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This year's Convergence India event saw the launch of a wide arena of products, announcements of future plans, deals and futuristic technologies for the first time in India. Business deals worth over $100 mn were inked during the '15th Convergence India 2007'.

The meet saw participation from Korea, Taiwan, China, Japan, Thailand, Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia, United Kingdom, Germany, Hungary, Portugal, Switzerland, the Netherlands, France, Russia, Latvia, Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Canada, the United States and India. The Expo spread over an area of 20,000 sq mts, with 450 plus participants from over 30 countries with 1,500 delegates. Some of the leading global players in the ICT segment exhibited at the event, thus making it a truly global platform to conduct business. Names like Alcatel, Cisco, Ericsson, ZTE Corporation, Blue Coat, Ceina, Cyberoam, Huawei, iBasis, Motorola, MTNL, NDS, Times Broadband, Powerwave Technologies, Powertel, Proto Star, Qualcomm, Soma Networks, Sterlite Optical Technologies, Sun Technics, AOL, Tekelek, Telllabs, Telsima, Texas Instruments, UT Starcom, Zyxel, Sonicwall, Fortinet, Quipo, Avocent, Airspan and Veraz Networks were prominent sponsors for the event. However, some of the important players like Hutchison, Idea, and Nokia gave the show a miss. It is to be seen whether the show could reach a level where no serious player can afford to miss being a part of the show.

Compared to last year's show, there was not much increase in the number of visitors with last year's number being 18,684 visitors. However, the number of exhibitors increased from 386 participants from 25 countries last year to 450 from 30 countries this year. One of the participants said, "We had ten to fifteen visitors from the SAARC region last year. This year, we have missed them. Following our participation at the show, we may not achieve the set target of business deals as well because of poor attendance at our stall". However, there were others who were very enthusiastic about the response.

A Lot of Action
Convergence India was inaugurated by the former Indian ambassador to the US, Abid Hussain, who said that India had emerged as a power by breaking the aristocracy of knowledge once confined to a few countries.

The even showcased convergence of telecommunications, voice and data networks, fixed and mobile networks, the Internet, computing, delivery of content, satellite communications, television and entertainment applications.

Making the right moves

There was a panel discussion on various aspects of 'Convergence: The future-fuelling the Indian economy'. Panelists included Pradip Baijal, former TRAI chairman; SN Zindal, director general, Software Technology Parks of India; SD Saxena, director (finance), BSNL; Nikhil Jain, chief technology advisor, Qualcomm; Brian Caskey, VP, UTStarcom; and John Giere, CMO, Alcatel-Lucent Worldwide.

A workshop was held on e-Governance and it brought together industry leaders, investors, government officials and users on a single platform to discuss various aspects of the ICT industry. The subjects for discussion included Next Gen telecom, wireless delivery: broadband for all; services on demand: business and infotainment, towards mobile information society, security challenges for the enterprise, and enabling SMB's and SME's for tomorrow's growth. A round-table on 'broadband revolution and rural connectivity' was cancelled for technical reasons.

Convergence India had emerged as the largest ICT meet in India. The year 2007 had been declared the year of the broadband and the emergence of ICT that covers rural connectivity, broadband, 3G, enterprise and entertainment bulge, mobile content, e-Governance, increase in PC penetration, information security and telemedicine, on-line education, telemedicine, IT applications in financial services, and e-commerce may be a coincidence in Convergence India 2007. Also, the meet reflected a surge in industry confidence.

Nilabh Jha
nilabhj@cybermedia.co.in