Apex Forum Meeting on “Growth of Telecom in India: Challenges & Opportunities” was the first meeting in the year of Golden Jubilee celebrations, held on Nov 27, 2002 at IETE HQ. The forum was inaugurated by Shri Shyamal Ghosh, Chairman, USO Fund, DoT Govt. of India. The keynote address was delivered by Dr D P S Seth, Member Telecom Services DoT. The forum deliberations were conducted in two sessions. Shri P S Saran, Former Secretary DoT Services and Shri S Rajagopal former CMD, MTNL moderated the sessions. The Forum agenda focussed on telecom policy related issues in India, changes in the competitive environment, importance of the private and public sector, impact of technological changes on affecting competition and consolidation of the sector. Shri P N Chopra, Chairman Industrial Coordination Committee and Convenor of the Apex Forum in his welcome address briefly introduced the subject and revealed IETE’s plan to conduct four such Apex Forum meetings at different places in the country on; “Education & Research: Role of NGO’s” at Bangalore in Feb 2003, “ Education” at Pune in April 2003, “Privatization & Liberalization in Telecommunication Sector: Opportunities for Economic Growth” at Hyderabad in July 2003 and “ICE and Education Industry” at Chennai in July 2003.

Prof K K Aggarwal in his presidential address dwelt on how the selection of the theme of the Apex Forum was appropriate and timely. He said that we have to put our efforts together in ensuring quality of service in adequate measure so that it reaches to every sector of society through out the geographic areas of our country at an affordable cost. Shri Shyamal Ghosh, in his inaugural address gave an account of the existing telecom scenario in the country and presented a SWOT analysis of the subject. He talked about universal connectivity and gave out most ambitious model for our country for setting up Telecentres in rural and remote areas with the help of universal service fund. Dr DPS Seth in his keynote address presented a picture of the existing telecom network of the country and also on the future National Telecom scenario. In his opinion higher quantum of USO funds was needed for boosting up the rural telecommunication connectivity.

Shri S Rajagopal said that licensing of services should be minimal and suggested that the service providers should carefully workout their business plans. Wg Cdr T R Dua, Director Bharati Enterprises talked about convergence, relevance of convergence in Indian context, formulation of convergence policy and the need to define clear migration path for the existing licensees. Shri Amitabh Singhal of ISPA expressed the view that the existing number of categories of licenses needs to be reduced. He suggested more independence for CCI. Shri Manjit Singh traced the growth of telecom network in the country. Shri P K Garg, Wireless Advisor talked about the essentiality of rules & regulations in spectrum management. Shri O P Gupta, Secretary General of the Telecom Employees union spoke on the difficulties of the existing telecom cadre to adopt new technologies. Col Gupta presented a model of wireless solution for rural communication. He said that a telecentre in each village would provide required rural connectivity and also improve national teledensity.