Interviews with ITU’s next top elected officials: Chaesub Lee

High-quality standards, delivered using an efficient standardization process, supporting ICT growth and innovation across a wide range of industry sectors – this is the ultimate aim of ITU standardization, says Chaesub Lee of the Republic of Korea, who was just re-elected as Director of the ITU Telecommunication Standardization Bureau (TSB).

Achieving this aim, says Dr Lee, will support ITU in connecting the unconnected and building trust in ICT, two objectives Dr Lee sees as fundamental to the fulfillment of ITU’s mission as an organization.

“Our connected life should be safe and trustworthy,” says Dr Lee in a video interview following his re-election at the ITU Plenipotentiary Conference in Dubai.

This will call for ITU standards to address the needs of a widening array of ICT applications.

ICTs are enabling innovation in financial services, energy, transport, healthcare and smart cities, and Artificial Intelligence is coming to have a “tremendous influence over all of our societies,” says Dr Lee.

The ITU membership provides the “energy for operating ITU,” says Dr Lee, motivating him to ask: “how we can extend our membership to bring up new areas, a new atmosphere, new subjects, new applications of ICTs?”

This question points to the accelerating evolution of ITU membership, evolution that reflects the expanding influence of ICTs across our societies and economies.

ITU’s standardization arm (ITU-T) has welcomed 44 new members in 2018, including mobile virtual network operators and enablers (MVNOs and MVNEs), over-the-top (OTT) service providers, manufacturers of unmanned aerial vehicles, telematics and automotive companies, energy utilities, and companies specializing in quantum cryptography and quantum communications.

Welcoming new communities to the ITU membership will be essential to the achievement of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, highlights Dr Lee. “As a UN agency, this is a very important responsibility … innovation by ICTs has a tremendous impact.”

Watch the video interview to learn more about Chaesub Lee’s priorities for the work of TSB.