A major telecom event in one of the most exciting markets in the world, India, is underway in New Delhi, Dec 12-14, 2007.

LIRNEasia presented its teleuse@BPO research at the first session: rs_indiatelecom07_final.ppt/   The central message was that India had to take the road less traveled by, focusing on developing the mobile as an interface to the Internet and its communication, information retrieval, publishing, transacting, etc. functionalities, if it is not to leave behind the people at the Bottom of the Pyramid.   A most fascinating presentation by Steve Rondel of Conversay showed that voice interface with the mobile was not as distant as some think it might be.

Contrary to the idea of developing the mobile as the next Internet device preferably using voice and other alternatives to data input and command, several speakers from Nokia Siemens proposed an interesting solution for low cost voice telephony for villages, where intra-village communications would stay inside the village and only the small percentage of calls intended for the outside would actually go to the backbone and beyond.