bank, the GSMA, the World Economic Forum and the IT US 5 Point Action Plan to leverage digital technologies and infrastructure and also to fast track collaboration.
And of course, and the Secretary General alluded to this, We also found ways to tap into the 2G market by partnering with WHOUNICEF and global operators so that we could deliver accurate and timely health messaging to the estimated 2 billion people that still rely on 2G connections.
And of course, keeping in mind the 1.5 billion children now at a school, we're working to accelerate our efforts with UNICEF and governments to expand our Giga partnership to really connect every school with the aim of making schools into community hubs for delivery of vital services.
The crisis has also underscored for us the urgent need for global digital cooperation.
And we have launched together with our UN partners and the tech community as a follow on to the UNS GS **** Level Panel on Digital Cooperation.
Of course, these discussions are are put in the context of COVID.
And one of the important focuses of these discussions has been on how to protect society's most vulnerable people and communities, as well as the special needs of of women and girls who are disproportionately affected by the pandemic.
The the COVID-19 crisis has also resulted in a huge surge in all kinds of online criminal activity.
Vodafone reported a 300 increase in phishing attacks across its own network.
And unfortunately, bad actors have been exploiting fear and uncertainty.
And my own cybersecurity team has set up an online repository to really help countries to be able to protect their networks, businesses and of course their their users.
And then linked to this, of course is the risks for children.
This has been heightened with so many millions of children now online.
And of course, many of these children came online younger than their parents had actually foreseen.
And so we on our side are trying to accelerate the launch of our child Online Protection guidelines and they will be coming out in the next couple of of weeks.
And I would like to stress, and the Secretary General mentioned this, that 3.6 billion people remain totally unconnected from the online world.
The SG mentioned what the G20 ministers were doing focusing on this.
And many of the billions that we count as connected are actually challenged with slow, infrequent, expensive connections using handheld devices.
And, and we need to keep that in mind.
And I think if there's one thing that the unprecedented events of the past few months have dramatically illustrated is the vital and essential importance of, of connectivity.
And really, as director of the BDTI can tell you that I don't accept as normal a situation where every second person on the planet has to manage without this vital digital lifeline.
There's a lot of talk about the need to define the new normal in our post covad world.
And for me, that new normal needs needs to really include broadband access for all.
We've all heard the UNSG urging us to build back better, but let's go further.
And I urge us to build back better with broadband.
Mozilla Foundation's Mitchell Baker commented some weeks ago that we must never waste a good crisis.
And so as my team begins to prepare for our World Telecom Development Conference next year, we are acutely aware that we have this unique opportunity to harness the unprecedented tide of political will.
And what what I mean is that we may never again benefit from the intense focus of governments, the focus of governments now on digital networks and services.
And so our conference next year, we believe, represents a unique opportunity to make huge strides forward in connecting the unconnected and really to building government and industry cooperation around the global Big Dig so that we get those without access online as fast as possible and that we leverage the power of digital to achieve the SD GS.
I hand back over to you, Monica.
Thank you, Thank you, Doreen.
So we heard we have to define the new normal.
I hand over now to Mario Manovic, who is the Director of the Radio Communication Bureau, to see what has changed there, what the Bureau is up to and what might be the new normal.
Dear Mario, please, over to you.
Yes, thank you, Monica, and good day, everybody, depending where you are.
So we've heard that during this.
We've had to change our daily routines to comply with the social distancing.
And for many of us, the continuity of our work has happened through teleworking.
And for our children, the continuity of their education has happened through remote learning.
So migrating from a physical environment to a digital 1 requires am I, do you hear me properly?
Oh, sorry about that.
[Other language spoken]
So sorry.
I was saying that migrating from a physical environment to a digital 1 requires connectivity, which is what we mean by communication services and users needs to be connected to the Internet and have the digital skills to use it and obtain economic benefits from it.
So what's the work of the radio communication sector in order to help achieving all that?
So I without getting too technical, the ITUR as we call it for for short, for the radio communication ITU sector, we worked very hard to ensure that everyone has access to communication services.
And in the current situation this means to be connected either via a fixed network at home or a Wi-Fi network or a mobile network or a satellite network or other services.
We continue working on defining globally harmonised radio communication standards that enable the provision of these services around the world.
