International Telecommunication Union (ITU) TELECOM WORLD 2006 was successfully held at the AsiaWorld Expo, Chek Lap Kok in Hong Kong in December 2006. The event attracted some 62,000 visitors including many industry - leading CEOs, government regulators, and telecommunications ministers to Hong Kong.

Event participants included Alcatel-Lucent Technologies, AT&T, China Mobile, China Netcom, Microsoft, Motorola, Samsung, Siemens, Toshiba, Verizon, and many more.

Officiating guests at the opening ceremony were Mr. Wu Bangguo, Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress; Professor Muhammad Yunus, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and Founder of Grameen Bank in Bangladesh; Mr. Donald Tsang, Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, and Yoshio Utsumi, Secretary-General of the ITU.

Welcoming the guests at the opening ceremony, Mr. Tsang said Hong Kong was extremely honored to host ITU TELECOM WORLD 2006 and that the honor was amplified because it was the first TELECOM WORLD ever held outside Geneva.

“This prestigious international mega-event bears special significance for us,” said Mr. Tsang. “It is one of the largest trade shows ever held in Hong Kong. It brings not only tremendous economic benefit to Hong Kong and Mainland China, but also new business opportunities.”

“It underlines Hong Kong’s unique position as a global hub for information and communications technology (ICT). It reinforces our position as an international events capital, a leading digital city and Asia’s world city,” he continued.

Mr. Tsang noted the sophisticated ICT infrastructure in Hong Kong, including broadband networks covering virtually all commercial and residential buildings, with a household penetration rate of 67%. Three quarters of those families can choose between two or more broadband networks; and the 3G broadband mobile networks are being upgraded to 3.5G standard.

The event comprised of two parts: a world-class exhibition and a high level forum. The exhibition enabled industry players to showcase their latest equipment, services or technologies, while the forum provided a platform for industry players, users and senior government officials to debate critical issues in policies and regulations, key technologies, business applications and environment.

At the opening session of the ITU TELECOM WORLD 2006 Forum, the Financial Secretary, Mr. Henry Tang called on public policymakers to create favorable and safe environment to allow the brains in the community to absorb as much knowledge as they can and innovate in the digital world.

Mr. Tang shared his views on the roles of governments in the digital world with top world leaders in the ICT industry.

“Digitalization changed the way information is processed, stored, transferred and presented, immensely improving the efficiency of such activities,” said Mr. Tang.

“Together with the expanding reach of the Internet and the increasing amount of content being made available on this platform, it has become far easier for people or businesses from all over the world to obtain and disseminate information.

“But information has to be processed and internalized before it becomes knowledge. And it is the knowledge possessed by individuals or companies that would provide a competitive edge in the digital world.”

To ensure the digital world was open to all, Mr. Tang pointed out that the governments had the responsibility to reduce the “digital divide” in a modern society.

Mr. Tang said that as well as providing additional hardware facilities to the less privileged segment of a community, investments by governments in education and training was absolutely necessary to tackle the issue through enhancing ICT adoption and knowledge building.

On protection of intellectual property rights, Mr. Tang said another important role of government was to create robust intellectual property rights regimes to preserve the value of knowledge and protect the information goods produced by the knowledge-based industries.

Mr. Tang told forum participants that the Hong Kong Government fully recognized this responsibility and had set up teams in the law enforcement agencies dedicated to tackling piracy on the Internet through round-the-clock monitoring.

He also called on governments and law enforcement agencies all over the world to join hands to protect information goods in the digital world.