Covenant University has successfully flagged off its International Conference on "3G GSM and Mobile Computing: An Emerging Growth Engine for National Development" on Monday, January 29, 2007.
The opening ceremony of the three-day conference, which was chaired by the Chancellor of the University, Dr David Oyedepo, attracted eminent scholars, captains of industry, operators and regulators in the communication industry across the globe.
It also attracted major communication giants like Huawei technologies, Ericsson, Alcatel as well as Nigerian electronic payment firm, e-Transact, who exhibited their products and services.
While declaring the conference open, the Chancellor charged the participants to proffer solution to the bugging problems confronting the nation’s telecommunication industry so as to make Nigeria a major player in the fast developing GSM technology.
Dr Oyedepo decried the high cost of GSM technology and called for dynamic policies to reverse the trend. He said that was necessary because a consumer would always be at the mercy of producers.
Earlier in her welcome address, the Vice Chancellor, Prof Aize Obayan, said the epochal event was designed to ensure that Nigeria develop and maintain competitive relevance in the fast emerging technologies of the 21st Century.
The Vice Chancellor said the emergence of GSM had definitely ranked with that of the personal computer (PC) in defining our contextual base on a global platform, cautioning that while celebrating those developments, it would be absolutely essential that we recognize that those breakthroughs in themselves open up further opportunities for maximizing the communication technology interface.
She said 3G phone was a representation of technological advancement that had continued to be the future of the telecommunications world, saying that it was essential that as a nation we do not only keep in touch with the implications of the new developments but engaging its wider ramifications in striving to place ourselves in a position which gives us the full benefits of its provisions while striving to get into a prime position to be a part of the further development in the new advances into 4G GSM and so on.
The Minister of Science and Technology, Prof Tuner Isoun, who was represented by Mrs Omowunmi Hassan, said telecommunications industry in Nigeria had grown so rapidly that the nation was now being referred to as the fastest growing market around the world, which necessitated the need to move to the 3G technologies.
He said the implication of migration to 3G by all the GSM operators in Nigeria would mean more support for data communication over GSM network. He, however, regretted that in the country, telecommunications development was still wholly dependent on foreign technologies, adding that investment by multinationals meant a mere relocation of facilities without the transfer of ability to innovate locally or develop new competences in critical areas ‘since all the elements of technology required to make telecommunication succeed are most often transferred in a package."
Earlier in his address, the Chairman of the Local Organizing Committee, Dr Victor Matthews, said the objective of the conference was, among other things, to sensitize the academic environment of the new trend in mobile communication and computing and thereby bringing to the forefront, the positive implications of those emerging technologies and their roles in national economy as well as bringing under one umbrella the telecommunication industries and the academics, in order to foster relationships for collaborative research in IT.