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