ICT sector, regulators meet in Dakar

BUSINESS

ICT industry representatives and regulators met in Senegal Tuesday for the third Global Industry Leaders’ Forum, ahead of the Global Symposium of Regulators (GSR), which gets underway on Wednesday.

Fatou Ndiaye Diop Blondin, Senegal’ s Minister of Information and Communication Technologies, welcomed delegates to the ITU GILF 2010 opening ceremony in Dakar.

ITU Telecommunication Development Bureau Director Sami Al Basheer Morshid said at the opening of the event that industry that governments and regulators had the same goals: a growing and vibrant ICT Sector.

He said: “ If by working together we manage to extend the benefits of ICT to as many people as possible across the world, we will stand to win. We have seen that the fastest growing ICT markets are the emerging markets, in particular in mobile. We now need to work together to extend this progress to broadband network expansion, to create a platform for innovative new services such as m-banking, m-government, m-health and other services.”

Under discussion were matters such as a regulatory environment that stimulates competition. A report emerging from the Global Industry Leaders’ Forum will be presented to the GSR on Wednesday.

The GSR, to run for the next three days, will examine the challenges for regulators to stimulate nationwide broadband deployment through adaptive and targeted regulations and out-of-the-box tools.

It will focus on the impact of broadband on and beyond the ICT sector as well as the driving forces of today’ s and tomorrow’ s ICT markets, notably the migration from analogue to digital terrestrial broadcasting and the allocation of the digital dividend.

GSR10 will also focus on the need to keep up with the pace of convergence and integration of ubiquitous networks, in particular through adapting institutional structure and mandates, adopting cutting-edge best practices and embracing new tools such as innovative dispute resolution techniques.