Collaboration market the Telco Conference at Webit

Webit Congress, the only global event for the new and emerging digital markets, hosted telecom professionals, developers and state officials as well as content providers, online retailers and brand advertisers at the Telco Conference to discuss how today’s digital era is affecting the telecommunication industry.

Istanbul - 12.10.12 - Webit Congress (www.WebitExpo.com), the only global event for the new and emerging digital markets was held on 10-11 October, 2012 in İstanbul Convention & Exhibition Centre Lütfi Kırdar, Turkey.

As one of the six paralel Congress streams, The Telco Conference especially focused on the challenges and opportunities nestled into the future of the telecom industry in core markets and near-core markets by diving into the critical issues for telcos from a consumer, business and administrative perspective. It also elaborated on opportunities for further growth, with innovative business models, smart solutions, OTT video and voice practices being the prominent themes discussed in detail by the delegates.

The conference began with the welcome speech of Karim Taga, Managing Partner and Global Practice Leader TIME at Arthur D. Little, who covered the crucial question about the future dynamics of Telco sector. The panel, titled “Telcos and Over-the-top players – Friends or Foes?”, opened new horizons about the challenges and opportunities arising from the clash between OTT and Telcos. One of the speaker of this panel, Elmar Grasser, CTO at Orange Austria said: “We need to enable every meaningful service in customer's life.”

The other discussion panel, dwelling on “The real time enterprise service space – the next “big thing” for Telcos?”, also searched for the answers about new business models which are expected to emerge in near future. The growing opportunities for Telcos to move into horizontal and vertical applications (e.g. Cloud, M2M) and the fact that real-time enabled enterprise is now becoming a mass-market phenomenon were the crucial points of this panel. The panelists also stressed that players from all vertical segments and operators are developing innovative offers around smart solutions.

“Business transformation in the telco industry towards 2020” was also an engaging discussion panel, presenting a different perspective for sector professionals. It was particularly stressed that the current situation is not encouraging and development and thus Telcos are under massive pressure to react and create new transformation models to increase growth. Last, but not least, the conference also focused on the latest eGovernment trends, led by “Smart, Open, Trusted, Connected Government” panel. During this notable discussion, the outstanding argument was the fact that public administrations have to be innovative, cost efficient and customer-oriented. Trust and security in the digital world are rising issues for both governmental infrastructures and customer-oriented services.

The Telco Conference, held during the first day of Webit Congress, also hosted CEOs and top executives of some of the most successful EMEA Telecoms, such as Khalid Omar Al Kaf, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer at Etihad Etisalat (Mobily); Yorgos Ioannidis, Chairman of the Board at Azerfon LLC; Yves Gauthier, CEO at Mobinil; Jurgen Hase, Vice President M2M, Deutsche Telekom AG as well as The Chairman of the EU Telecom reguatory Authority (BEREC) - Dr Georg Serentschy; Christian Rupp, Austrian Federal eGov Chancellery, etc.

Useful materials:

Webit Congress logo: http://www.webitexpo.com/en/webit/2012/webit_logo.html
Webit Congress pictures: http://www.webitexpo.com/en/webit/2012/webit_gallery.html
Webit Congress video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJE9QUSwPRs

Further information, please contact: 

Edelman Turkey
Elif Güvençer - elif.guvencer@edelman.com – 0530 955 45 93
Pınar Farımaz – pinar.farimaz@edelman.com – 0530 955 45 95
Duygu Nergiz – Duygu.nergiz@edelman.com – 0530 955 45 94