Monthly Archive

The earthquake of this week damaged the telecom and internet infrastructure, impacting many Asian countries. Banking services were severely hampered Wednesday but services had resumed Thursday after networks were reconfigured to detour around the broken cables. In June 2005 Pakistan’s only undersea fiber-optic cable link with the outside world at that time developed a serious fault, virtually crippling data feeds, including the Internet, for 11 days. See my previous post on Pakistan’s new undersea project.

This earthquake underscored the vulnerabilities of a system where huge amounts of data speed through the region in cables laid deep beneath the sea, noted Red Herring magazine.

The WALL STREET JOURNAL (12/29) reports that the slow but steady return of telecom services across Asia, after Tuesday’s earthquake damaged a critical nexus of cables off Taiwan, suggests that ‘workaround’ tactics and the quake’s holiday timing may limit its impact on business. Some telecom companies were working to reroute their service by other channels, including through Australia, the Indian Ocean or by satellite. Several ships were on their way Thursday to repair regional telecom cables broken by an earthquake off southern Taiwan, but officials warned that it could take several more days before Internet access across much of Asia returned to normal. One of the two cables that were broken is owned by a consortium that includes Singapore Telecom, France Telecom and Pakistan Telecommunication. The other is partly owned by China Unicom, StarHub and Telekom Malaysia.

An article in today’s BUSINESSWORLD (Philippines) reports that industry observers said that the chaos in Asia’s Internet service sparked by an undersea earthquake shows that the region’s cable network is too fragile and overly reliant on connections to the U.S. Undersea fiber-optic cables account for more than 95 percent of international telecommunications thanks to their strength, capacity and connection quality, according to South Korean provider KT Submarine Corp. These cables have been around for over 125 years. According to a report by policy think tank Rand Corporation the cables, which for the most part lie unprotected on the ocean floor can be dmanaged by ship anchors, fish nets that scrape the sea bottom and even in one case, sharks that gnawed on a line apparently due to its electromagnetic pulse.

One alternative would be satellites, which are costlier and do not provide as much capacity or quality of transmission as fiber-optic cables, analysts said. See my post to read more about use of satellite commuication for disaster management.

The Red Herring article notes that South Korea has 10 main undersea cables connecting it to the world and seven of them were damaged by the quake. India was highly vulnerable from damage to undersea cable links as well because it receives 80 percent to 90 percent of its bandwidth from the undersea network, industry officials said.

This incident has forced the global telecommunication industry to seriously consider resilience and business continuity. The world of today depends too much on communication technology to allow this to happen again. I expect to see many improvements in the coming months and years.

As the price of smart phones falls the popularity of email on mobile phones is on the rise.  This is especially useful for business folks who need access to their email on the road. However the security of email and data over the phones is still flaky … and phones are also more likely to get lost or stolen. Intellectual property issues and lawsuits among technology companies are also common (see last paragraph).

According to press reports Warid Telecom in Pakistan has announced the launch of a Push Mobile Email solution for its consumer and business customers in partnership with Ericsson and Seven. This new solution is called Wand Mobile Email (WME). Wand customers subscribing to this service will have instant access to their company and personal email through their mobile handset.

This service is supported by a wide variety of handsets such as Sony Ericsson, Windows based phones, etc. Through Wand Mobile Email, Warid consumers will have secure access to their company and/or personal email. This service will allow consumers to send, receive, view, edit and delete emails or MS Office and PDF attachments instantly - just the way it is done from a personal computer.

Warid Mobile Email is a secure email solution from Seven. Leading telecom operators such as Vodafone, Hutch India, Maxis in Malaysia, Etisalat in UAE and many other leading operators around the globe are using push mail solution. Recently another e-mail technology company Visto won a final judgment in its patent infringement lawsuit against Seven Networks (see more at InformationWeek), another wireless e-mail provider. A U.S. District Court ordered Seven to pay Visto $7.7 million in damages and stayed an injunction against Seven that’s awaiting appeal.

The popularity of emails over the phone will continue to rise. The handset makers are aware of the security gaps and they are pushing for better technical standards to secure the data. More on this soon.

This is from a recent WIRED magazine gadget test issue. It shows the source of the different metals used in making of a mobile handset but I liked how it illustrates the components (screen, circuit board, micro chips, lens, housing, battery) in layers. Click on the photo to see a higher resolution image.

