Anusha nominated as candidate for ITU Director

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has nominated former Minister of State for Information Technology & Telecommunication, Anusha Rehman, as a unanimous candidate for the post of Director in the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) Elections 2022.

The Prime Minister’s Office and the Ministry of Information Technology & Telecommunication have nominated Anusha Rehman as a candidate for the post of Director-BDT (Telecommunication Development Sector).

“We are not only praying for her success but in the upcoming elections at ITU there will be full support of her success,” Minister for IT & Telecom, Syed Amin ul-Haque said on Thursday.

The ITU Conference is scheduled to be held in Romania from September 26 to October 14, 2022. There will be elections for the post of Director in ITU, for which Pakistan has nominated the ex-minister for this prestigious post.

The Plenipotentiary Conference is the highest policy-making body of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). Held every four years, it is the key event at which ITU member states decide on the future role of the organisation, thereby determining the organisation’s ability to influence and affect the development of information and communication technologies (ICTs) worldwide. The conference sets the union’s general policies; adopts four-year strategic and financial plans; and elects the senior management team of the organisation, the Member States of the Council, and the members of the Radio Regulations Board.

The Plenipotentiary Conference 2022 (PP-22) will be held in Bucharest, Romania, from Monday, 26 September to Friday, 14 October 2022. It will be preceded by the last meeting of the 2022 session of the Council on Saturday, 24 September, 2022.

In her vision statement, Anusha Rehman stressed that after her Master’s degree in Law (LL.M) from the University College London, UK, specialising in Law and Economics of regulated industries, networks and markets, she had the chance of working with the ICT industry globally, which enabled her to get a firm grasp on techno-commercial and legal issues relevant to the telecommunication industry.

During her tenure, she undertook several policy and legislative initiatives for achieving the vision of “Digital Pakistan” and a knowledge-based society. During this period, Pakistan witnessed the advent of 3G/4G/LTE technology and several successful rounds of transparent spectrum auctions to sustain the mobile broadband growth, taking the broadband market from around 3 million users in 2013, to more than 70 million in 2018 to 119 million in 2022 (54%).