Ninth IETE Apex Forum was held on 20th December 2000 at Bangalore to discuss " ICT for Media in India". Invitations were extended to thinkers all over the country with a request to send innovative ideas, even if they were enable to participate. A background paper was prepared by collating all the ideas including personal interactions with senior opinion makers at Bangalore, specially in the field of press, publishing, television, cable T.V. etc. Four hours of intense discussions and post discussion memorunda from the participants brought out the following recommendations:-

1. Print media will flourish in the country for many years inspite of technological predictions of paperless environment. Planning should thus be done for electronic and print media fulfilling complementary roles.
2. Telecom Infrastructure needs substantial improvements like making privatization effective and a real competitor replacement of telegraph act and associated mind set to avoid blocking of facilities made available by technology, making regulator more effective, decreasing tariffs, inverting the present slab system so that the call rates are reduced for greater use, augment national level planning etc.
3. Adequate attention should be given to the content specially its quality authentication security, mature balanced policing etc.
4. Potentials of media specially the electronic media have been too meagerly utilized for education, information dissemination, national integration, rural development etc. Road blocks in this area like allocation of resources, training of professionals for generating suitable software etc are badly.
5. Deliberated decisions are needed about the introduction of technologies suitable to our needs. e.g. proliferation of TV channels, DTH etc. Professional bodies like IETE have a definite role in generating unbiased, balanced professional views about the usefulness of technological innovations to meet national needs.
6. Management and policing of frequency spectrum needs to be augmented to achieve optimum utilization of this national resource.
7. Hardware industry, specially in the fields of computers & communications needs to be encouraged so that the country can become regional supplier of ICT.