Triple play made its way to Pakistan. Triple Play service is a marketing term for the 3 services: high-speed Internet, Video (TV, Video on Demand) and telephone service - all over a single broadband connection. Wateen, PTCL and Nayatel are a few examples for which services are already or soon to be available in some parts of Lahore and Islamabad. The important question is if these services will be affordable and reliable?

Wateen’s triple play offering was recently unveiled with its services for DHA Lahore, scheduled for commercial launch in January 2007. With all the digging work going on in DHA, it will be a relief for the public. According to the press release by Wateen:

This project will provide DHA residents access to a breadth and depth of 21st century telecommunication and media services through fiber optic and wireless WiMAX networks. Services provided will include innovative telephony calling plans for local, nationwide and international routes, video conferencing/video telephony, true broadband internet (both fixed and wireless), DVD quality TV viewing and Value Added Services such as security & surveillance and interactive gaming.

Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL) was awarded the country’s first IPTV operating licence in November 2006 and will be an major competitor. PTCL has yet to announce a timetable for rollout of the service. “We have some exciting plans that we will be announcing soon,” was all PTCL CEO Mohammad Bamakhrama would tell local press. According to discussion forums, PTCL will use Alcatel IPTV solution which is based on partnership with Microsoft.

Alcatel (NYSE:ALA) also helped Naya Tel  of Pakistan to supply the region’s first fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) solution to deliver a high bandwidth triple play (voice, video and data) services to over 30,000 subscribers in the capital city of Islamabad. More on this here. Sample rates for Nayatel’s Internet service are:

Now that we have these services available to select few, let’s monitor their success rate in 2007. Price is the main factor here and the one-time cost of the equipment (i.e. ONT) is likely to be the hurdle. If companies can asborb the equipment price in exchange for a contract, it can speed up adoption.

As we wait for Pakistan to implement mobile number portability, let us take a look at the status of another recent MNP implementation - in Japan. As expected there were issues after MNP - but the nature of the issues is interesting and has relevance to Pakistan as well. The main issues were not technical or process related - they were related to the intense competition and deceptive advertisement and marketing. The Japanese Fair Trade Commission had to step in and threaten the operators to fix their advertisements.  

Here’s a writeup of the issue as reported by the Japanese paper Daily Yomiuri.

The turmoil was triggered by the introduction in late October of the mobile number portability (MNP) system, in which a cell phone user can switch a service provider without changing the cell phone number.

Taking advantage of the introduction of the MNP system as an opportunity to boost its share in the cell phone market, SoftBank went on the offensive. The advertisements it ran during this sales campaign became the issue. SoftBank Mobile widely advertised that it would offer free calls and free e-mail in its cell phone service. But in fact, a number of conditions had to be met to receive such benefits. SoftBank Mobile’s advertisements failed to cite these conditions clearly.

But if the company continues to offer the discount deal after Jan. 15, that means the company deceived people who subscribed to it before that day. In that case, the FTC said it would issue a warning or take other measures against SoftBank Mobile. The commission also pointed out problems with advertisements by KDDI and the two companies.

The FTC said the language in the advertisements was inappropriate because it misled consumers into believing they could immediately receive a 50 percent discount in the basic subscription fee for some plans, or carry over without limit unused portions of a free call deal to the following month.  

The editorial notes that the Fair Trade Commission on Tuesday issued a warning to Softbank Mobile, saying the cellphone provider ran misleading ads in possible violation of the new law against unjustifiable premiums and misleading representations. The antitrust watchdog also issued cautions to Japanese operators NTT DoCoMo, KDDI and PHS operator Willcom.

A front-page article in the Wall Street Journal (12/1 reports that some of the world’s biggest telecom companies are racing to tap China and other rapidly growing Asian markets by building faster pipelines for the surging volume of Internet and phone traffic produced by multinational corporations and the region’s consumers. The article mentions that Verizon  is set to sign a  $500 million agreement with five major Asian telecom carriers to build the first high-speed trans-Pacific undersea cable system, to be called “Trans-Pacific Express”, directly linking the U.S. and China.

Verizon Business and partners China Telecom, China Netcom, China Unicom, Korea Telecom and Taiwan’s Chunghwa Telecom will start building the cable in the first quarter with completion expected in the third quarter of 2008. Meanwhile, according to the article, people familiar with the matter say AT&T is in talks with Telekom Malaysia and Singaporean carrier Starhub to build a cable line linking Southeast Asia and the U.S. 