Moreover, the international treaty that governs all this use of spectrum and satellite orbits, which is called the Radio Regulations, also ensures that traditionals and new services can access the spectrum.
And international spectrum harmonisation allows people to benefit from more affordable services and services due to the economies of scale.
A positive note in all this is that since the beginning of the crisis in most countries, the telecommunications infrastructure in place has responded very well to the increase in voice and data traffic.
Fortunately, the design of a telecommunication network is not based on the average traffic levels, but on the peak hour traffic levels.
Currently, the traffic levels are spread during working hours to support teleworking and remote learning platforms.
So the increase in the average volume throughout the day has not impacted considerably the previous peak volumes that we had during the night and the existing networks have been able to cope well with this available and significant overhead capacity that already had.
Moreover, network operators have been continuously optimising their networks to balance the changes in volume, data patterns and location.
A clear example is the redimensioning of the networks to support more balanced bi directional traffic from interactive conference platforms like the one we are using today, in contrast with previous downlink video streaming traffic which was mostly downlinking, downloading and not uploading.
Nevertheless, one fact that we have noticed has been the migration of data traffic from the city centres and dense urban areas where most offices are located towards the suburban and rural areas where employees houses are situated.
The problem is that many of these homes do not have the same level of access to telecommunication services and the people that do not have access to broadband are the masks, the ones that are suffering the most from staying home.
This has evidence the well known issue of the digital divide that you're very well known about.
And now that work and school depend on the connection of all homes to the Internet, there is an urgent need to bring the digital divide more than always.
Of course, there are many ways in which we can bridge the digital divide and we, I'm not going to get into that, but we have already provided A globally harmonised spectrum for mobile communications over the past few decades.
But in addition, in the last World Radio Communication Conference, which happened only last year, additional spectrum has been identified that can be used for new technologies to help provide coverage and affordable prices to underserved communities.
These technologies are both satellite and terrestrial based and can cover large areas.
They promise to enable affordable broadband access in rural and remote areas.
So now that the international regulation is in place, the availability of these services is in the hands of the industry and supporting national regulatory policies.
The priority must be to close and bridge the digital divide and to makes make access to communications affordable for everyone.
So in closing, I will reiterate that now more than ever, telecommunications services have been regarded as essential services.
Information and communication technologies or Icts, for sure, have been helping humanity to be informed about and respond to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Icts are enabling people to telework, children to benefit from distance learning and social connections to continue through social platforms.
Thus, Icts have been of critical importance during these difficult times.
Thank you, Monica, over to you.
Yeah, thank you very much, Mario.
So we heard connectivity is is vital in facing this crisis.
And I hand over to Reinhardt, Reinhardt Scholl from the Telecommunications Standardisation Bureau.
So we hear how that Bureau has taken its activities online, virtual, remote and what role artificial intelligence plays in all of this.
[Other language spoken]
And I hand over to you, Reinhardt.
[Other language spoken]
Hello everyone, Today would have indeed been the grand opening of For AI for Good global Summit that we organised together with our partner X Prize, the ACM and the 36 UN organisations.
But we decided not to offer a physical event this year and we also decided to not to offer a dedicated virtual AI Summit.
Instead, what we are doing is we are offering an always online, all year AI for good global summit.
So that's sort of like a Netflix AI for good global Summit.
So we are going to offer a digital bouquet of flowers comprising of webinars, of interviews, of pitching sessions, of live streaming on social media, networking events, media corners.
And we do this throughout this year.
Even this week we offer three such events.
The goal of the Afro Good Global Summit is still to be very much a project oriented.
We would like to see how AI can help achieve the sustainable Development goals.
So we offer not just good talks and panel discussions, but we would like to get something tangible coming out of the summit.
We think that we can reach a much wider audience by going online.
Last year we had 2300 people on site in Geneva and we had about the participants from 100 countries.
We think we can multiply the number of people we can reach by a factor of 10 and we could probably get to all corners of the planet.
This was the Africa Global summit.
Now let me mention a couple of cutting edge technical work that ITU is doing over the next few weeks.
You are invited to participate, you can read the documents, you can, you can join, no IT membership is necessary and there are no fees involved.
So ending today, yesterday and today we have our AI and self driving car technical group meet.
What's the goal of this group?
Suppose you want to learn to drive a car, you have to take lessons and you have to take an exam and then you get a licence.
