TRA Director General participates in the Broadband Commission meeting in New York

Mobilk - The Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA), represented by its Director General, H.E. Hamad Obaid Al Mansoori, participated in the annual meeting of the Broadband Commission held in New York City, USA. He delivered a speech at the meeting, addressing a number of important issues in ICT such as the challenges of organizing the sector, future policies and regulations, and the UAE role in this field. H.E. also invited the audience to attend the ITU PP-18, which will be held in Dubai from 29 October to 16 November 2018.

At the meeting, the Commission discussed the most important issues and developments in ICT, and the progress with regard to the seven goals set by the Commission for achieving sustainable development by 2025, which are based on worldwide broadband deployment, achieving gender equality and increasing the number of broadband users.

During his participation, H.E. Hamad Obaid Al Mansoori noted the great role played by the Broadband Commission as an important platform for the global telecommunications sector, where he said: "The spread of broadband is of great benefit to all countries and nations, as it effectively helps in increasing learning opportunities, sharing knowledge and information among all peoples, and plays a significant role in the equality of races and nationalities. The spread of broadband will result in better living opportunities for both genders by giving them the skills to take on new jobs, hence the importance of the role played by the Broadband Commission in the happiness of humanity and improving the standard of living of various nations of the world."

H.E. indicated that the high level of ambitions in ICT regulation has led to more challenges, saying: "We aspire for all nations to have the best ICT technologies, but these aspirations cannot be achieved if we do not find solutions to a number of obstacles and challenges, the most important of which is the provision of the necessary infrastructure for the deployment of ICTs, in addition to providing the human resources capable of handling and operating them, and raising cybersecurity awareness. These and other challenges require us to work hard to achieve the seven goals set by the Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development by 2025."

H.E. underscored the great role played by the UAE in ICT promotion by adopting the best policies and practices in this field and its continued support to the least developed countries in the region. "Thanks to the great efforts made by the UAE, the country has been able to become a world leader in ICT, where the global competitiveness indicators in the telecommunications sector have recently shown UAEs advance to the first place globally in mobile broadband subscriptions, percentage of population benefiting from coverage of telephone networks, as well as percentage of population benefiting from coverage of data networks (3G services and above). The UAE was also ranked second globally in mobile subscription rate, and in striving to continue to excel, the UAE pursues its efforts to support the least developed countries materially and logistically."

H.E. emphasized the readiness of the UAE to host the Plenipotentiary Conference or PP, saying: "Today, the UAE has the qualified manpower and advanced infrastructure to successfully host the worlds largest events. We are now finalizing the preparations for hosting the PP, and we are confident that we are can achieve the best results."

Broadband, meaning increased bandwidth, is a technology solution to increase Internet speed, enabling organizations to deliver innovative services based on the mass influx of qualitative and quantitative information generated by applying such band. Furthermore, it contributes effectively to the foundations of smart transformation, especially in ambitious UAE projects such as Big Data, smart buildings, Internet of Things, and others.

The General Authority for Regulating the Telecommunications Sector of the United Arab Emirates issues regulations for the Information and Communication Technology Sector to promote the national knowledge-based economy. The development of this sector directly supports the social and economic growth, which corresponds to UAE Vision 2021.