Call for universal broadband at Spain’s mobile summit

ISLAMABAD: Universal broadband is a target that can be achieved through public-private partnerships to promote greater digital, social and financial inclusion in the developing world, the chief executive officer of Etisalat Group said.
A statement issued by the Pakistan Telecommunications Limited quoted Ahmad Julfar as saying in a speech in Barcelona, Spain that public internet needs to evolve further, which requires investment in capacity, new solutions, technologies and innovative business models.
The telco sector will not be able to drive this alone, as it faces the risk of a big disruption due to the shifts across the value chain, he added.
Julfar was addressing an audience of some of the world’s leading figures in telecommunications at Mobile World Summit, the premier event of the ongoing 2015 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
Julfar also holds the position of vice chair of the GSMA, which organises the annual congress and unites over 800 telecom operators and over 250 companies that operate in the broader mobile ecosystem.
“Etisalat believes that access to broadband is a basic right for everyone,” he went on to say. “But providing universal access to broadband poses a challenge for telcos because network investments not only have long payback periods, and capex on infrastructure today yields diminishing returns.”
Julfar said that “new investment models based on semi-public funding from governments or infrastructure-sharing models defined by regulators are urgently needed and should be encouraged.”
Julfar said “the benefits of increasing connectivity are clear to see in the economic, social and environmental fields, but there is a clear digital gap. Some 60 percent of the world’s population remains unconnected, the majority of which is in rural areas of the developing world.”
By 2020, approximately 3.8 billion men and women, or half of the world’s population, will be connected to the internet via mobile, and a vast majority of the new users will be in developing countries.
“Telecommunications revolutionises everything we do; it is the industry that changes all other industries. Governments know it. That’s why, over the past 10 years, more than 150 governments have developed or are developing national broadband networks,” Julfar said. “And we share a common interest to keep investing in the future internet,” the press release quoted him as saying.