Spectrum Futures gears up for 2015 Event

Some 40 attendees and 21 speakers were part of the the inaugural Pacific Telecommunications Council Spectrum Futures conference, held in Singapore Oct. 29 and 30, 2014, featuring a half-day "regulators only" session and a full-day general conference. 

A one-minute video about the event gives you the flavor of the event, intended to bring together regulators, service providers, infrastructure suppliers, app providers, policy advisors, consultants and others working to bring Internet access to billions of people across South and Southeast Asia.

The Pacific Telecommunications Council, a professional, non-profit organization has been working for 30 years to promote and advance the commercial use of information and communication technologies and services for the benefit of the peoples of the Pacific region. 

This blog will allow us to share information as we create Spectrum Futures 2015, to be held again in Singapore in the autumn. 

We learned quite a lot from holding the first event. Among the key take-aways is the need to get the program content developed far earlier. This blog will seek to provide details, as they are developed and revised, about the program content, themes and activities.

The formal Spectrum Futures site is where you will be able to register for the event and get venue details. 

We will be seeking subject matter experts to share expertise in a number of areas, including, but not limited to:
* regulatory and policy issues (spectrum sharing, TV white spaces, balancing investment and social goals, perspectives from regions outside Asia, spectrum reallocation issues, ways that regulatory actions affect ability to widely deliver low-cost and affordable access)
* technology (mobile Internet access, TV white spaces, Wi-Fi, shared spectrum, satellite access)
* business models (revenue models, retail packaing, cost models, sustainability issues, end user demand issues, sponsored apps or access, devices)

Attendees asked for more time to network, mingle and meet "offline," so we will add more time for such activities. 

As always, we will work to maximize interaction, peer-to-peer discussion and sharing, and minimize slideware data dumps, in keeping with PTC's historic "ohana" (family) approach and atmosphere. 

Strictly speaking, ohana is used only for "blood" relations, the term "hui" being used for intentional and non-familial relationships, but you get the point. 

The emphasis will continue to be on South Asia and Southeast Asia, with the intention of bringing the best, and most-current thinking from practitioners elsewhere in the world working on the same issues.