Delegates from 130 countries converged upon Hyderabad, India May 24th-June 4th to help shape the global vision and strategy for ICT development for the next four years.
Delegates from 130 countries converged upon Hyderabad, India May 24th-June 4th to help shape the global vision and strategy for ICT development for the next four years. Qatar's voice was very much heard as ictQATAR Secretary General, Dr. Hessa Al-Jaber lead a full delegation to the International Telecommunication Union's fifth World Telecom Development Conference 2010 (WTDC 2010).Shortly after the conference, the Hyderabad Action Plan will be issued, reflecting the shared vision of the delegates for ICT development. Al-Jaber delivered Qatar's High Level Policy Statement to the gathered delegates, highlighting the areas of focus for Qatar in advancing ICT. She started by discussing the importance of the last WTDC in developing Qatar's strategy, which was held in Doha in 2006. "We were able to learn from the experiences of other member states and based on their guidance and the Doha Declaration, Qatar focused its efforts in four broad areas: creating a legal and institutional environment; enabling an attractive market environment; building an advanced ICT infrastructure, and establishing a good skills and human resource-based environment." said Dr. Hessa. Qatar's primary focus at first was to build a supportive legal and institutional environment that promotes private sector participation, investment and competition, said Al-Jaber. "We adopted policies and regulations that are designed to increase investment in the sector and encourage the introduction of leading edge technologies." Stressing the crucial role of an attractive market environment in Qatar, Dr. Al-Jaber explained the equally important contribution of supply and demand. "Demand attracts investment, spurs entrepreneurship, and promotes creativity and innovation, such as the development of locally relevant content. Creating demand is also critical to support large scale investments, such as a next generation broadband network. As our market continues to grow and become more sophisticated, so does the demand for advanced information and communication technologies." Following her High Level Policy Statement, Dr. Hessa Al-Jaber was interviewed by the WTDC Media Team as one of the key high-level dignitaries at the Conference. In her interview Al-Jaber reflected of ICANN's recent approval of Qatar's Arabic Internet Domain name (.qa). "I believe it's a decision that's going to bring along a great feeling of belonging to many Qatari youth, re-enhance the Arab values that we constantly feel keen to remind them of and establish the understanding that technology can nevertheless be equated with Arabic language, as opposed to solely English." Arab e-content was also among the highlights of the interview, with Al-Jaber explaining the large discrepancy between the percentage of Arabic Internet users and Arabic content creators. Seeing the solution as a two-fold approach, Al-Jaber stressed the importance of both government intervention and encouraging Arab end users to create their own content. ictQATAR live tweeted from the Hyderabad International Convention Center where the conference took place. Check out the live tweets at: www.twitter.com/ictQATAR. The event's tweets were at the hashtag: #wtdc. Interviews with seven key speakers at WTDC will soon be available on ictQATAR's YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/ictQATAR
