World Telecommunication Day 1999 |
Telecom 99 in Geneva, Switzerland opens its doors to the world's press today for a preview of what industry and government visitors will be seeing from Oct. 10 to 17 - a glimpse into the future of telecommunications.
Over 200,000 visitors from government, industry and finance will crowd the halls of Geneva's Palexpo for this quadrennial event, which has become known as the ''Olympics of telecommunications.'' The first Telecom was organized by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in 1971, and both the organization and its showcase event have gained in size and stature since then, reflecting the growing importance of telecommunications to the global economy. It was recently decided to bring the show back to Geneva in 2003.
The Forum's opening session on the morning of Oct. 10 includes keynote speeches by Yoshio Utsumi, secretary-general of the ITU; John Roth, chief executive officer of Nortel Networks; and Erkki Liikanen, commissioner in charge of enterprise and the information society for the EC. The afternoon session features addresses by Louis Gerstner, Jr., chief executive officer of IBM; Wu Jichuan, Chinese minister of information industries; and an all-star panel of executives.
The Telecom 99 exhibition includes Interactive 99, a follow-up to the ITU's 1997 event, Telecom Interactive 97, which brought together not only telecommunications and IT representatives, but also those from the entertainment industry and content providers.
Claudia Flisi