SPECIAL REPORT: PTC Conference

Pacific Telecommunication

Council (PTC), founded in 1980, is a Hawaii-based international,

non-profit, non-governmental membership organization with more

than 600 members worldwide.

Its sixth annual

conference titled "Communication at Convergence" was

held under the aegis of PTC, India chapter. The participants at

the conference deliberated upon the critical problems of

expansion of communication and its convergence with IT.

Addressing the conference, N Bhaskara Rao, president, PTC India

Foundation, said, "The target of $50 billion worth IT

exports that the government has set by 2008 will not be achieved

without adequate telecom connectivity."

Hoyt H Zia, executive

director, PTC, deliberated on the aims and objectives of the

conference highlighting the role played by his organization in

helping telecom industry to fulfil its potential.

Rajgopalan, CMD, MTNL,

while speaking at the conference lamented that all new companies

are looking at the stock market and not at the people. Rural

areas have been neglected and people in the decision-making

bodies are yet to understand the actual meaning of convergence.

The first panel discussion

dealt with the crucial issue of policy plan and priorities for

convergence. The speakers felt that current telecom policy was

inadequate and stressed the need for a single policy on

convergence. They also emphasized the need for active

involvement of industry in policy making.

The next panel took up the

issue of broadband and multimedia services. Dr TH Chowdary, IT

advisor to Andhra Pradesh government chaired this panel and

emphasized that not only private telecom operators, but also any

enterprise should be free to build infrastructure for use by any

service provider. He also added that pure infrastructure

providers and educational institutions/enterprises should only

need to register and a licence should not be mandatory for them.

AK Bhatnagar of PGCL revealed about his company''s ambitious

plan to lay fibre over its 14,000 kilometre of powerline. It is

planning to set up a National Telecom Grid in association with

some state governments and electricity boards to create a

unified network. It hopes to lay a total of 4,000 kilometre of

optic fibre by the end of 2000 in northern and southern India.

Other sessions at the

conference discussed about Spectrum Management and Planning in

India for the next generation services, e-business, universal

access, human capital formation, and National Long Distance (NLD).

The panel on NLD focused on the contentious issue of Right of

Way.

Akhil Agarwal, the

executive director, telecom development, Railway Board

deliberated on the Railways'' radio network, telecommunication

for passenger safety, and radio spectrum requirement for Indian

Railways. RN Agarwal, wireless advisor, WPC chaired the panel.

RRN Prasad, member, TRAI,

chaired the session on universal access, which witnessed a

spirited presentation by Ashok Jhunjhunwala of IIT Chennai. He

concluded that technology exists for providing affordable

telecommunication in India and meeting the target of 150 to 200

million telecom and Internet connections in 8 to 10 years''

time. He was confident that if everything went according to the

plan, the per-line cost could be brought down to Rs 10,000.