ITU Telecom World 2006 conference

This article in BuisnessWeek reports on this ITU conference being held now in Hong Kong. While you might find some of the details interesting, I think the big picture is what matters most to this School. That would be that excitement (and investment) around the telecom industry are up. It is in a very optimistic place these days, which, hopefully, bodes well for enrollments in our programs. Quoting from the article:

At the last ITU Telecom World confab held in Geneva back in 2003, the mood was decidedly grim. After all, the industry was still reeling from overcapacity problems, a deep profit recession, and massive layoffs from the bursting of a global telecom bubble in 2000. Only a year earlier, the U.S.'s No. 2 long-distance carrier, WorldCom, had gone bust under the weight of $40-billion plus in debt in the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history and had been nailed for massive accounting fraud.

This time around, for the 2006 ITU global gathering that kicked off Dec. 2, the world's biggest telecom companies, handset purveyors, equipment makers, and government regulators have shifted the venue for the first time from Geneva to Hong Kong.

The Geneva-based ITU (or International Telecommunications Union) is the United Nations agency focused on information and communication technology issues. And the industry outlook is far brighter, what with the rise of China and India, big spikes in global mobile phone usage, and the recent rollout of wireless technologies and next-generation, high-speed networks.