An international conference of telecom regulators conference was organised by Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on the side-lines of World Telecom Standardisation Assembly (WTSA-24) and India Mobile Congress (IMC-24) in New Delhi.
The conference was inaugurated by Dr Chandra Sekhar Pemmasani, Minister of State for Communications and Minister of State for Rural Development, in a well-attended inaugural session. The other dignitaries present at the inaugural session include Doreen Bogdan-Martin, secretary general, International Telecommunication Union (ITU), Mats Granryd, director general, GSMA, Anil Kumar Lahoti, chairman, TRAI and Atul Kumar Chaudhary, secretary, TRAI.
This conference was on theme ‘Emerging Trends in Regulation.’ Many eminent speakers from around the world, who are experts in their domain, spoke and deliberated on many important technical and regulatory issues. There were three sessions in the conference and each session was on very important and current topics and the sessions were extremely engaging with lot of deliberations and discussions.
The first session was titled ‘Regulatory Perspective in Standardisation’ in which many burning topics such as regulator’s role in standard development, standards as a tool for regulators, quality of services (QoS) by design, consumer-centric approach etc were discussed.
Further, the second session was on ‘Regulatory Aspects of Satellite Communication, including other non-terrestrial networks (NTN)’. Some of the topics dealt in this session were emerging technological developments, deployment models and use-cases of NTN, standardisation initiatives, security and privacy concerns, economic and social impact etc.
Furthermore, the third session ‘Regulatory Outlook of over-the-top (OTT) Communication Services’ addressed some complex regulatory issues pertaining to OTT communication services. Key points discussed in this session were need for OTT regulation, consumer protection issues, law enforcement and national security issues etc.
The conference received overwhelming response from regulators from around the world who have converged in New Delhi to attend WTSA-24 and IMC-24 conferences. The delegates from more than 30 countries registered for this conference and over 150 participants attended the conference including around 80 international delegates, 15 heads of regulators/ minister and domestic participants representing stakeholders from telecom industry.
In addition, a memorandum of understanding (MOU) was signed between Communications, Space and Technology (CST), the ICT regulator, Saudi Arabia and TRAI during inaugural session of the conference. The conference concluded with a call to action for regulators worldwide to collaborate and share best practices in addressing the challenges posed by emerging technologies and services.
