Over a 100 CEOs, representing both the service providers and regulators from the SAARC region, are converging for their 6 th annual CEO conference in Kathmandu starting Thursday ( October 25, 2007) to decide on strategies on how to provide telecom access to the millions living in the 2nd and 3rd tier towns, semi-urban and rural areas. Mr. Shankar Prasad Koirala, IT and Telecom Secretary, Ministry of Information and Communications, Nepal, will kick-off the conference.

CEOS from India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh , Nepal, Bhutan and Maldives will spend their time on how to take telecom beyond cities and learn from experiences of the individual countries. 

Speaking on the eve of departure Pradeep Gupta, Chairman of Cybermedia, the publishers of Voice&Data and Dataquest said, "With the emergence of Internet, telecom is becoming a meta resource for economic development of nations. Leaders from the 7 SAARC nations will shed their geographic boundaries to carve out strategies to deploy telecom to accelerate economic development in the region." 

The industry representatives will also discuss crucial areas like telecom penetration, quality of service, adoption of new technologies, and above all affordability. Mr. Prasanto K Roy Chief Editor of Voice&Data says that the 3-day Voice&Data CEO Conclave will bring together the industry think tank together on the same platform and facilitate the creation of a plan to address major, access affordability and technology issues. 

The CEO Conclave will also use the opportunity to present SAARC Telecom Innovation Awards for mobile operators from each of the SAARC country. This award is based on an on-line poll, conducted among more than 6000 users in various SAARC countries. 

The Conclave will also host the first summit of the SAARC Telecom Advisory Council (STAC), in association with CII (Confedration of Indian Industries), that will draw up a roadmap for building synergies in SAARC telecom for 2008 and beyond. The main objective behind this is to work out areas of opportunities for SAARC cooperation for meeting individual country telecom targets. 

Mr. Kuldeep Goyal, CMD, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd, Mr Hamid Farooq, CEO, Warid Telecom, Pakistan, Suren Jeevaka Amarasekera, CEO, Mobitel, Sri Lanka; Mr SK Vashishta, MD, Railtel, India; Dr Dinesh Sharma, Chairman, Nepal Telecom Authority; Mr RN Prabhakar, Member, TRAI; Mr. V. Ravi Sankar, COO, VSNL Lanka; Mr. Nayeem M Chaowhury, Director, WorldTel, Bangladesh; Mr. Sultan ul Arfeen, Chairman, Telecard Limited, Pakistan; and Mr. ATM Hayatuzzaman Khan, Chairman, Dhaka Telephone; Dimitri Zaika, CEO, Spice, Nepal; Neeraj Roy, MD & CEO, Hungama Mobile; Vijayshekhar Sharma, MD, One97; Dr YL Agarwal, Director, HFCL; and Vikram Tewatia, CIO, CII; will be some of the telecom leaders from their respective countries. 

The eminent private sector players will be represented by Mr. Hari Dev Khosla, Deputy Chief Operating Officer, Tata Teleservices Maharashtra Limited and Bharti Airtel's CMO-East Hub Mr. G.V. Krishnan. Mr. Satyen Gupta, Chief Regulatory Advisor, SAARC Region, British Telecom Global. 

The promiment service providers attedning the conference include Reliance Infocom, VSNL, Bharti, Idea Cellular, Tata Teleservices, MTNL, Aircel, Railtel, Diraagu of Maldives; Telenor of Pakistan; BPL Mobile; British Telecom, and Nepal Doorsanchar

About CyberMedia 
CyberMedia is South Asia's first and largest specialty media house, with 15 publications (including Dataquest, DQ Channels and DQ Week, PCQuest, Voice&Data and Global Services) in the infotech, telecom, consumer electronics and biotech areas, and is a media value chain including Internet ( www.ciol.com), events and television. The group's media services include market research (IDC India), job board (CyberMedia Dice), content management, multimedia, and media education. 

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