Minister of Communications and Information Technology Dr. Tarek Kamel inaugurated today the fifth International Conference on Information and Communications Technology (ICICT 2007).

Under the theme “Media Convergence: Moving to the Next Generation: Towards Exploiting the Benefits of Next Generation Networks,” the conference focuses on the convergence of ICT and media applications.

The three-day event has been organized by Information Technology Institute (ITI) in cooperation with the IEEE section in Egypt.

"This event is a new step towards a constructive long-term dialogue between the ICT and media sectors," Dr. Kamel said.

According to Kamel, the ICT-media convergence process faced many challenges in its first steps, including, but not limited to, the availability of a reliable infrastructure, a regulatory framework and a promising market capable of absorbing such technologies.

Egypt in President Mubarak's era, Dr. Kamel added, has effectively managed to develop its ICT infrastructure to posses one of the biggest networks in the Middle East.
 
On his part, ITI Chairman Dr. Mohamed Salem said representatives from the USA, China, Germany, France, Canada, Malaysia, Iran, South Korea, Finland, Italy, Britain, Greece, Tunisia and Algeria in addition to Egypt are attending the conference.

Dr. Salem added that a number of high-profiled ICT executives from several international companies, others from private and public sector companies, academics and researchers are also participating in the conference to demonstrate their papers on issues related to the field. 

Meanwhile, ICICT 2007 has been preceded by two days tutorials on mobile commerce, mobile games, mobile TV and IPTV and VoD.

The collaboration between the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology and that of Information primarily depends on ICT-media convergence. Based on a cooperation protocol agreement singed between the two ministries, the ITI began a training program on ICT-media convergence technologies. The program is directed to 1000 of the Egyptian Radio and Television Union employees. The first training course was held in November.