You know, What about self driving cars?
Who is the driver in soft driving cars?
It's the software.
So what kind of test does the software have to pass in order to be allowed on the road?
So this is being discussed today.
Then this week on Thursday and Friday we have what we think is a super exciting activity that we do jointly with the World Health Organisation and it's called AI for Health.
The goal of this group is to come up with a benchmarking framework to check the quality of AI models.
So this is super ambitious.
You know, suppose you want to take a drug, you want to make sure that it's safe, that doesn't **** you and maybe hopefully it's also doing some good to you.
So very elaborated and time consuming and expensive process has been constructed in order to ensure the safety and efficacy of drugs.
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Who would certify?
Who would test that?
Your AI model that's analysing breast cancer is kidney cancer for example, is safe.
So this is the goal of the AI for Health group that we have meeting in on Thursday and Friday of this week to come up with a quality steal for AI models.
Then in four weeks, we have a group called machine learning in 5G networks, and applying AI in communication networks such as today's communication networks or 5G or other networks is not well suited.
Applying AI to image recognition is very much different from applying AI in communication networks.
So the IT over the last two years has devised a toolbox of machine learning tools that can be applied to networks such as 5G.
We have also launched a challenge.
Challenge in the sense of a competition where students and professionals around the world are solving problem statements in order to make them work in networks.
And then last but not least, I would like to mention a group that we call Network 2030 that's going to meet in six weeks time.
The goal is what kind of services could one imagine in 20-30 and what would the network have to look like in 20-30?
So these are 4 examples of cutting edge work that IT is doing.
You're invited to join them.
As I said, they're open and you can access all the documents and no fees involved.
[Other language spoken]
Thank you very much, Reinhardt.
So thanks for all the speakers.
We can now hand over the floor to the journalists.
And we do have a question already from Reuters, I presume that's Emma Forge.
And the question is to Mr Zhao, who mentioned that Internet service providers may not have enough spectrum.
Could you please clarify, Mr Zhao?
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I'm not good to my.
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This is urgent issue.
I, you know, had first this voice from our consultation with our members of Prop and Commission early April that, you know, they would like to ask us to help to convey this message to the authorities.
And then during my consultation with industry leaders over recent days and they highlighted this again.
And fortunately, they told me that for example, in Africa already 20 countries already offered the spectrum operators wanted to their services and that great help, you know, our operators to offer the services to their customers to meet the urgent need.
The spectrum, you know that they you know, to some extent in some areas they have this spectrum under consideration.
And then the operator consider that if you delay this assignment to that they cannot offer good service.
And I use some other countries.
I know that the for example, in United States they also asked some ISPs like Disney or the others to reduce their quality of transmission at this moment so that they can have additional spectrum to offer to our you know operators to provide a service like a zoom like teamwork because that need a lot of traffic volumes and then the normal traffic volume you know, patterns cannot satisfy them.
So this also, you know, when you have requested to have, you know, just under consultations between 2, two places and then they never got such kind of service before, they needed this, this kind of spectrum to support their services.
So this, you know, the urgent need from our operators and I'm very pleased in many countries the local associates, you know cooperate with them and freeze those spectrum to help them to get a service quickly done.
So that is very good.
Of course for the time being, you know that people do not care too much about payment.
You know that normally this kind of service need some kind of, you know payment either from customers or from operators.
And but anyhow it's not to meet as an urgent leader of the situation.
And I'm very, very pleased that our partners from either public authority or operators, you know helped a lot in that first we offer the service and then we will see what the, you know, we can do.
And of course some temporary arrangement may not be fixed permanently because this is a commercial business, you know that you cannot expect such kind of things to be just continue like that.
But I'm pretty sure with very good service offered to our customer to the market and local authority and operators and also any users who we have come together to find the solutions for long term solution.
[Other language spoken]
Mr Zhao, we have a follow up question from Reuters, please Reuters and here you may also ask hello, ask Mario to, to, to if he would have some ideas to to offer offset my my comments just to follow up.
Thank you for your response.
I have two further questions.
I was wondering if the Secretary General, you might be able to weigh in on contact tracing apps and which ones you think are best placed to help the world in post lockdown and why and whether there's any debate about that within the ITU and, and what the different views are and, and whether the organisation will have much of A say in that.
