Dialog hosts GSM Asia Pacific Conference

Dialog Telekom PLC is to host the 29th GSM Asia Pacific Conference of the GSM Association to be held in Colombo Sri Lanka, September 07 to 10. This year’s conference aptly titled ‘Beyond 21’ will coincide with the 21st Anniversary of GSM.

The selection of Colombo, Sri Lanka as the venue for this important event in the regional GSM calendar indicates the stature of the local telecommunications industry, and the acceptance of Sri Lanka as a preferred location for international summits.

GSMA Asia Pacific, the regional interest group of the GSM Association consists of 49 countries and over 130 GSM operators. The Asia Pacific Interest Group spans the Pacific rim and includes Australia, New Zealand and China, and the South East Asia includes Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong.

The region accounts for over 50 per cent of the world’s population and 42 per cent of the world’s GSM mobile subscribers. Colombo’s conference is tipped to attract over 150 delegates from member operators, as well as from the associate business partners.

In line with its vibrant theme, ‘Beyond 21’, the conference aims to draw attention to some of the key areas relating to the past, present and future of GSM, with special emphasis on actionable solutions and strategies to the issues faced by industry stakeholders in the region.

The two day conference will be dedicated to presentations by experts from diverse fields providing critical insights on products and services based on GSM and 3GSM with near term applicability, network infrastructures and deployment strategies targeting low cost high growth markets, multi-media device strategies based on 3G communications, service context extensions such as mobile commerce and topical issues on 3G-based voice and data International Roaming.

Chairperson GSMA Asia Pacific, and Chief Executive Officer, Dialog Global Anoja J. Obeyesekere, said, “Dialog is extremely honoured to host this event in partnership with our sponsors. Asia Pacific completely dominates the growth picture with net additions of 145 million connections as at June 2008, more than four times the growth of any other region.

As the region that holds the key to the growth of the industry, it is imperative we congregate to deliberate issues that are common to member countries and to formulate strategies that are vital to the growth of the industry in the region.”

World leaders in mobile technology, Huawei Technologies and Ericsson have pledged their support for the conference as Tier-1 and Tier-2 sponsors respectively, and will present the future of mobile telecommunications at the technology session.

Apart from Huawei Technologies and Ericsson, Orange-France Telecom Group, Satyam Computer Services Ltd, TATA Communications and Alcatel-Lucent will also participate at the conference as Tier-3 Sponsors.