Dr. Hamadoun Toure, secretary general of International Telecommunications Union (ITU), one of the specialized agencies of the United Nations. He has been promoting the Connect Africa initiative, a $55 billion project to improve Africa’s telecommunications infrastructure. Toure, visited the country recently, and took time out to spoke with chike onwuegbuchi in Abuja on issues in telecommunications around the world.
Fight Against Cybercrime
You can’t fight cybercrime without adequate legislations; you need to have national legislations and those national legislations need to be harmonized at the international level as well. Legislation is among our five pillars of the global cybersecurity agenda. In addition to legislation that also need to be harmonized includes technical readiness, you need to have organizational structure in the country which involves all stakeholders in fact ministries from youth, education to health. Countries also need to have very good capacity building programmes which requires the various law enforcement agencies working together which will help them to be knowledgeable enough to fight cybercrime.
The last important thing is international cooperation so that these cybercriminal can be track down, because criminals know no boundary in the space. I’m very pleased to notice that Nigeria is now ready to put in place cybercrime legislation. It is something that will be put in the parliament very soon according to Minister of Information and Communications. This will go a long way to resolve many issues, as you know, unfortunately, many criminals at the cyberspace are using Nigerian’s name, and some of these criminals using Nigerians name have never being to the country. Unless something is done those people outside the country will spoil Nigeria name and the name of the continent. In order for people to do business in this country, you need to ensure that these criminals are not using unfairly the country’s name, so we can fight these criminals together.
I like this little cartoon long time ago, where a dog with puppy, they were sitting operating a computer on the keyboard, the father was telling the puppy, “In the cyberspace no one knows that you are a dog.” Unfortunately, people steal the identity of other people and claim to be them, in order to commit heinous crimes in the cyberspace. That has to be stopped. We also have to ensure that the legislations take account of the commitment of not harboring terrorist in the country, which is the commitment not to attack other countries in the cyberspace. The next world war could be waged in the cyberspace, and that will be a disastrous war because of the way we rely on the cyberspace.
Platform for Broadband Infrastructure
In this arena all countries are coming at the same level, there is no such thing as developed or developing countries. We are all dealing with new technologies with new things were nobody has been trained to be a regulator; there is no university for that. Technology is always advancing and regulation is following technology. We need to ensure that it is catching up with technology.
I’m very pleased with the regulation in this country. The results are there to show that it is working. We also have some other countries that are doing well such as Egypt, Morocco, and some neighbouring countries such as Ghana that has a very good regulatory environment. Those African countries are really contributing heavily in the global discussion on telecommunications development. The necessary human capital is here in Nigeria you have to make good use of them. You need to create a good understanding between the government and the regulator, there has to be accomplishes in a positive way to aim for the same, and that can be done, then, the players will be obliged to follow. Broadband technology is accessible by fibre optic but you have wireless broadband as well and these technologies are there. In 2007, when we organized the last World Radio Conference, we set-up enough bandwidth structure for the wireless technologies that will serve the world for the next 30 years. Last time we had World Radio Conference that made changes to the radio allocation was in 1947, those allocations lasted 60 years. We are advancing now and I can safely say that the 2007 resolution will go along way to address wireless bandwidth challenges for the next 30 years.
Number Portability
Number portability should not be decided by decree, it is just like rules on interconnect rate, you cannot decree them. What you can do is to analyze them and the market. When the market reaches some maturity point or stagnation, then you take some regulatory decision to solve that. I think Number Portability is one of the next things that NCC will deal with, because of the level of maturity, the moment you reach 50% of penetration the remaining 50% are lower users. What will happen is that competition will not focus on new customers but the services and application the operators are giving to them. Therefore, in order to boost that competition, Number Portability will be one key catalyst to oblige operators to give those new services and applications, because if they don’t, as number portability is available their customers will go else where. That is a natural thing that will come, and again market forces will dictate that.
UN on People with Disability and Telecom services
In this convention the task of ITU is specific in ensuring that the same principle of having people on wheel chairs, having arms chairs where they can move on are applied in Information and Communications Technology. Last year 2008, the theme for May 17 which is anniversary of ITU and also World Information Society day, was giving telecommunications access to people with disabilities. It is something that is embedded in the works of the Union. We have many organizations that are doing work on that, to ensure that manufacturers are giving the right tools for people with disabilities. We have demonstrated this over the years with so many new tools and applications that can help people with disabilities use telecommunications services. We have demonstrated this last year in Cairo, Egypt during our telecom event; where a paralyzed man who the only thing that can move in his body is his head. He was able to use ICT tools to communicate more. By moving his jaw and his head he could click, there are some cameras that were mounted at him as well as software installed in the system that enables him to communicate. Now he is much more free man. He does not depend on anybody to do some things for him; he sends email to his daughter in Italy. He can dial a phone number and sends a message that can be transcribed immediately into voice. Those are things that are happening and we hope that ICT equipment manufacturers will continue to improve on that. That convention was very key to help us deliver information and communications technology to people with disabilities around the world.
Encouraging IT Development
You need to ensure that you have taxes that are very friendly for those who want to import Information and Communications Technology equipment. Nigeria been a large country is a potential big market. Nigeria is strong enough to create demand where manufacturers can site a factory here that will serve not only Nigeria but other West African market, where we have free movement of people and goods. We need to put strategies together that will attract manufacturing industries here and having a local consumer base is already a big plus, as opposed to smaller countries with less than 10 million people, such markets are small to attract manufacturing companies. Here you have that capability, and you have to use that potential in order to attract manufacturing industries here. With the right vision of leadership those things can be realized. When you have manufacturing industries based here, you create jobs and Universities will be much more involved because research and development need to bring public and private sectors together, and therefore we can apply some of our capabilities. When you train people from developing countries in one single skill such as in software development you have solved a lot of problems, in our daily life in developing world, all we do is survive problems. What is software about? Software is about finding solution to problems. If we train our people in software development they will be more innovating than someone who wakes up just put his hands on the tape and water comes, and press a button light comes. On a daily basis we are fighting for survival and therefore we are coming with solutions and are more innovative when we can come up with new software that nobody could dream of. Therefore, there are immense potential in this continent and in the developing world in general.
The Forthcoming Telecom World 2009
One of the reasons I’m in Nigeria is to gather support for this event which is coming up between October 5 and 9. ITU Telecom World 2009 brings together the most influential representatives of government and information and communications technology (ICT) industry to exchange ideas, knowledge and technology for the benefit of the global community, and in particular the developing world.
From broadband Internet to latest-generation in wireless technologies, from aeronautical and maritime navigation to radio astronomy and satellite-based meteorology, from convergence in fixed-mobile phone, Internet access, data, voice and TV broadcasting to next-generation networks. ITU is committed to connecting the world.
This event will be a major milestone in addressing the issue of broadband access, and is seen as an important industry event for the developing world, providing an opportunity to benchmark local ICT sectors in terms of policy, regulation, and infrastructure development. It also enables the showcasing of local ICT, and represents an invaluable opportunity to attract inward investment and seek opportunities to engage with ICT companies from the developed world.
ITU Telecom World 2009 is a wide and open network that brings together all the players in the ICT sector. Attendance at this event is the best way to learn about new developments and future plans.