Your strategic partner in leveraging sustainable digital opportunities

The objectives of the project included analysing 22 countries in the Arab Region - identifying gaps within the ICT ecosystem and aligning those gaps with the 10 thematic priority areas identified by the ITU. The project provided the Arab Regional Office of the ITU with an overview of needs at both national and regional levels to support the future programming and help in developing a dynamic digital economy in the Arab Region.

Set up a COVID-19 industry support programme for the Telecommunication Development Bureau of the International Telecommunication Union. It included a launch (in less than a week) of the Global Network Resiliency Platform (REG4COVID) to enable policy makers, regulators and industry to exchange experiences in keeping networks resilient and services available. With support from Saudi Arabia and Japan, ITU also launched the Connect2Recover initiative to reinforce national digital infrastructures in the wake of COVID-19.    

Provided broad policy support to the Vanuatu Government. Resulting National ICT Policy was regarded as “a genuinely historic achievement” (Pacific Institute of Public Policy). The country’s first submarine cable led to 70% decrease in Internet prices within less than a year. A revised Universal Access Policy helped achieve 98.8% of the total population coverage. Support contributed to Vanuatu winning a prestigious United Nations and International Telecommunication Union “Award for ICTs in Sustainable Development.”

Supported the Vietnamese Government in the evaluation of its e-Government and ICT policies and actual development, through in-country research and interviews with senior officials, including Deputy Prime Minister. A Road Map for Change Management and a Project Concept Document were produced. This effort paved the way to an $80 million assistance package to address Government’s needs in telecommunications, G2G and G2C information flow, as well as other ICT and associated human capacity development requirements.

Managed a $10.6 million USAID-funded strategy, organization and management effort to establish a national telecom policy, identify FDI opportunities, research the rural telecoms penetration plan, establish a competition policy, devise privatization options, set up a national regulatory agency, and provide training to the staff. This effort also involved an analysis of the IT needs of the national telecommunications operator and developing an outline of the laws required to modernize the telecommunications sector.

Through interaction with regulatory and other public authorities cleared regulatory and public policy obstacles to the launch of VEON Personal Internet Platform (integrating messaging, content, marketplace and self-care for telecommunications consumers) and a number of global business transformation projects across the group’s footprint in Europe, North Africa, Central as well as South Asia. Also developed a group-wide digital policy strategy (including on data protection, cybersecurity, digital financial services).

Supported the adoption at the ITU Plenipotentiary Conference 2014 of Connect 2020 Agenda, the first inter-governmentally agreed agenda with tangible targets on the global development of information and communication technologies, with more than 100 countries setting out their commitments. At the same time, spearheaded the development of the ITU Strategic Plan for 2016-2019 with the ITU’s Independent Management Advisory Committee (IMAC) “express[ing] its support for the excellent and innovative approaches adopted”.