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CU hosts International
Conference on 3G Mobile Phone
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.
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Chancellor, Dr
David Oyedepo in a group photograph with
participants |
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.
Click here to view
pictures of the event |
