The Broadband Commission for Digital Development has named eight new Commissioners drawn from technology leaders and development champions from around the world. These new Commissioners join a select group of over 50 global leaders who are putting broadband at the very centre of their organisational vision.
The new Commissioners are: Dr Hessa Al-Jaber, Secretary-General, ictQATAR; Sheikh Abdullah Bin Mohammed Bin Saud Al-Thani, Chairman, Qtel; Dr Saad Bin Dhafer Al Qahtani, Group CEO for Strategic Operations, Saudi Telecom Corporation; Vanu Bose, CEO, Vanu Inc; Innocenti Botti, President, Invitalia; H E Jasna Matić, State Secretary for Digital Agenda, Serbia; Dr Armen Orujyan, Founder & Chairman, Athgo Corporation; and Jean-Louis Schiltz, legal counsel, Schiltz & Schiltz and former Minister for Communications, Luxembourg.
Said Dr Hamadoun Toure, ITU Secretary-General and Co-Vice Chair of the Commission: “The Broadband Commission is delighted to welcome these global leaders, who will use their talents and their considerable expertise to add fresh impetus to our mission to spread the word about the importance of broadband.’
Commission members comprise a high-powered international community, including prominent CEOs, top-level policy-makers and government representatives, heads of international agencies, and senior figures from academia and organisations with a development mandate. Leaders in their fields, they each believe strongly in a future based on broadband, and are working to drive the issue to the top of the political and development agenda worldwide.
The Commission was launched at ITU headquarters in Geneva in May 2010 in response to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon’s call to step up UN efforts to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). It is co-chaired by President Paul Kagame of Rwanda and Carlos Slim Helu, President of the Carlos Slim Foundation, with ITU Secretary-General Dr Hamadoun Toure and UNESCO Director-General, Ms Irina Bokova, serving as joint vice chairs.
At its fourth meeting, held in Geneva last October, Commissioners agreed on a set of four “ambitious but achievable’ targets that countries around the world should strive to meet in order to ensure their populations fully participate in tomorrow’s emerging knowledge societies.
They also launched a “Broadband Challenge’ that recognises communication as “a human need and a right’, and calls on governments and private industry to work together to develop the innovative policy frameworks, business models and financing arrangements needed to facilitate growth in access to broadband worldwide.
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