SAARC communications industry CEOs meet at Kathmandu

Kathmandu

October 25th, 2007

Over a 100 CEOs, representing both the service providers and regulators from
the SAARC region, are converging for their sixth annual CEO conference in
Kathmandu starting today (October 25, 2007) to decide on strategies on how to
provide telecom access to the millions living in the 2nd and 3rd tier towns,
semi-urban and rural areas.

CEOs from India, Pakistan , Sri Lanka, Bangladesh , Nepal, Bhutan and
Maldives will spend their time devising strategies for taking telecom beyond
cities and learn from experiences of the individual countries.

Speaking before the conference Pradeep Gupta, Chairman, CyberMedia, the
publishers of Voice&Data, Dataquest and Dare said, "With the emergence
of Internet, telecom is becoming a meta resource for economic development of
developing nations. Leaders from the seven SAARC nations will shed their
geographic boundaries to carve out strategies to deploy telecom to accelerate
economic development in the region."

The industry representatives will also discuss crucial areas like telecom
penetration, quality of service, adoption of new technologies, and above all
affordability. Prasanto K Roy Chief Editor of Voice&Data says that the
three-day Voice&Data CEO Conclave will bring together the industry think
tank together on the same platform and facilitate the creation of a plan to
address major access, affordability and technology issues.

The CEO Conclave will also use the opportunity to identify and present SAARC
Innovation Awards for the Telecom Industry.

The Conclave will also host the first summit of the SAARC Telecom Advisory
Council (STAC) that will draw up a roadmap for telecom for 2008 and beyond.

The sixth Voice&Data CEO Conclave will also address opportunities for
SAARC cooperation for meeting individual country telecom targets.

Shankar Prasad Koirala, IT and Telecom Secretary, Ministry of Information and
Communications, Nepal and Dinesh Kumar Sharma, Chairman , Nepal Telecom
Authority will represent the host country.

From India , Kulbeer Goyal, CMD, BSNL, RN Prabhakar, Member of TRAI and SK
Vasistha, MD Railtel will spearhead the discussions.

Suren Jeevaka Amarasekera, CEO, Mobitel, Sri Lanka; V. Ravi Sankar, COO, VSNL
Lanka; Nayeem M Chaowhury, Director. WorldTel, Bangladesh; Sultan ul Arfeen,
Chairman, Telecard Limited, Pakistan and Ahmad Maumoon, Broadband and Fixed,
Dhiraagu, Maldives will be eminent telecom leaders from their respective
countries.

Hari Dev Khosla, Deputy Chief Operating Officer, Tata Teleservices
Maharashtra Limited and Bharti Airtel's CMO-East Hub G.V. Krishnan will
represent the eminent private sector players. Satyen Gupta, Chief Regulatory
Advisor, SAARC Region, British Telecom Global.