HRH Crown Prince Tupouto’a attends ITU TELECOM WORLD 2016 in Bangkok ^Featured

His attendance was due to a personal invitation from the Secretary General of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) Mr. Houlin Zhao and was the highlight of the highest level participation event.

Crown Prince Tupouto’a told participants consisted of both public and private sectors across the ICT industry around the world that Tonga was the first country in the Pacific to open its telecommunications market in 2002.

“As first in the Pacific Island Countries, Tonga liberalised its telecommunications market in 2002 by introducing competition, following a major review to the sector in the late 1990s, which saw the enactment of Communications Act 2000 that governs the development of the sector,” he said.

“Within short, benefits were realised especially with much lower competitive tariffs and improvement in services provided throughout Tonga.”

Crown Prince Tupouto’a stated that the Government of Tonga remains as the largest business and economic player in the economy.

“Like some other countries, Tongan government is still the largest business and economic player in the economy and provision of its e-Government strategy proactively nurture the development of such sector.”

“The leveraging of ICT and e-Government is an important vehicle that will allow Tonga’s economy to diversify and embrace knowledge economy based sectors whilst at the same time strengthening the traditional industries of tourism, agriculture and fisheries.”

He said measures have been introduced to leverage the implementation of the e-Government programs through the establishment of easy accessible and affordable Internet Cafes and Internet Centres in rural communities and outer islands.

Crown Prince Tupouto’a also explained that such measures included the “Design and maintain programs to get Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and micro-enterprises online, complemented by the roll out of broadband to the rural community to stimulate the e-Commerce outreach of the agriculture and craft sectors respectively.”

“Revised regulatory and legislative measures have recently been introduced with the approval of both the Communications Act 2015 and Communications Commission Act 2015, in simplifying licensing requirements and increasing transparency around processes, establishing comprehensive competition regime, strengthening interconnection and access regime to enhance certainty, strengthened consumer protection as well as measures to provide greater public confidence that negative impacts of faster broadband speeds can be addressed by enhancing existing laws of cybercrime.”

He noted that it was the responsibility of good leadership to implement such policies to govern the use and access of technology for the welfare of individual nations.

The ITU Telecom World was an annual event that provides unique opportunity to meet, network, and share knowledge with a unique and influential global audience.

The Crown Prince courtesy call with the ITU Secretary General, Mr. Haulin Zhao confirmed ITU’s efforts and commitment to connect countries around the world through its activities. With the ITU activities, Tonga is among the Pacific Island countries being awarded with V-Sat under the Pacific Connectivity Project to foster rural areas accessibility as well as using it as mean of communication for disaster. Two high schools computer labs are to be equipped with laptops from the ITU under its activity.

The Crown Prince also met with H.E Mr Elmir Tofig oblu Velizadeh of the Republic of Azerbaijan and discussions were made to establish an ICT relation between the two countries where an invitation to visit Azerbaijan was accorded to the Crown Prince.

HRH Princess Maha Chaki Sirindhorn of the Kingdom of Thailand officially opened the conference on Monday this week.

-MEIDECC