Experts on Thursday observed Pakistan can meet the modern day fast rising challenges with attaining technological development in telecom and IT fields. Speaking at the 6th Annual Pakistan Telecommunications Conference 2013 (TeleCON 2013), experts said the country has the opportunity to shift to new telecom technologies such as 3G or 4G.
Officials from government, corporate, business, social sectors besides academic institutions attended the conference: "The Next Wave in Telecommunications: The Digitalized Society/Consumer," at a local hotel.
Experts from a number of telecom and IT sectors gave their views of the present day technological progress through presentations and explained the participants how to attain development in the field. Believing the country can grow in the field of IT, the experts outlined different areas of development during their speeches. They also pointed out shortcomings of the country's lack of growth in the field, saying Pakistan is still lagging behind many countries for being a slow-starter to develop new technologies. Worldwide, countries emerged fast to shift from 3-G/LTE to 4-G systems and looking forward to adopt new technologies. However, experts were optimists about the country which can grow to embrace the technological changes.
Senior Vice President of PTCL, Furqan Qureshi said the country despite having problems can attain the growth in the field of IT and telecom and capitalise on available opportunities to benefit the nation. Chairman and Chief Executive of JJ Media (Pvt) Ltd, Javed Jabbar gave a keynote speech at the conference, saying a "new wave" has an impact on the country's telecommunication field and good governance in national institutions.
The first session was on "The Telecom Cloud Opportunity" which Dr Khawar Khokhar, Ex-Director Technical, PTA chaired. A representative of Cisco Systems, Babar Shahbaz Ahmed and Advisor to Systems Ltd, Ashraf Kapadia talked about cloud computing technology.
They said the cloud computing technology is about building a shared pool of configurable computing resources including network, servers, storage, applications and services, besides providing a "better" return on investment. Country Manager, 03b Networks/Interactive Group, Nadeem Safdar, CEO Trango Interactive, Shehryar Hydri and Dean at Habib University Foundation, Dr Charles Timothy were the expert speakers at the second session on "A New Generation of Cellular Standards".
They highlighted the new generation of standards that enables an entire new range of revolutionary telecom facilities for streamlining economic functions and social outreach. CEO at AUC Technologies, Asadullah Chaudhry, Head of Telecom Dept, Institute of Business Management, Seema Ansari and President of P@SHA Jehan Ara spoke at the concluding session of the conference. The session was on "Innovations in Telecommunication & Information Technology Sector" which Managing Director, Pakistan Software Export Board (PSEB) Mohammad Anwer Sheikh chaired to represent the Ministry of IT & Telecommunication.
Earlier, Chairman of TeleCON 2013, Menin Rodrigues spoke at the conference, saying the industry has shown a remarkable performance and created some empowering services, products and events. He was of the view the telephony changed and reshaped lives in the country.