These are interesting developments. Recently Trasnworld Associates, Pakistan’s first private submarine fiber optic cable operator, have provided a new undersea cable system known as TW1, with a capacity of up to 1.28 terabits per second (Tbps). This will increase Pakistan’s bandwidth capacity and provide much-needed resilience against failures. Till this came along Pakistan had only one pipeline connecting it to the gloabl internet. For a good overview of Pakistan’s internet connections see KO’s blog post. The Trasnworld wesbite shows a glimpse of their work, as shown below.

Hopefully these projects will provided the much needed additional capacity needed for Asia’s growth and will speed up the work to reduce the deep digital divide.

 Information and communication technologies (ICT) play an important role of lifeline in disaster management life cycle. The recent disasters in Asia and USA have highlighted the need for interoperable standards and technologies, and better planning and coordination to leverage telecommunication for disaster management. This post will describe various efforts around the world to improve the use of telecommunication technologies for disaster mitigation.  

As a case in example, after the earthquake in Pakistan Inmarsat-sponsored Télécoms Sans Frontières(TSF) responded immediately to the disaster. TSF created emergency mobile satellite telecoms centres - using Inmarsat equipment - for rescue teams, local authorities and other emergency relief efforts. After the quake cellular mobile operators in Pakistan were also allowed to offer their services in Kashmir. Even so, according to ITU, rescue and relief operations in Pakistan were drastically hampered because telecommunication infrastructure was severely damaged and distribution networks almost perished, .

Let us take a quick look at how telecommunication helps in disaster management lifecycle, who are the key stakeholders, what are the challenges and what are the new developments.

The disaster management lifecycle has 4 phases: Preparedness, Mitigation, Relief and Recovery.

The Stakeholders include:
Policy Makers- ITU, World Bank, United Nations, WSIS
Regulators- ITU, Country specific Agencies eg PTA, FCC
Operators - Service providers, Equipment Makers
Academia - Universities, Researchers
Civil Society- Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs) e.g. IFRC

The challenge is to bring the stakeholders together so that synergies are realized and innovative solutions can be offered. For instance see the image below from a Japanese mobile phone which provides maps and instructions in case of a disaster.  I’ll summarize some of the important developments over the last few years.

Hyogo Framework for disaster reduction presents the results of global leaders to build the resilience against disasters. It was adopted at the World Conference on Disaster Reduction in Hyogo, Japna in Jan 2005. It addresses issues of digital divide and how to leverage ICT for disaster mitigation and presents detailed action and followoup plans.

Tampere Conventionis a resolution specific to emergency telecommunication. ITU is responsible for driving its content, ratification and adoption.  Tampere Convetion describes the procedures for request and provision of telecommunication assistance, legal and financial matters and the logistics. You can get full details about it here.  Pakistan is not one of the 35 countries who have ratified Tampere convention.

The challenges
To give you an idea of the challenges faced, I’ll share excerpts from a talk by Dr Ferrari of Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation :

The availability and use of interoperable and adequate telecommunication resources are indispensable tools for humanitarian relief and disaster mitigation. Public and private humanitarian relief agencies are often stunned to learn that hefty import duties must be paid for their telecommunications equipment, that they have serious problems to import and operate telecommunication equipment and that operators must obtain operating licenses before communicating within the area of disaster relief operations and with the outside word. The Tampere Convention is a targeted effort to facilitate the provision of timely and effective telecommunication resources and of rapid, efficient information flows for disaster prevention and response.

In another interesting development, a petition has been put forth in the USA to deal with emergency communication issues as faced by victims of Katrina hurricane. Read the full news article here , excerpts are below. The petition asks that carriers should be required to set up alternative communications service for customers affected by disaster-related outages. Carriers would be given a choice:

• They could activate a voice mail servicethat could be accessed by incoming callers dialing the customer’s phone number. This would enable customers who don’t have any outgoing phone service to receive incoming calls or record an outgoing voicemail message providing information about their status and location.
• Or, the carriers could provide expedited local number portabilityto customers whose service has been knocked out. This would enable customers to quickly port their phone numbers to alternative providers (including IP-based providers and providers outside the affected area) and thereby reestablish communications links with their families and friends.

The Pakistan earthquake of 2005 and the Tsunami of 2004 presents many learning opportunities. This post touched upon just one technical topic . However one post cannot do justice to this complex topic. I hope that you got a glimpse of how telecommunication can save lives.

