India Telecom Summit 2007
Dcecember 12, 2007, New Delhi

Special Address by Thiru A. Raja, Hon'ble Union Minister of Communications and Information and Technology

Dr. Shakeel Ahmad, Minister of State for Communications & IT
Thiru Habil Khorakiwala, President, FICCI
Thiru Zhao Houlin, Deputy Secretary General, ITU
Thiru D. S. Mathur, Secretary, Department of Telecom
Thiru R. Bandyopadhyay, Additional Secretary, Deptt. of Telecom
Thiru Amit Mitra, Secretary General, FICCI
Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is a pleasure for me to be here on the occasion of signing of MoUs between Government, Industry sponsors and renowned educational institutions of the country to set up four more Telecom Centers of Excellence across the country. This event has immense significance for Indian Telecom sector. Department of Telecom and Industry deserve congratulations for their good work and I hope that they will together continue to maintain this growth trajectory in future also.

To be a world leader and to reach masses we have to use state of the art technology especially in wireless domain. While we have adopted all the leading communication technologies in the world, we also need to see an Indian face of technologies such as E-commerce, Tele working, E-governance, E-health and E-education etc. that affect day to day life of common man. This is a must to enable embracing of technologies by the masses. This will also bridge the digital divide and will lead to harnessing of full potential of our telecom growth. While the growth of telecom sector is very satisfactory, it is essential to foster development of Telecom R&D facilities in India. We, as a country, have special requirements especially for rural and remote areas and indigenous R&D would be able to address those requirements effectively.

There is also a need to work closely with International Telecommunication Union to evolve the future standards for the telecommunications that reflect India's needs which has a large consumer base of the world. It is, therefore, very appropriate that we have Thiru Zhao Houlin, Deputy Secretary General, ITU with us today. We have to seize the opportunity and make full use of it.

The concept of cluster of Centers of Excellence (COEs) across the country is a timely move for inculcating the best practices, nurturing innovations and acting as incubator for R&D efforts. MoUs for 2 COEs have already been signed in October 2007. Today is a landmark day with another five MoUs for COEs have been signed by the IIT Delhi with Airtel, IIT Kanpur with BSNL, IIT Mumbai with Tata Teleservices, IISc Bangalore with Aircel and the Government of India. This is one of the most important Public Private Partnership initiatives in the Indian Telecom sector. It also has a unique concept of Coordination Center to facilitate collaborative research and sharing of research findings. With setting up of these 7 COEs, I expect qualitative improvement in telecom research in the country to begin.

I am happy that a round table is being held as a part of this event to explore areas of collaboration for these COEs with 9 universities from USA, UK, Canada and Australia. This is a welcome step and I am hopeful that some meaningful relationships would shape up through these initiatives.

I thank the IITs, IISc, and our telecom companies for their support to this innovative scheme of Telecom COEs and hope that these Centers of Excellence with active support from all stake holders will become crown jewels of Indian Telecom sector in time to come.

Thank you.