The Next Generation Network (NGN) Standardisation Forum which concluded in Colombo on Friday saw the industry discuss current trends as well as the future evolution of NGN, within a context of sharing experiences on the architecture, design, development and deployment of the technology.
Priyantha Kariyapperuma, Director General of Telecommunications Regulatory Commission of Sri Lanka which hosted this event in association with the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the Commonwealth Telecommunications Organization (CTO) told the gathering at the inauguration that this forum will showcase how far the telecommunication industry has developed in terms of meeting the sophisticated needs of the local consumer through capacity building, further consolidating its world class infrastructure while providing the latest global technology on offer.
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| At the conference |
He said that Sri Lanka is one of the first countries in the Asian region to offer 3G, 3.5G services as well as the High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) technology, which has enabled local subscribers to have access to not only voice communications, but also to a wide range of world class features such as video calling, video streaming, mobile TV, music streaming and high speed Internet. “This is a testament to what the telecommunication industry in Sri Lanka has achieved thus far, being on par with the rest of the world.”
He said the mobile subscribers in the country are three times that of the fixed line subscribers. “IT literacy in the country has jumped from 5% to 25% as at last year, which is a remarkable achievement,” he said.
Malcolm Johnson, Director, Telecommunication Standardization Bureau, (TSB), ITU in the welcome address said that mobility has been a key focus of the global studies on NGN in ITU. “Mobile technologies offer the most promising means of access to ICTs for people in developing countries.
More and more people are gaining access to ICTs and its benefits for health, education, government and business through mobile technologies and the mobile Internet. These days, mobiles need to have an increasingly sophisticated combination of services and applications if they are to sell.” He said that the ability to quickly rollout and support these value-added services is therefore essential.
“In NGN, service-related functions are independent of the underlying transport-related technologies. This means that service providers will be able to respond much more quickly to new service requirements,” he noted.
Prof. Tissa Vitharana, Minister of Science and Technology noted that it is important to curb misuse in communication and address cyber-crime. “Acts (laws) are in place to lay the controls for cyber-crime,” he said.
A wide range of topics were discussed at this forum, such as ‘Development issues at the Asia Pacific Region and Case Studies related to NGN,’ ‘An implementable NGN Architecture and its Capabilities,’ ‘Development Trends of NGN technology and systems,’ ‘Interconnection and interoperability aspects of NGN,’ and ‘Broadcasting, multicasting, person-to-person and machine-to-machine communications,’ among others. |
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