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Therefore,
it is essential to skill-enable and knowledge-enable
the village youth through the industry,
banking as well as academic and marketing
institutions. VKCs should act as facilitators,
he stressed.
The
President appreciated the Ministry of Communication
and Information Technology for its efforts
in establishing 100,000 Common Services
Centres, which will become part of PURA
knowledge connectivity.
Maran,
in his keynote address, said that in order
to achieve growth with equity and sustainability,
it is necessary to take technology to the
masses. This aspiration had been visualised
by the late Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi
way back in 1985, he held, adding that the
late leader had laid the foundation for
providing one PCO in every village.
The
present government's decision of providing
support from USO Fund for mobile telephony
as well as broadband services is going to
open up the vast untapped market in rural
areas of the country.
"In
fact, we are christening 2007 as the 'Year
of Broadband' in India," Maran said,
adding that presently the country's broadband
penetration is quite modest, at about three
million connections.
With
the USO scheme for coverage of rural areas
and intense coverage through WiMAX, the
DoT is expected to start adding more than
one million broadband connections per month
before the end of year 2007, he revealed.
For
this, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL)
has come out with an aggressive plan for
providing five million broadband connections
in the year 2007 itself, with a minimum
download speed of 2 mbps.
This,
he hoped, would be a real challenge for
private operators too, "either to match
it or beat it".
The
entry of Nokia into the manufacturing space,
followed by Flextronics, Motorola and a
whole lot of others, has set up the platform
for positioning India as a global hub for
telecom manufacturing. He said there were
expectations of fresh commitment of about
$2 billion in telecom manufacturing itself
in the next year or so.
"This
would be further enhanced to $20 billion
by the year 2010, with more jobs, contribution
to GDP, revenue, etc.," he said.
N
Srinivasan, vice president, FICCI, in his
welcome address said: "Recognising
the key role that telecom plays in the growth
of the economy, FICCI has joined hands with
Ministry of Communications and IT to launch
this annual event. The first event has seen
very good response from all leading telecom
players. We hope to make it a flagship event
of the telecom sector in India in coming
years."
He
said that the Indian telecom industry was
on a high growth trajectory, with over 183
million mobile subscribers in the country
today.
Srinivasan
added, "I hope this event, with the
expertise of national and international
speakers, along with inputs from all the
stakeholders with their vast and rich knowledge
domain, will bring out useful recommendations
for policymakers."
The
international exhibition will showcase products
and technologies from over one hundred companies,
both domestic and international. The Indian
telecom industry is being represented by
companies like Bharti Airtel Limited, BSNL,
C-DOT, Hutchison Essar Mobile Services Ltd,
COAI, Qualcomm India Pvt Ltd. Reliance Communication
Ltd. etc.
Among
the international participants there are
companies from Canada, China, Singapore,
Hong Kong, and Italy, while Taiwan, Korea
and US .companies will be seen in independent
pavilions.
India
Telecom 2006 has been organised by the Department
of Telecommunications, Ministry of Communications
and IT in association with Federation of
Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry
(FICCI) and Telecom Equipment Manufactures'
Association (TEMA).
The
main sponsors are BSNL, Nokia, Ericsson,
Reliance Communications and ZTE. MTNL is
the co-sponsor, while the Associate Sponsors
are Airtel, Idea Cellular, Tata Indicom,
Qualcomm and UT Starcomm.
Ernst
& Young are the Knowledge partners.
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