Hamadoun Touré: Telecom World will bring together at least 30 heads of states, many more ministers and 400 C-level industry heads

Hamadoun Touré is excited that the International Telecommunication Union, which he leads, is bringing its big conference back to Geneva this year.
But he is warning Geneva's hotel owners not to exploit the industry's executives when they arrive in October 2009 for what should be the biggest exhibition and conference in the telecoms industry.
Touré, secretary general of the ITU, told Global Telecoms Business that his organisation — an agency of the United Nations — took away the ITU Telecom conference from Geneva after the 2003 event "because it was too expensive".
Hotel owners were demanding delegates book for extended periods, and prices were high. The ITU moved the conference in protest in 2006 to Hong Kong in south-east Asia.
Now, he's hoping the city of Geneva — where the ITU has been based for more than 50 years — has learned its lesson. "We have made a very good deal with Geneva," he says. "There will be no minimum stays."
Nevertheless Touré has reduced his expectation of delegate numbers for the ITU Telecom event. Around 170,000 came to the biggest ever ITU show, held in Geneva in 1999, before the dotcom bubble burst.
The organisation recorded just over 100,000 visitors across the seven days of the 2003 event, with a peak of 18,200 on the middle day, and three years later the Hong Kong event was down again, at 62,000.
Touré was speaking to GTB at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, where numbers were also down on previous years. At the close of the last day, the GSM Association reported 47,000 visitors over the four days, including delegates, exhibitors, contractors and media — compared with almost 55,000 in 2008, a fall of 14.5%.
Given the economic crisis, he's cautious about giving numbers for the return to Geneva of Telecom World, the ITU's brand-name for its big event, held so close to the airport that some delegates never get any further into the city.
"Telecom World will bring together at least 30 heads of states, many more ministers and as many as 400 C-level industry heads," says Touré.
Among those taking part will be Ban Ki-moon, the secretary general of the United Nations.
"We can't predict exactly how many people will come to Geneva. Clearly the global financial climate will limit people's ability to travel."
And Telecom World, which takes place on October 5-9 2009, will be competing with a number of other big events in the September-October conference season. The International Engineering Consortium is bringing its Broadband World Forum to Paris — a conference more than an exhibition — on September 7-9.
More seriously for the ITU, the US telecoms industry has just moved its Supercomm event, formerly booked for June, to October 21-23, barely two weeks after the global caravan of delegates, speakers and exhibitors is due in Geneva.
"Telecom World will offer a unique global public-private platform to brainstorm strategies to smooth the road to recovery from the current financial crisis and thus we expect a very high calibre of attendees," says Touré.
Given the experience of Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, he is being realistic about the numbers, though. "We are predicting lower numbers." But he notes that MWC attracted "more ministers than ever before" and he is hoping for the same level of top politicians in Geneva in October.
Among the heads of state and government he hopes to attract a significant number from the G8 leading economies, he says, "and from the Bric countries — Brazil, Russia, India and China — and South Africa and other developing countries, so we can have the CEOs and the policymakers to brainstorm ways out from the crisis."
Because of his position at the head of the oldest UN institution — founded in the 19th century, long before the UN itself — Touré has superb access to political and industry leaders. How does he see their response to the global crisis?
"I'm sitting between the two, governments and the private sector," he agrees, "and I myself have worked in both sides, government and the private sector. I know that the two can work together — and they are working together. The rules are different but the have complementary roles."
What are industry leaders telling him about the crisis, that they're not necessarily telling the rest of us?
"Our industry is less affected than others," says Touré. There was the dotcom crash in 2001-02, and he feels that "you never see the same crisis happening twice in less than a decade in the same industry. It's simply not possible."
There is still growing demand for telecommunications, he points out: for mobile services in developing countries, in particular. "The penetration of subscribers is about 13% now as opposed to countries like Finland where it's over 100%. You don't expect in Finland an increase in subscribers. You don't expect a big demand in handsets. Normal handset demand will go down in developed countries, while it will still go up in the developing world. I think the market will continue to adjust itself."
It's a matter of appetite, he smiles: "The more you eat, the more you want. The more you use a mobile, the more you want. The more you find new applications, the more you want."
Communications is a natural behaviour, "just like breathing": it will always be there.
But operators still need finance in order to build infrastructure, and thanks to the financial crisis banks are less willing to provide finance. Touré disagrees: banks are willing to provide finance, he says, because even with ARPU of $1 operators can make money in emerging markets. "There are still profit margins that are there. The area is still profit-making, so banks will have less risk when they invest in operators."
The doubt, he says, is whether operators are confident enough to continue to invest: it is a matter of confidence. That's one of the reasons the ITU is now publishing regular forecasts of the industry's progress, he says: the next is due in April 2009, and there will be a further report in October at the time of the ITU conference in Geneva.
These show "you need to invest in innovation, you need to invest in infrastructure, you need to invest in capacity building", says Touré. "Those three will continue to be areas of interest."
But how do you get the right environment for that? "That's what I'm discussing with industry leaders, with governments, to see what we can do together," says Touré.
How are regulators helping? "I don't want to call them regulators. They can be a catalyst. Good regulation will encourage investment and bad regulation will actively discourage investment."
At meetings at MWC he was told of clear examples of countries where telecoms is growing strongly, he says: China, India, Brazil and Nigeria, just to name four. "There are two countries where there has not been growth. There has been a slowdown in Pakistan and Bangladesh. Operators were telling me about the effects of taxation." That's taxation on terminals and even on activating SIM cards, he says. That doesn't help the market, he says: "I intend to contact the minister in Pakistan. We have the opportunity to work with governments and the private sector and bring them together, and analyse things together to find the right solution."
The goal is to stimulate the market, and "sometimes countries don't understand that by reducing tax by half you can still have the same revenue — you get more business".
This is familiar territory for Touré: several years ago, when he headed the ITU's development arm, before he was secretary general, he organised a conference on taxation on information and communications technology. "We sent a report to the governments that taxation on ICT was not good for the industry — tax on computers, on laptops, on cellphones, is not good. Of course governments need a minimum tax in order to operate universal service and those things."
But the value that governments get when their citizens have access communications and computers "is much higher than the monetary value of the tax — governments need to understand that".
He bounds with confidence in the industry and the contribution it can make: "Our industry still makes money, including in developing countries. The Orange group made its highest profit last year in Senegal and Mali — and they are in how many countries around the world?" And in Senegal penetration is still only 30% "so they have a lot of room to grow".
Meanwhile "Nigeria has had the highest growth in the world, and that wouldn't have happened if there weren't proper regulation there. It's as simple as that."
So he sees the crisis as an opportunity for telecoms. "Given the growth potential, we still can create new jobs." GTB