Resources and Further Reading:

• ITU Site Pages on Emergency Telecom
• Emergency Telecommunication Working Group
• Reliefweb - Telecom
• LIRNE Asia, an organization for ICT, reports on a recent conference about ICT and disasters.
• Emergency Telecom Workshop in Bangladesh, March 2006.
• Papers - ICT UNSIDR Conference Report from Kobe/Hyogo Conference, Japan 2005.

The Indian telecom market is again the topic of a political discussion about security and foreign telecommunication and technology firms. Recently the Chinese telecom equipment firms ZTE and Huawei were the issue but now Orascom has joined the list. Pakistan is a common link for all these companies.

As reported in Indian press here, the Egyptian telecom giant Orascom wants to pick up direct stake in Indian telecom companies. Currently, the company holds an indirect 10% stake in Hutch-Essar.

Orascom was being scrutinised by Indian Intelligence agencies since it was a key mobile player in Pakistan. CEO Naguib Sawaris says he needs more clarity on the government’s FDI policy. “The security issue surprises me, just because we operate in Pakistan does not mean our company becomes a threat to any nation’s security,” Sawaris added.

Orascom had sparked off the debate on the security issue of FDI from countries, percieved to be a threat to India. The debate within the government continues.

For a review of ZTE and Huawei with India see this Business Week blog. Excerpts below:

Indian telecom operator BSNL disqualified the Chinese company from bidding for contract worth $4 billion for GSM equipment. The Indian government, through the Foreign Investment Promotion Board, had also prevented Huawei and ZTE from expanding their small presence in India.

Both Huawei and ZTE early this month won some business from state-owned operators. And now comes news that ZTE is teaming up with an Indian partner. The Shenzhen-based company plans on working with MCorpGlobal, according to the Economic Times, “to set up a service-based company, which will import, distribute and sell telecom equipment and also offer other telecom-related services in India.”

Clearly this is a setback for ZTE, which no doubt would have much preferred to stick with its original plan of going it alone in India.

It would be good for all 3 countries - China, India and Pakistan - to clarify such matters of security and investment rules in detail so that foreign companies can invest with confidence. The rules of 21st century blur the geographical borders faced in the past by global businesses and telecommunication technology is at the forefront of this push. There’s not much to be gained by pushing back.
 

This is my second post on Mobile Number Portability (MNP) in Pakistan. After the first post on portability a number of readers asked about the status of MNP in Pakistan. According to recent news  MNP is likely to be implemented in the first quarter of 2007.

MNP is the ability of end users to change service providers, without changing their mobile numbers. MNP is considered a major achievement for any mobile market and it is anticipated to shake things up in the already heated mobile market. Research from Japan and India indicates that about 30% of subscribers would switch providers if they could keep their numbers. MNP poses many technical and administrative challenges for the operators but provides a competitive landscape for consumers and operators. Usually MNP increases the potential of churn (loss of customers) thereby forcing service operators to work hard to retain their customers. MNP helps the best company to win.

Here’s a timeline of how MNP evolved in Pakistan. Source: PTA website.

2004: Cellular Telecom policy requires MNP implementation by Jan 2006.

January 2005: PTA asks for Request for Proposals on Mobile Number Portability

May 2005: All the six cellular mobile operators agree to form a Supervisory Board to implement Mobile Number Portability with the help of Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA). Initial expenses on the implementation of MNP to be shared by the operators. Tore Johnsen, President of Telenor Pakistan is elected as Chairman of Supervisory Board to implement MNP.

June 2005: The Mobile Number Portability Regulations are placed for the information of all concerned and comments are requested from all stakeholders including general public

July 2006: Chairman PTA announces that MNP will be implemented in October 2006

Sep 2006: PTA sets first Quarter 2007 as the new target for MNP implementation 

March 2007: Latest date announced for MNP launch!

On December 12 The News reported that all the six operators - Mobilink, Ufone, Warid, Telenor, Paktel and Instaphone - have reaffirmed their commitment to meet the deadline of January to implement the MNP after five-time extension offered by the authorities concerned. The article mentions that ”MNP requires more than $500 million investment, which is contributed by the operators at the ratio of their subscribers base share”.

If you are interested in the details of how MNP works PTA has published a good paper here. The supervisory board owns the whole process and is responsible for numbering aspects, routing using centralized databases and for making sure that the portability is completely transparent (no dialing changes) to the end users. The press articles mention a “Pakistan Mobile Number Portability Database (Guaranteed) Company Limited” which appears to be the organization responsible for portability system.

