World Telecom confab opens in Accra...Daily Graphic (Spread)... Tues May 27/08

Story Rebecca Quaicoe Duho
GHANA is hosting a three-day international telecommunication forum in Accra as a prelude to the World Telecommunication Standardisation Assembly (WTSA) to be held in October this year in Johannesburg, South Africa.
The forum, which began today, is a preparatory meeting being organised by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) on the theme, “Bridging the ICT standardisation gap in developing countries for the Africa Region”.
Participants drawn from different countries in Africa include those from national regulatory bodies, government officials, telecommunication operators and service providers and they will deliberate on standardisation issues of common concern to the continent, as well as consider relevant issues and adopt common proposals for presentation to the WTSA.
Towards the WTSA meeting, the various regions which, include Africa, Arab, Asia-Pacific, the Caribbean, America and Eastern and Western Europe of the ITU, conduct their preparatory meetings to come up with issues of concern to their various continents.
The Minister of Communications, Dr Benjamin Aggrey Ntim, in a keynote address, said Ghana’s ICT policy statement set out the road map for the development of an information society and economy and provided a basis for facilitating accelerated national development.
“With the policy, Ghana has pledged to further develop the country’s ICT ambitions, focusing on improving the quality of its entrepreneurs and status as an outsourcing destination,” he said.
He added that Ghana’s ICT policy document had identified 14 priority areas, along with key drivers of the policy, which he enumerated as accelerated human resource development, promoting ICT in education, facilitating government administration, facilitating the development of the private sector, modernisation of agriculture, deployment and spread of ICT in the community and the promotion of national health.
The rest were rapid ICT physical infrastructure development, legal, regulatory and institutional framework, facilitating national security and law and order.
The Director of the Telecommunications Standardisation Bureau, Mr Malcolm Johnson, in an opening remark, said the African Region had an important role to play in the process of standardising telecommunication across the globe.
Standardisation, he said, was a complex business and that it was getting more complex by the day, but added that standards were essential for international communications and global trade.
Mr Johnson, who enumerated some of the benefits of standardisation, said global standards avoided costly market battles over preferred technologies, saying companies from emerging markets created a level playing field which provided access to new markets.
He added that they were an essential aid to developing countries in building their infrastructure and encouraging economic development, saying that they could reduce costs for manufacturers, operators and consumers through economies of scale.
In his welcoming address, the Secretary-General of the African Telecommunications Union, Dr Akossi Akossi, was of the conviction that the outcome of the forum would fulfil the union’s expectation of improving infrastructure for attaining industrialisation by 2015, as well as improving the way businesses were done on the continent.
He was hopeful that the forum would help identify components for the retention of skilled human resource, especially ICT skills, within the continent.