Portugal is a candidate to the International Telecommunication Union Councilhttp://www.itu.int/council/ (ITU), during the 16th Plenipotentiary Conference, a meeting held every four years pertaining to this specialized agency of the United Nations, which begins today and lasts until 18 October, in Marrakesh, Morocco.
The election to become a Member of the Council, currently composed of 46 Members corresponding to 1/4 of the Member States, takes place in the Plenipotentiary Conferencehttp://www.itu.int/aboutitu/overview/conferences.html, ITUhttps://www.itu.int/en/Pages/default.aspx supreme authority, aiming at ensuring international cooperation in regulation, standardization and development of telecommunications, including management of the spectrum and satellites orbits. ITU is currently composed of 189 Member States plus 650 entitieshttp://www.itu.int/members/index.html with interests in the telecommunications sector, namely manufacturers and operators.
Since 1994 Portugal is a member of ITU Council, which acts as a supreme authority between Plenipotentiary Conferences. The Council has as main function to ensure that ITU activities, policies and strategies meet what is defined in the Conference, being also responsible for ensuring the daily management and the good operation of ITU at operational, financial and administrative level.
According to ITU itself, the 2002 Plenipotentiary Conferencehttp://www.itu.int/plenipotentiary/index.html (PP02) takes place in an environment of crises of the telecommunications confidence but, although time is difficult for equipment manufacturers and suppliers, it is positive for consumers who are facing increasingly lower prices, new services and a wide range of operators.
However, under this context, ITU needs to convey the belief that there is a sound future for the sector at long term, existing here the possibility of carrying on more radical reforms within the organization and its policies, orienting its objectives to the extension of the benefits of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) to the developing countries.
The reform of the Organization is a PP-02 core concern since over the last years the sector has been changing in terms of the "property regimes", which increasingly value the regulators and the representatives from the private sector, or with the technical nature of the sector which constant evolution increases every year ITU scope of action.
Portugal is represented in this Plenipotentiary Conference by an ICP-ANACOM delegation, headed by a Member of the Board of Directors - Mr Saraiva Mendes - with the presence of PT Group representatives (to which belong national companies that hold the statute of ITU Sectors Memberhttp://www.itu.int/cgi-bin/htsh/mm/scripts/mm.list?_search=SEC&_languageid=1).
Permanent updated information about PP02 sessions is available at the Newsroomhttp://www.itu.int/newsroom/pp02/index.html of the Conference.