If history is any guide, there will be issues when MNP is introduced.  The administrative processes for handling portability requests can be complex and hard to track at times. I hope that the companies provide an easy-to-understand guide for their consumer to get through the portability process. I’m sure most consumers will ignore these teething pains for the larger reward of retaining their phone number and for getting quality service!

Added on Feb 27 2007:  As reported in DAWN, March 23 is the next target date for MNP launch.

Paktel has been in the news recently. Its European parent company Millicom has decided to exit Pakistan and the fate of its assets and employees is unclear. This presents a test case for PTA - can it handle the difficult task of protecting investors, subscribers, employees and ensure continuity of Paktel operations? 

Till now Pakistan Telecom Authority (PTA) has been enjoying the rewards of foreign direct investment and the telecom growth. For the first time now it has to deal with the messy part. A lot hinges on this. Millicom owes PTA money (US$ 29 Million) for the spectrum licence it bought in 2004. The way this dispute is handled will become a guideline for other telecom companies. It so happens that PTA has it hands full because of another nasty dispute with PTCL over bandwidth tariffs.

There have been speculations on this topic in the industry. Many have commented and voiced their opinions and concerns as well - see TM’s post on this. There have been many rumours in the media about Paktel’s future but no official word as of this writing.  

It was reported that China Telecom may buy Paktel from Millicom. A brief note in The News states: Paktel, the first cellular company of Pakistan, is in negotiations with China’s famous ‘China Telecom’ for its sale. Paktel’s higher official told ‘The News’ that Millicom and China Telecom have reached an understanding on Paktel’s sale, further details will be announced in the next few days. China Telecom has shown great interest in Paktel and now only final meeting is being held to conclude the deal.

Separately a PTA spokesman provided the following comments which appeared in The News:

“There is a proper Cellular Mobile Policy, which defines each and every situation,” said the PTA official. “The situation, which is most likely to surface, is that Paktel may shut down its business or sell this out to someone but in both cases the PTA accounts must be cleared.”

He said the high-ups of Paktel and the PTA had a series of meetings to resolve the fee installment issue but the two sides failed to reach any agreement because of too many allowances demanded by the company.

It seems that it will take some more time for all these negotiations to come to some conclusion. China Telecom’s entry to Pakistan will be a very interesting event. It will be a tough decision for China Telecom administration to justify the acquistion and its associated cost. Any negative vibrations from this case will have repercussions for Pakistan’s nascent telecom industry. PTA should make sure that it takes a flexible stance and makes a wise decision. 
 

This is a followup to my previous posts about bandwidth rate cuts. In the latest development Lahore High Court has granted PTCL stay against the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority’s decision to reduce bandwidth prices after the Etisalat-run company challenged the determination for the second time.

The NEWS article summarizes the issues nicely so I will present some excerpts directly below. This is a disappointment for those who wanted the prices to come down to an affordable level. I think PTCL has panicked due to its sliding market share and profits and has decided to use whatever means necessary to keep its tariffs high. No wonder Pakistan scored low on the digital opportunity index. It is the combination of lack of infrastrucure, monopoly at work and weak policies.

Read full news item here and also see the statement by PTA chairman about PTCL’s poor performance.

Compared to its previous decision, the PTA’s revised determination was quite mild, introducing a mere 6% reduction in the price of 2 Mbits and 20% reduction in higher data rates, yet PTCL’s new management from Etisalat decided to challenge this decision.

The Internet, IT and call center spheres of the telecommunication industry, who expected a letter-and-spirit implementation of the verdict, are voicing disappointment over the PTCL move to oppose the determination.

Call centers and business processing outsourcing (BPO) industry find bandwidth cost reduction imperative for making Pakistan an attractive global destination for such business.

This is turning out to be a real test for PTA’s authority. Lets hope the end decision works in favor of the public.

Are the developing countries and organizations such as ITU, WSIS making real progress against digital divide? A new measure called Digital Opportunity Index may provide an objective way to  answer this question.  

Following the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) summits (Geneva 2003 and Tunis 2005) which brought together the stakeholders, ITU and partners including the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development introduced Digital Opportunity Index (DOI), a tool for measuring the digital divide and monitoring progress in building the information society.

DOI is a composite index created from 11 internationally agreed ICT indicators, including the percentage of a population covered by cellular telephony, the proportion of households with internet access and the ratio of fixed broadband subscribers to total internet subscribers. Based on this approach Pakistan scored 0.73 out of a maximum of 1.o and is ranked 42nd out of 54 countries in Asia Pacific region in 2005. South Korea tops the list worldwide. Full results here (scroll to end).  A separate post will discuss the reasons for Pakistan’s low ranking.