And secondly, there was an article about the ITU in the Financial Times in December.
And I was wondering if you could respond to that article.
There were allegations in it that under your leadership, Chinese technology companies have been able to have more influence in shaping facial recognition and surveillance standards.
And I was just wondering if you could comment on that.
Thank you very much.
[Other language spoken]
[Other language spoken]
You can take the floor.
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For the applicant applications, I think that a lot of popular applications come up but not necessarily from big companies and the mainly from small mediums of companies and we are very precise.
For example, this morning I talked to my yesterday morning, I talked to a Smart Africa executive director and he told me that in Africa they encouraged their SME user to come up with local solutions, local applications to fight against COVID-19.
And they got more than 300 in the projects.
And then, you know, they have some kind of expert team to try to, to, to, to, to sing out those excellent ones and from 300 to 28, from 28 to 6 and from 6:00 to 3:00.
So I told, I encourage him that to not only focus on three and then we should really promote those who coming from Africa, but also useful for our local community.
So we have to encourage them to do this kind of, you know, development.
And then, you know, of course, recently we had a lot of news from media that the new applicants could help, you know, the public authority to chase those people, you know, with school has close contact with affected people and more efficiently, you know, helped the local authority to, you know, try to confine those people, isolated those people, identify those people and contemplate.
And this also caused the public concerns of the privacy and the computationality, you know that.
So we know that these kind of things, we encourage our authority to have a good discuss discussion on this topic.
And I think that this is something look, authority and operators and the end users, they all try to, to, to, to address.
So I, I, I'm sure that there will be, you know, some solutions to allow our society to mobile height with those quick applications, but reducing those risk of privacy.
And, you know, some solution could be found.
And that is the one thing I like to highlight.
Of course, if you ask me to identify one or two few, it's quite difficult because each country has their own, you know, popular app that they already received by the local community.
I, I noted that one.
And we encourage those industries to continue to make efforts.
And from IT we normally do not engage ourselves with the development of local applications that is that really the SM, ES and the companies, you know, commercial business.
On the second question, I, I assume that this I know that this concerns and questions from our media.
So that question already converted and presented to our standardisation Bureau for their considerations.
I think that Reinhard could give more information on what does they have done so far and what does they think about that.
And for me, I think that in IQ and we enjoyed ourselves with 155 years of history, we always, you know, relevant to the market.
The only secret is that we are going with our members with innovations, innovations, you know, who will help us to get new technologies to enrich our life and with more efficiency and the more you know solution and the more you know, benefit.
Except we try to work with our industrial members in the 1st to get technology be standardised.
And then, you know, we will also encourage our public, you know, society to help us to implement those, you know, technologies because the technology cannot be mentioned by technical experts on that.
You know, we need, you know, global society to to accept this one, to work together to implement this one.
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I think that the Renha and the Peace Bureau already worked on this issue that he could give us a good advice.
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Reinhart, if you would like to take the floor, if I may say just before we have at least five questions in the queue and I would like to ask the journalist to ask one question please only so we can take more questions.
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So I'd like to comment on both on 1st, on the contact tracing, there are dozens of applications out there in the market.
The one that was said to be the first using Bluetooth that's called Trace Together from Singapore.
So a lot of people have been talking about this and other efforts have been taken this as as a model.
We had in one of our webinars a month ago, we had a presentation on an initiative called the PPT.
That's the pan European privacy preserving proximity tracing platform.
Google, Apple have announced.
So they're going to offer an API, they called it now, the exposure notification API on which countries can put apps.
So there is a lot of activity and we have to see once the dust settles, which one is going to work best.
It would be good if there is no fragmentation within countries and maybe even beyond the borders of countries.
So it would be great if and I would hope that this is going to happen if we see a proposals on best practises in coming in from members or non members on how to do contract tracing.
With respect to to China about you know, 2025 years ago, most of the activities are basically all of the activities and the standardisation sector has been done by North American and European companies.
And today it's just a matter of fact, a lot of the activities have shifted to Asia, in particular China, Japan and Korea.
So a lot of our input is coming from close to the countries.
I mentioned the network 2030 group that's going to meet in the middle of June, that's a group that's going that's chaired by Huawei where they, you know, outline their ideas on what the network might look like in in 2030.
