The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) opened this week at the Kigali Convention Centre in Rwanda, located in East Africa, with a representative from NATE, Jesse Petrilla, President of Petrilla Technologies, in attendance. Petrilla was named to the U.S. Department of State’s International Telecommunications Advisory Committee in December of 2019, and is NATE’s Wireless Industry Network Pacific Region Ambassador.
Petrilla said he was present at a segment of the event where nations and companies are making various pledges to help connect the unconnected. He said he learned from the various delegations about the challenges to overcome bringing meaningful connectivity to the 2.9 billion people currently without access to the internet. Interest in NATE was high, according to Petrilla, as he heard repeatedly that tower crews in Africa are definitely in need of training.
Taking place over a two-week span, the conference focuses on negotiations and remedies to accelerate global digital development. The ITU conference will produce a globally agreed Declaration and Action Plan for Connecting the Unconnected to Achieve Sustainable Development.
Running between June 6 and 16, the goal of the conference is to draw up a roadmap for harnessing digital technologies to drive socio-economic development and re-energize progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set by the UN for 2030.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres, addressing more than 1,000 delegates present at the opening ceremony via video message, said: “The potential of digital technologies to help us make up lost ground in our efforts to achieve the 17 SDGs is tremendous. But so too are the challenges. Over one third of humanity still has no access to the internet…Your task is to map out a new Action Plan to bring the nearly three billion unconnected people into our global digital community, because leaving no-one behind means leaving no one offline.”
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