Telecom Kings in Himalayan Kingdom

The VOICE&DATA SAARC CEO Conclave, SAARC communication industry's discussion
forum, held its sixth version at Kathmandu, the picturesque capital of Nepal,
from October 25-28. The theme of the conclave was 'Taking Telecom Beyond
Cities'. VOICE&DATA zeroed in on this theme as the whole SAARC region has
witnessed a paradigm shift in the telecom scenario in the last few years. The
industry is growing in this region at a fiery pace, so is the quality of life of
its people. This telecom revolution in the SAARC region has changed the
telecommunication picture in urban areas. And, now the telecom industry is all
set to take another responsibility-changing the rural scenario.

Welcoming the guests at the conclave, Pradeep Gupta, CMD, Cybermedia, said,
“This is an unprecedented time, if you look at the entire SAARC region. And,
there are enough studies to prove that telecommunication is something that can
really have tremendous impact in terms of growth and indeed that is something we
are witnessing with a lot of countries in the entire region. The total number of
users stands at 400 mn. It is one of the fastest growing regions in terms of
telecom penetration. The entire South Asian region has become a hotspot for
different kinds of technologies for different kinds of expansion. So, I think we
are living in a very exiting time.”

Sohan Bahadur Nyachhyon, joint secretary, Ministry of Telecom, Nepal,
inaugurated the event with a warm welcome to the delegates from the neighboring
countries. In his inaugural speech, he also emphasized on the opportunities that
exist for the telecom industry. He said, “The final beneficiaries will be the
people of the SAARC countries because I am sure if there is good communication
among the SAARC countries, there will be stronger culture, education, sports,
entertainment and trade ties. I believe that the main objective for cooperation
among the operators in the SAARC region will be reducing tariffs of telecom
services, especially when calls are made among the SAARC countries, making calls
cheaper and obtaining the return from the increased call volume, maximizing the
use of submarine cable, building the backbone of the telecom network in the
SAARC region and using the modern up-to-date technology to reduce the cost of
making calls.”

RN Prabhakar, member, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India and Salman Malik,
project director, Ministry of IT and Telecommunications, Pakistan, also
delivered the keynote address. In their speech, they stressed on the need to
leveraging on each other's strength for better co-operation among the
neighboring regions in terms of technologies and services related to
telecommunication.

On this occasion, VOICE&DATA also released the second version of the SAARC
report, depicting the current telecom scenario in various countries in the
region. The chief guest, Sohan Bahadur Nyachhyon and Pradeep Gupta, jointly
released the report.

The first day of the conclave saw a grand gathering of CEOs in the form of
the CEO STAC Summit. STAC (SAARC Telecom Advisory Council) was floated in 2006
during the fifth CEO Conclave held in Colombo, Sri Lanka, to bring out concrete
changes in the telecom scenario in the entire SAARC region. This STAC committee
comprises CEOs of various operators, policyholders, and other stakeholders in
the telecom fraternity. The theme of the summit for this year was 'Burning
Issues and Remedial Strategies to Harmonize SAARC telecom'.

The CEO STAC Summit focused on the challenges/issues that operators in the
SAARC region face with respect to taking telecom growth to semi-urban and rural
markets; country-specific strategies operators have for addressing the
challenges; preparedness of the operators in terms of technologies, regulations,
infrastructure, and revenue models to implement those strategies; and the
support operators require from each other in the SAARC region.

The STAC Summit

The summit saw more than twenty stalwarts sitting on the dais to take the
STAC mission statement forward and bring about concrete results. Vikram Tiwathia,
CTO, CII, moderated the summit and the panelists included DPS Seth, ex-CMD, BSNL
and former member, TRAI; SK Vashishtha, MD, RailTel; RN Prabhakar, member, TRAI;
SD Saxena, director, Finance, BSNL; ATM Hayattuzaman Khan, chairman, Dhaka
Telephone; Ravi Sankar, COO, VSNL Lanka; Brajesh C Jain, CEO, Spectranet;
Biswadeep Mitra, MD, Texas Instruments; Nalin Tyronne Perera, CMO, Mobitel, Sri
Lanka; Ahmad Maumoon, manager, Marketing, Dhiraagu Maldives; GC Jha, advisor,
Spectrum Management, Aircell; HC Soni, senior advisor, Reliance Communications;
Karma Jurme, GM, Bhutan Telecom; Asif H Choudhury, deputy MD, Sheba Telecom;
Omer Haider, GM, Regulatory Affairs, Warid Telecom; Dmitriy Zaika, CEO, Spice
Nepal; Debashis Sur, COO, Tata Telservices, Satyen Gupta, chief regulatory
advisor, British Telecom; AK Srivastava, GM, MTNL; AK Sinha, ex-CMD, BSNL and T
Hanuman Choudhary, telecom advisor, government of Andhra Pradesh.

The CEO STAC Summit was kick-stared by Tiwathia, who read out the mission
statement that had been unanimously accepted by all the delegates present at the
summit.

Starting the discussion with the roaming issue, Choudhary said that roaming
charges exist not only among countries in the SAARC, but even within a country.
“In India, there are 23 licensee areas and if you go from one area to another,
it is called roaming and the charges are very, very, very high. This can be
likened to international calls. We had the accounting rates and settlement
rates. So, roaming today is extraordinary highly priced, not only within India
and among the SAARC countries, but even in Europe.”

Giving a piece of his mind, Haider suggested that reduction in interconnect
charges could be a good solution to bring down the roaming charges in the SAARC
region.

From TRAI's perspective, Prabhaker said that the regulators have taken some
initiatives toward the roaming issue and decided that no monthly rental should
be charged for roaming facilities.

Seth had some different observations on the roaming issue. He said, “The
entire concept of roaming needs to be broken down.” He added, “Most of us would
see that when we talk of roaming, a person goes into a network, he is hooked on
to that network and then he becomes a captive. So, affectively there is no
competition available over there. Normally, competition in an open market takes
care of bringing down prices.” Taking on open market and competition, he said,
“The solution lies in the regulatory intervention. Since several countries are
involved, it means the regulators of these countries should come together and
arrive at a common policy.”

On the issue of value-added services, Jurme from Bhutan Telecom said, “We
have just started to introduce value-added services. Besides SMS and voice mail,
we did not have any other value-added services so far. We have signed a contract
with an Indian firm to provide value-added services, but we have not yet
started, the service is still not here.” But, the picture is not the same in
Bangladesh. Sharing his views on the VAS scene in his country, Asif said that
value-added services are actually growing in Bangladesh and to say that
Bangladesh is a small telecom market is probably understating the fact.

Adding some human development aspects to the VAS application, Mitra said that
there are two areas that he would like the SAARC telecom players to work
on-education and healthcare. He further added that the progression of technology
that has happened could literally transmit ECG waveforms on the mobile.

Concluding the summit, Tiwathia said this is just the beginning and in the
times to come, STAC will play an important role in expanding the telecom
services and shaping the telecom scenario in the SAARC countries.

After the brainstorming session, it was time to unwind. The gathering saw a
grand cultural performance by local folk dancers arranged by Nepal Tourism. The
following day was for more brainstorming in the form of four panel discussions
on various topics. All the discussions saw a good number of industry experts as
panelists to discuss various issues pertaining to the topics of the discussion.
Kuldeep Goyal, CMD, BSNL delivered the concluding keynote address.

As an integral part of the event, VOICE&DATA conferred awards to various
telecom operators and handset vendors for their innovative and outstanding
service in the last year. These awards are called SAARC VOICE&DATA Telecom1
Innovation Awards.

Gyana Ranjan Swain