So, you know, everyone is invited.
This is an open group.
You can participate, you can look at the documents if you would like to get consensus and that's the way the IT was working in the in the ITO.
You have to get other partners, other companies, other countries on board.
You're going to just come up with a proposal and hope that it's going to to be accepted.
So there is going to be a lot of discussion, compromises will have to be made.
And at the end it's up to the membership and to decide whether they accept or or not accept certain proposals.
[Other language spoken]
Thank you, Reinhart.
So before I hand over the next question to Freddie Mulongo, I would like to give Mario Manuel to the floor again in response to Emma Ford's question on spectrum.
I know you have many questions waiting, so I I think it's important to be precise on the need for more spectrum as it is publicised out there.
There is already enough spectrum identified and harmonised by the successive World Radio Communication Conferences.
In fact, in the last conference we have identified 17 giga of additional spectrum.
So the the issue of having more spectrum means really to have governments allocate, assign the spectrum that is already available and it is already identified.
So what government should do is not to allocate more spectrum, but to avoid that there is an assigned spectrum in their countries, meaning that the the the spectrum that is already identified for mobile telecommunications be assigned to operators that could deploy networks and then have more capacity.
Having said that, because of the restrictions of the COVID-19, the operator might have a bit of a problem in deploying new equipment, as we said before.
But obviously we start by giving them possibilities to do so and then trying to help them do it.
Even if they have, there are some constraints.
So I think it's it's important for the journalist to understand this difference between having more spectrum or making good use of the one that is already existing, but much of it is not yet allocated or assigned by the government.
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Thank you, Mario, for that specification.
It is important difference I hand out over now the next question to Freddy Malongo.
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Bonjour Truce.
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If I may answer you in English, that might be benefit for the, you know, one of the advantage of 5G is the very low time delay.
Then we talk about milliseconds and then that this kind of delay could be very critical for life of death in particular, you know, for the, you know, surgery operations.
If you don't have good system to support your remote surgery operation, then that the doctor in another city or remote area, you know, could not really give timely advice to those who take operation at a sport.
So that one, you know it's not possible for 4G, but it's possible for 5G.
And you also talk about, you know, autonomous driving today and you know that during these days, you know, you need a lot of people to help to deliver goods to the houses, the families.
Why are the health of security of this delivery man and could be also in dangerous If we have autonomous driving that could help us to solve this problem quickly.
So this kind of service can be only offered by 5G, not by 4G yet.
So we are talking about SDG by 20-30 we should achieve our goals of SDG.
We have only 10 years to go.
Why are the next 10 years?
I'm pretty sure there's no other technology except the 5G.
Who will come with us for next decade And if any service you like to bring benefit to people if you do anything to help the global, you know family to reach the goal of SDGS by 2035.
G will play absolutely critical role here.
That is reason I see that you know everywhere there's in spite of this kind of you know covet programmes.
I noted that many places already put the 5G on their national strategy.
And of course, since last year, you know that many countries already set up a 5G pilot and even started their commercial business like Korea, South Korea and the United States.
Many others and many other countries not come up with a 5G.
And of course, during this COVID-19, we noted that there are also programmes of delivery of equipment and even the, you know, production chain could be interrupted by this COVID-19 that not only equipment of a system, but also handset mobile, I know that could not be available to the market as we originally planned.
But anyhow, there's a new dot, the 5G, and the services will be there.
Very, very sure.
And I was very pleased to note that in Africa, countries like the DeSoto, I was in DeSoto in September 2018 and I found that in the capital they already have a pilot of 5G and many African countries already have this pilot.
But on the other hand, we also realise that as I mentioned, still in Africa continent a lot of people use 2G and many people even do not have mobile phone at all.
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This is a reality.
And how can we help to, to, to, to eliminate the digit of divide?
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But on that hand, 5G is absolutely the next step for everyone.
I, I, I have no thought about that.
And I would encourage our, you know, member States and industry members to work together to deploy 5G as quick as possible.
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Pre Nina, I give you the floor.
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So I was hoping to put a question to Doreen.
I wanted to ask if you could just elaborate a bit.
You mentioned that children, especially young ones are at risk now that they're going online more of to do school work and other other things.
So if you could explain a little bit more about what specific risks you're seeing and how to counter those.
