John Hibbard, CEO, Hibbard Consulting, Australia

The annual PTC conference was again a great success. Under the guidance of the recently appointed Executive Director, Sharon Nakama, the conference attracted increased attendance reflecting the health of the industry. This year, the content was particularly stimulating attracting engaged audiences in the sessions. Amongst the high points was the wholesale session chaired by Steve McClelland [see separate articles linked below] which provoked considerable thought and reinforced the messages contained in the submarine cable and global traffic sessions which preceded it.

It was probably the best conference yet for the networkers. With WiFi access in the Tapa Bar of the Hilton, the crossroads of global telecommunications became even more active than ever, particularly as the weather was ideal for alfresco negotiations. Probably the most exciting element was the number of significant announcements that were made at or just before the conference stimulating healthy discussion and reflection.

Morley Winograd, Executive Director, Center for Telecoms Management, University of Southern California, USA

There was a renewed sense of energy and optimism at the 2008 PTC conference. While the opening plenary focused on the challenges of having regulation keep pace with the rapid technological advances in the industry, most of the conference sessions preceded on the assumption that regulators would either catch up or get out of the way. For instance, Sri Lanka’s Dialogue group presented a cutting edge view of how to use IMS in the backbone network to provide applications that would be attractive to the mobile, entertainment-oriented Millennial generation. NTT DoCoMo, in the same session, gave everyone a peek at the future of 4G mobile technologies and the services they would enable.

Meanwhile, the improved financial picture for the industry provided for both PTC and the conferees to think anew about the need to bring the benefits of all these new technologies to the entire region. An overflow crowd of researchers and practitioners, brainstormed for an hour over lunch on all that PTC could do to enable the more robust deployment of ICT in emerging economies. The “special interest group’s” ideas were supported and encouraged when presented the next day to the Board of Governors.

These interactions and others gave new momentum to PTC as it plans its mid-year conference in Singapore in June at the time of CommunicAsia. Hopefully, when PTC reconvenes for its annual meeting in January of 2009 many of these cutting edge ideas will be well on their way to being implemented.