Print

Comment

Email

Digg

Del.icio.us

Reddit

A proud Prime Minster while inaugurating the India Telecom Summit 2011, in a very clear and firm voice stated it to the world that the Indian telecommunications industry is the fastest growing telecom market in the world, with the addition of over millions of subscribers every month.

In fact, why only the prime minister, every citizen who has the slightest idea of India's telecom success story will take pride of the fact. However it's really unfortunate that when it comes to representing the same telecommunications industry at a common platform, the same enthusiasm and zeal is somehow seen far lagging behind.

Lack of Enthusiasm and Motivation

The recently concluded Indian Telecom 2011 event, jointly organized by the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) and FICCI in the national capital New Delhi, was a testimonial to that. Though the 3-day event kick-started on a high note in the presence of the high dignitaries like Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Union Minister for Information and Communications Kapil Sibal, Minister of State for IT and Communication Milind Deora, and Minister of state for IT and Communications Sachin Pilot, however many big names of the Indian telecom industry skipped the event.

The main attractions of the event, without any shred of doubt, are and have always been the stalls of various telecom service providers, vendors, or the distributors. And, year after year the number of stalls put up and the participation of vendors and service providers are significantly decreasing.

Big Names Miss the Show

The summit lacked the zest and heat of early days. While Bharti airtel was seen promoting airtel money, Aircel was promoting iPhone 4 on their network.

Vodafone was seen showcasing their enterprise business inclinations and BSNL and MTNL both were seen promoting IPTV technology on their networks. There were few product launches as well: This helped in the Summit in gaining some momentum.

Regular participants like Reliance Communications, Idea Cellular, Qualcomm, Motorola, etc, were seen missing during the recent edition of the event, so as the number of footfalls.

Supported and endorsed by the Ministry of Communications & Information Technology of the Government of India, the India Telecommunications International Summit used to be the must-attend high-level international summit addressing the strategic, financial, and technical growth potential and contributions of the telecom sector in India. The journey that started in 2006 seems to be losing its sheen year after year.

Issues Impacting the Show

The lack of interest in participating in the current edition of the event combined with the half-hearted interest of visitors attending India's telecom show can be attributed to myriad issues the industry has been facing for the last couple of years. Issues like the 2G scam, lack of clear policy guidelines plaguing the industry, the wait for the NTP 2011, sluggish growth of much-awaited 3G services, and financial turmoil in the world arena seem to have impacted the India's flagship telecom event to a great extent.

Page(s)   1  2