And also on the digital slide, if you could elaborate a little bit on the impact you think this is going to have on education and future opportunities if it's not bridged too quickly now.
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Doreen, are you?
Yes, please Doreen, we're waiting for your sound.
We are under your control, your control.
Now it's you and TV which will give her the now we're we hear you.
Oh, that's OK.
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Yes, thank you Nina for the for the question.
I would say in terms of the digital divide and linked to to education, we are very, very concerned that if we don't accelerate efforts to bridge the digital divide, we are risking exacerbating further inequalities.
And of course, when it comes to education, with more than 1.5 billion kids out of school and so many of them without access to online learning, the impact can be devastating.
So from our side, we're doing our utmost to try to accelerate efforts to bridge the digital divide.
And I mentioned before for our work with with UNICEF, our work with UNESCO and others to try to advance our school connectivity efforts.
In terms of the child Online Protection issue, I think there's many different aspects.
As I mentioned when I intervened before, many children are coming online earlier than their parents had intended at much earlier ages and without the necessary skills, let's say, to protect themselves.
So whether it's online harassment, cyberbullying, these things are, are are growing in concern.
And, and also the other point is the length that children are spending online, you know, whether it's simply for their schooling or it's also for, you know, entertainment, gaming and socialising they're doing after their learning is completed.
So we are seeing a number of challenges with education having moved entirely to online platforms.
Challenges for parents.
I myself am a parent of 4, but I'm lucky because my kids are teenagers and they can manage without me.
But the challenge is for parents, the challenge is for teachers.
And of course, the challenge is for kids.
And we are really in the middle of a learning crisis.
And I do hope that that we can, we can learn from this so that we are better prepared should a future crisis come.
And, and I do hope that we can bridge the connectivity gap because I do think if we're, if we are not able to do that, we are at risk, not just on our SDG education goal, but on all of the SDGS.
[Other language spoken]
Thank you, Doreen.
I hand over now to Stefan Boussard of Luton here in Geneva.
Yes, hello, Stefan Boussard, Laton newspaper.
Thank you so much for holding this conference.
I have a question about the new IP.
In February, engineers from Huawei came to Geneva to ITU to present a new IP or Internet, new Internet infrastructure.
And I was wondering, Secretary General, how you look on this new kind of proposal and what's the timeline was a discussion within the Technical Committee 13 and what's the general assessment of member states as far as I, I, this new IP is concerned?
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Yeah, thank you very much for this question.
I think that IP you know starting from last century in already quite, you know some time you know that as far as technology is concerned, we have to advance our technology, advance our services.
That is absolutely the chain to of technology development in the history that we have to support that.
But when we come to the specific, you know, project you mentioned, I know that that comments from the media and I think that that is presented to some technical expert meetings in standardisation Bureau.
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Renhart could give us more information on the work, you know, managed there and they can give us also information about their expectation of this technology development there.
So if I may, I would invite Renhart to provide more information on comments.
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Reinhard Schall from the IT Telecommunications standardisation per Rd I I gave the answer I think earlier.
It's related also to the activity that we call Network 2030.
Members can bring any proposal that they want to bring into the ITO and then it needs to be discussed.
And we have to get the partners on board and have them agreed because the decisions of the ITO are based on consensus.
So they have a, you know, wide view what the network may or should look like in the in the future, the services that they have in mind.
And it will be discussed.
And then, you know, depending on how the discussions go, it may get maybe modified, there may be compromises, maybe it doesn't get accepted and then they take it back.
So, you know, everything is everything is possible, but I think, you know, it's a, it's a valid question to, to see whether you know networks, you know, what should networks look like in the future?
And our current networks have done enormously good stuff, but they're also a big problem.
So I mean, could you solve things by having maybe a different type of network?
So, you know, that's a discussion that needs to, needs to take place.
And the idea is offering a, a great platform because we have countries and companies and universities as members.
So I invite you to participate in this or take a sneak view of the Network 2030 group that will take place in the middle of June.
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Which is a virtual meeting as many others, right?
I think everything is online this year and who knows for how long.
Thank you, Reinhardt.
So the next question I would like to give to Tamir Abo Alenin from Cubite News 8.
Yes, hello and good afternoon.
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I'm just would like to ask Mr Zhao to encourage the media team, your media team and ITU to be more cooperative with the journalists as we have difficulties to get in contact with the experts.
