The GSR is an annual event bringing together heads of national regulatory authorities from both developed and developing countries and has earned a reputation as the global venue for regulators to share their views and experiences as part of the worldwide community of regulators.  The meeting fosters an open dialogue between regulators and key ICT stakeholders: the private sector, investors and consumers.

The 12th Global Symposium for Regulators (GSR‑12), organized by ITU’s Telecommunication Development Bureau (BDT), in collaboration with the Telecommunication Regulatory Commission of Sri Lanka (TRCSL), took place in Colombo from 2 to 4 October 2012. The theme of GSR-12 was Why regulate in a networked society?. The symposium examined several aspects that regulators must face in a new world, which is or tends to be completely networked and converged, where ICTs are the cross-cutting facilitators of many other sectors of the society such as health, finance, education, trade, agriculture, tourism, etc. and where there is growing need for the necessary bandwidth and investments to deploy it.

The main outcome of GSR‑12 was a set of best-practice guidelines, which offer regulatory approaches to foster access to digital opportunities through cloud services. With the advent of cloud computing, digital resources were becoming accessible over multiple networks anywhere, anytime. The guidelines include recommendations relating to consumer “cloud literacy” to ensure personal data protection, transparency in cloud service obligations between service providers, the development and adoption of international technical and organizational standards for cloud interfaces and service delivery, data portability in the cloud, and international cooperation between regulators.

GSR-12 was held along with the newly created Global Regulators-Industry Dialogue (GRID), ITU having decided to transform its Global Industry Leaders’ Forum into GRID to further strengthen dialogue between industry and regulatory agencies.