As shown in the graphic above the index ranges from 0 to 1 where 1 is complete digital opportunity.

These indicators are divided into 3 categories: opportunity, which measures the basic access and affordability needed to participate in the information society; infrastructurewhich looks at networks and devices; and utilisation which focuses on who is using what.

The DOI was developed by a multi-stakeholder partnership (the Digital Opportunity Platform) comprising ITU, UNCTAD and the KADO (Korea Agency for Digital Opportunity and Promotion) and which is open to other partners.

A recent Financial Times article by Alan Cane with the headline “Digital Divide: Still there for the poor” points out that despite the telecommunication growth rates observed in some countries, the poorest of the world still face formidable challenges of digital divide. Excerpts from the FT article: 

Less than 10 per cent of the world’s population had basic internet access in 2003, Paul Mountford, president of Cisco Systems’ emerging markets group, told the Silicon Valley Challenge Summit last month, vividly illustrating the size of the “digital divide” which separates the information rich from the information poor.

On Digital Opportunity Index: Mr Kelly, head of the ITU’s policy and strategy unit, says: “The first full release (of DOI) was published in July 2006 covering 180 economies. It is the first genuinely neutral index for the ICT sector. This first edition will provide a baseline for analysis between now and 2015 when the WSIS outcomes are due for review.”

This year’s WSIS report, the first of its kind, uses the DOI to show that India and China have made the most gains in closing the digital divide between 2001 and 2005, followed by Russia, Hungary, Peru and Indonesia.

The article ends with a dose of reality check.

“But the poorest countries have yet to taste the wonders of the internet and would, no doubt, prefer the taste of plentiful food, clean water and adequate sanitation.”

I could not resist sharing this amusing futuristic work of imagination from WIRED magazine. If you use headsets with blue tooth technology, this one is surely for you. At the pace of technology and gadget development we may have embedded devices soon - but I for one will not be waiting in line to try this out!

Follow this link for higher resolution image.

As this post is being written, ITU is hosting TELECOM WORLD 2006 Asia in Hong Kong. It is one of the leading events of the telecom world, “bringing the world’s leading ICT companies, decision-makers, organisations and governments together, Telecom WORLD features a major exhibition, a high-level Forum and numerous opportunities for meeting, discussing, networking and getting business done.”

One of the most interesting part of this event is the Forum where leaders (see a few leading speakers below) get together and discuss the technical, economic, social and policy matters surrounding telecommunications and ICT in general. The theme for this forum is Living the Digital World which seems quite appropriate given the fast-paced changes digital technology is making in the world.

There are many hot topics in the agenda such as broadband triple play, digital content, Wimax etc. While each of the above topic merits in-depth discussions, I’d like to point out to one of the most important subject for the world today: Next Generation networks for Development. The decisions of today will impact how tens millions of people in developing countries with low income levels can join this information revolution. In my opinion, telecommunication related technologies have a vast potential to change these people’s lives.

In the ITU conference the Telecommunication Development Symposium will cover how telecommunication can enhance development. More information about this theme is here. Excerpts below:

Developing countries have made tremendous strides towards increasing connectivity by using fixed, wireless and mobile technologies. At the same time, there is wide consensus that the next phase of networked communications will be based upon Next Generation Network technologies that promise to achieve enhanced connectivity through cost-effective and sustainable infrastructure development and management.

The concept of the Next Generation Network (NGN) covers the transition from current to future packet-based infrastructures, which is essential to take advantage of new opportunities for development and to bridge the digital divide. It spans both the fixed and wireless worlds so that the same services can be delivered no matter what access technology is used — whether it is a mobile device, a fixed network broadband connection or a fixed wireless connection. As a result, NGNs promise to foster the use of communications for greater socio-economic development, including E-education, E-health, and E-government, and enable countries to boost productivity and growth.

Participants and attendees will learn what NGNs look like, which NGN applications can succeed in developing countries, whether existing business and regulatory models will be applicable, and whether developing countries can move beyond existing technologies to a state-of-the-art wireless NGN world. They will also discuss what kinds of handsets and devices will be most appropriate, how end users will pay for broadband services such as IPTV, VoIP and e-health services in an NGN environment, and what kind of NGN policy developing countries should embark upon.

I hope that after this conference a concrete action plan is published and follwed so that we can see some results and its not all talk. The representatives of developing countries need to take the lead on this.