Asia Pacific Set To Ride Crest Of Telecom Boom

With a 100 per cent teledensity growth every year, the Asia Pacific region is the telecom market of the future, speakers at the final strategy session of Asia Telecom 97 concluded here yesterday.

The five-day conference-cum-exhibition ended on a firm note that an Asia Pacific information society, riding the tidal wave of telecom investments and technologies, would shape tomorrows world. The event was jointly organised by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the international telecom regulator, and the Telecom Authority of Singapore (TAS).

The region will lead the world towards the land of the information age, Henry Chasia, ITU deputy secretary said here yesterday. President and chief executive officer of AT&T Asia Pacific John Legere felt that the world was witnessing a telecoms revolution and Asia Pacific was the place of victory.

 

Chasia and Legere were speaking at the concluding strategy session of the event titled Asia moves into the information age here. The conference-cum-exhibition is estimated to have had over 2,000 registered participants, about 300 exhibitors and an estimated 10,000 visitors until Thursday.

The Asia Pacific region together is expected to need investments of almost $200 billion (Rs 720,000 crore) in the four-year period 1996-2000 in the telecoms sector. Twenty-seven low income countries, including China and India, are projected to soak up more than three-quarters of this amount. China alone will need over $100 billion (Rs 360,000 crore) to meet its rollout targets, with India ($18 billion or Rs 65,000 crore) following at a distant second.

Teledensity (the number of telephone lines per 100 people) growth in Asia is expected to jump 111 per cent annually. By the year 2000, the number of actual lines will more than double to 375 million, Legere said.

To give an example of the enormous expansion, China is planning to install telephone lines at the rate each year equivalent to the size of a US Bell regional holding company or, put another way, they will duplicate Australias entire national network every year. The Project teledensity growth rate in the US pales in comparison to the Pac Rim with a 15 per cent growth opportunity expected by the year 2000, he explained.