And by the way, the idea of this press conference was an initiative of Akanu to invite you for a press conference with the media team and other experts.
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OK, Thank you very much for your opinions and proposals.
Indeed our media, frankly, it's very important for us to some extent ITU as a specialised agency, we are very good to work with our partners of our family members.
We are not very strong in the promoting our work outside of IT families.
So we from very beginning when I started my role as the director of the Sanitation Bureau in 1999, I already pay attention to strengthen our cooperation with the media.
And I think that the media friends, you know, would very much, you know, give us opportunities to promote our work more these days.
You know that if like a cybersecurity, you know I too has worked on the security issues from very beginning.
When we started 1865 for Telegraph system, we already worked on the Telegraph system security and if we were not the work of security, nobody will use the public telecom services.
So that is very clear.
But however, before 1998, all these issues, student issues are addressed by telecom Indians with the telecom authority.
You know, yes, sorry, I'm in a press conference.
So this one, you know, that will not be enough.
So that is reason why IQ suggest the UN to organise the wishes process to invite a big public to join us to address these common issues.
So that one, we will, you know, listen to you and also, you know, I take your, your criticism and I think that of course, we have limited resources in our team and they're also busy with our business.
And you know that in ITU we have 3 sector and the three sector, you know, have the different, you know, competence.
And then, you know, it's also not that easy to take care of.
Everybody's need a timely manner.
So that is already structured for them.
But anyhow, generally speaking, I see that your observations, your proposal is absolutely valid for us.
We 1st to thank you for your interest, try our best to work with our media friends, OK?
And also I'd like to take this opportunity to invite it because we don't have another meeting.
IIT we organise, it's a celebration of award Telecom information Saturday on the 18th of May.
And normally it's the 17th of May, but the 17th of May this year is a Sunday.
So we organise that one Monday, 18th of May.
And the theme of this celebration is the, you know, ICT for SD GS.
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We started from 1969 to separate our day and it's already 51 years past.
And now it's the 52 version of this special day.
So we will invite a few UN colleagues to join us to talk about ICT for SD GS.
So if possible, you know we would very much like you to join us at this future meeting starting from 2O clock in the afternoon of 18th of May.
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[Other language spoken]
Mr Zhao, we take one more question because we're running late and that question is for Laurent Ciero from Swiss News Agency.
And hopefully we have done some minutes a very short for the deputy Director, journalist Malcolm Johnson to say a few words.
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I'd like to come back to the connectivity gap.
So you mentioned the, the potential impact on education, but what about the, the effect on the current health pandemics?
Would you say that people will die because they won't get the Dean force they they need in order to to be able to tackle the effect of the virus?
Yeah, that is absolutely also challenge to us.
In fact, the last year at the UN General Assembly in New York, I participate at the special session for the health system because I consider that the the digit technology could help the care system to improve its efficiency.
I also, during my visitor to the Member States, I visit a lot of countries with my interest to visit their health systems.
For example, in Kazakhstan last year, I was really pleased to see that the one of their Community Hospital was fully equipped with ICT and patient would do not need to go to the hospital to, you know, to, to make appointment.
They can get all the prescribed, you know, medicine from any pharmacy after their, you know, their, their suggestions from their doctor.
So that's a lot of work already done by the Yes system and we will encourage them to do more.
And of course, you know, one of our goals at the Wishes Forum Wishes 2005 is to connect all school, all pharmacies or hospitals by 2015.
Unfortunately, we have not reached that call.
But I, I'm very pleased to see that the, the credibility to the hospitals, to pharmacies, with the families now is, you know, dramatically improved.
And with this COVID-19, I'm pretty sure and you know, that system will be rapidly improved.
One of the proof is IT was invited as one of few UN agencies to join the T20 health minister meetings, which again demonstrated that the our PAS ministers and our PAS systems recognise the ICT's contribution to this one.
We were also, you know, encouraging our ICT industry to work with them and connectivity still here.
It's the most important, you know, factor.
So that is reason why I highlighted A4 Eyes infrastructure investment, innovation and inclusiveness as my, you know, agenda, you know and you know, this kind of new situation and infrastructure including this proper interconnectability and normal Internet connectability to reach everybody.
