Rohan Samarajiva and Divakar Goswami, chaired sessions at the first Telecom World event , ITU Telecom World 2006, to be held in Asia, in Hong Kong SAR, 3-8 December 2006. This event, held once in four years, is normally held in Geneva. It was moved to Hong Kong to recognize the leading role of the Asia Pacific in the ICT sector today (see Figure 1).Samarajiva and Goswami were the only persons from Sri Lanka featured in the program of the Forum at Telecom World.
Figure 1: 
Goswami, lead researcher on LIRNEasia’s Indonesia ICT sector and regulatory performance study, chaired a session that included keynote presentations by Dr Sofyan Djalil, the Indonesian Minister of ICTs. Samarajiva’s session on universal access included keynotes by the Vice President of China Unicom, Dr Zhengmao Li, and Tom Philllips, the Head of Regulatory Affairs at the GSM Association.
LIRNEasia has an ongoing research program that covers India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Philippines, Sri Lanka and Thailand, in addition to capacity building work across the entire Asia Pacific. The invitations to chair the said sessions demonstrated the high recognition that LIRNEasia has achieved in the two years of its existence. Samarajiva and Goswami are the only representatives from non-profit research organizations invited as session chairs, outside the US, the UK and the host country.
Samarajiva was an invited speaker at previous Forums– Telecom Asia 2004 (Busan, Korea), Telecom Asia 2002 (Hong Kong), Telecom Africa 2001 (Johannesburg) and Telecom World 1999 (Geneva)—, and chaired the ITU expert workshop on fixed-mobile interconnection in 2000 and served on the ITU Secretary General’s Expert Group on International Telecommunication Regulations, 1999-2000.
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See Daily Mirror Financial Times (LK) coverage:
LIRNEasia to fly Lankan flag high at ITU Telecom World 2006 event http://www.dailymirror.lk/2006/12/07/ft/2.asp