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The name of the new secretary general of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) will be known on Thursday, at noon, said Sabin Sarmas, the president of the event, on the sidelines of the Plenipotentiary Conference (PP-22) of the ITU in Bucharest.
"The first week is about the elections. There will be policy statements (...) after which, in the second week, after we have the elections that start on Thursday and end on Monday, the way of working on the resolutions will be intensified. We will know the name of the secretary general (of the ITU, ed. n.) on Thursday, at noon. Afterwards, the other four officials are elected. All 193 ITU member countries vote. The majority decides, and the one with the fewest votes leaves the competition. Regarding the discussion topics, each country comes up with proposals. However, there are some important things: Internet governance - how it should look, how free and how regulated, then cyber security, artificial intelligence, OTTs, i.e. services like WhatsApp or YouTube - from the perspective of some telecommunications companies, those who have such services should pay, because they use the telecommunications structure without paying anything. There are other countries that say that it is not good to do this and to keep things as they are. There are things that are negotiated a lot," Sarmas explained.
"Another new topic, but one that arouses great interest, is related to how we use technology in moments of crisis - pandemic, war. Romania worked within the European group on many of these proposals, it does not have a proposal itself. It contributed to over ten proposals. The vast majority of the specialists who worked are from ANCOM (National Authority for Administration and Regulation in Communications, ed. n.) and contributed to Europe's proposals. In general, the proposals come from the regions," stated the president of the PP conference -22 of ITU.
The Romanian official also mentioned that the private sector in Romania can build a solid business through the relationship it could have with the International Telecommunication Union.
The international conference will have one of the most important topics on the agenda, namely the election of the five high officials of the ITU: the secretary general, the deputy secretary general and the directors of the offices of radiocommunications, standardization in telecommunications and development of telecommunications - who will guide the organization's activity in the next four years.
Thus, once the mandate of the current general secretary of the ITU, Houlin Zhao, expires, according to the organization's regulations, new elections must be organized, and two people have submitted their candidacy for this position: Doreen Bogdan Martin from the USA and Rashid Ismailov from the Russian Federation.AGERPRES