And if we cannot reach everybody, you know, that hub population not connected online yet, this kind of, you know, health, E health will not be beneficial to them.
So that is something, you know, IT is working very, very, very closely with our health organisations like WHO and national authorities for health and authorities of ICT.
We encourage them to work closely.
[Other language spoken]
So we have one more question and if we're lucky, it's a question from Malcolm Johnson and we would marry two more speakers.
So this is a question from Peter Kenny, South Africa in the US Actually, I was going to ask a question to Mr Zhao, but it's about your slogan is AI for good.
And we've heard about the great access that AI gives us, but perhaps one of the biggest tiers of individual consumers about AI is the intrusion that it offers to both state surveillance and grasping companies.
What does the ITU have in its mechanism or in its DNA to make sure that it is AI for good and prevents this type of intrusion?
Yeah, this is the partly the technical issue.
And of course, if we have a strong, you know, technical solutions, that kind of things could be a, you know, some kind of overcome.
But in general, in my opinion, it's not a pure technical issue.
We are working on this for sure in that we noted this issue for, for years.
But again, what I mentioned, we cannot rely on our experts to work on this.
We have to engage the public to, to to work on this like a cybersecurity issues not become an issue everybody and become, you know, top because everywhere.
But unfortunately we have not got much progress because in my opinion that the world debate is still unfortunately held under this kind of geopolitical divisions.
And that could not help us to make a progress if we all work together and put these kind of things in a, in a equally on the table to look at the, you know, the ethics issue and you know, basically international understanding and agreement.
You know, we, we, we could make some progress to overcome this issue, as you mentioned, including those privacy and confidentiality or this kind of thing.
I think that we could make some progress.
So that is something it's still, and ITO is interested by VCs as only a facilitator for cybersecurity.
We are working on that issue and with our members, with our partners, but you know that to my observation is still not much progress made, but I think we have to continue to work.
[Other language spoken]
So now I hand over to Malcolm Johnson and I'm sure there is a nice sentence in what he will say to close the conference afterwards.
[Other language spoken]
The word is very much Monica.
And and just to add to that last answer, we have everyone coming together for the purpose of using AI for good.
So that's other international organisations, industry regulators, academics, entrepreneurs.
So we're really looking for benefits from AI.
And one good example was the formation of the AI for health together with The Who, And that's was very opportune because it's looking at how we can use AI to help overcome the the current crisis as well as other many other health issues.
So yes, to conclude, I'd just like to add my thanks to everyone for joining this press briefing and for your interest in the work of ITU.
I noticed that one question that wasn't asked, but one that I often get asked, especially by our staff, is when do we intend going back to working as normal?
So COVID-19 has changed the world drastically, but no more so than the way we work.
And the normal before COVID-19 will not be the normal after COVID-19.
And this crisis has really proved the power of the technology because in ITU we've maintained our business as usual with the virtual meetings, both internal meetings and external meetings with our membership of 193 Member States and over 900 sector members, mostly private sector tech companies.
And that includes meetings using six language interpretation.
These meetings have been particularly successful, and we've been.
Finding them more inclusive even than physical meetings and tend to be more efficient in reaching conclusions and decisions more quickly.
We've also found the platforms available and the networks quite resilient to dealing with the huge demand increase in demand.
ITU doesn't have the pressure then to return to the office that maybe other organisations have but are having difficulty maintaining their operations.
Currently we're not planning a return to the office before the end of this month at least, and after that it'll only be a very gradual return to the office.
So I believe the new normal working life will be much more sustainable than the old.
The planet and all of us will benefit from a reduction in emissions and pollution and a better work life balance as a result of this new way of working there.
Despite the difficulties and the challenges that we now face, I believe something good will come of this eventually.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much Malcolm.
All the speakers we heard that digital has been or is the hidden hero in this crisis we're all facing that we have to define a new normal, that the new normal may be positive.
If we listen to Malcolm, what is for sure is that it will continue to work on bridging the digital divide and bringing everybody on board for this better plan and and better work life balance, etcetera for better health.
So thank you very much for joining us this afternoon.
Sorry that we run over the one hour we had reserved for this.
We hope you join us again and picking up on COVID news agency, I hope we will have more opportunities going forward for some press events.
And so thank you very much and I wish you along with my colleagues from ITU, a very nice evening.
[Other language spoken]