TRA host ITU Secretary General Dr Hamadoun Touré

The Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) hosted Dr Hamadoun I. Touré, Secretary-General of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) on Sunday September 20^th, 2012, at its Dubai offices ahead of the three milestone ITU events set to take place in the UAE in the coming months. 

H.E. Mohamed Nasser Al Ghanim, Director General of the TRA, and H.E. Dr. Abdulqader Al Khayat, Chairman of the Higher Committee entrusted with hosting the ITU Events, met with Dr. Toure to discuss the progress of preparations before meeting with members of the media for a briefing. 

The first event will be the ITU Telecom World 2012, the leading platform for the global ICT community to connect, debate, network and share knowledge. Key stakeholders from across the entire industry ecosystem will come together in Dubai’s World Trade Center from 14 -18 October to harness the power of ICTs to create real change. 

This will be followed by the World Telecommunication Standardization Assembly (WTSA) from 20-29 November, which is held every four years at a country level to discuss issues relating to international telecommunications standards. A one-day Global Standards Symposium (GSS) will be held on the 19^th of November and will be dedicated to the private sector. 

The final event will be the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) held from 3-14 December 2012. This landmark conference will review the current International Telecommunications Regulations (ITRs), which serve as the binding global treaty outlining the principles which govern the way international voice, data and video traffic is handled, and which lay the foundation for ongoing innovation and market growth. The ITRs were last negotiated in Melbourne, Australia in 1988, and there is broad consensus that the text now needs to be updated to reflect the dramatically different information and communication technology (ICT) landscape of the 21st century. 

Through the TRA, the UAE has taken a leading role in the world telecommunications scene, and the hosting the three key ITU events and the UAE’s status as world telecoms capital for Q4 2012 was the crowning achievement for that effort. Regionally, the UAE has led and coordinated the joint Arab nations’ proposals to be presented during the ITU event. The TRA has also overseen the UAE’s ascendance to the pinnacle of the regional telecommunications industry. 

The ITU is the United Nations specialized agency for information and communication technologies – ICTs, and Dr. Touré’s, a long-standing champion of ICTs as a driver of social and economic development, is committed to the ITU’s mission of connecting the world, and to helping achieve the Millennium Development Goals through harnessing the unique potential of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs).