The fourth technical meeting on telecommunications held by the Community of Portuguese-speaking Countries - Comunidade de Países de Língua Oficial Portuguesa (CPLP) has taken place in Maputo, Mozambique. The theme for this year's meeting, held on 19 and 20 October 2006, was ''Regulation development in CPLP countries''.
The first panel of the meeting, which looked at how telecommunication sectors are evolving in CPLP countries, saw presentations made by the various delegations on their national scenarios. Among the key developments reported to the panel were: the possible entry of third operators of mobile telephone services into the Angolan and Guinea-Bissau markets, the recent creation of the General Regulation Authority - Autoridade Geral de Regulação (AGER) in Sao Tome and Principe, a drive to increase telephone density and ease of internet access in Cape Verde, poor telecommunication service coverage in the rural areas of Mozambique and the need for institutional support in East Timor.
The other panels of the meeting devoted their time to discussing universal access, the regulation of satellite networks in developing countries and the spread of the respective services to rural areas, looking at issues such as International Telecommunications Union (ITU) procedures for the coordination of satellite projects and the situation regarding international satellite operators, in particular INTELSAT. The subject of broadband was also featured with presentations made by Portugal, Brazil and Mozambique on the application and regulation of third generation networks licensing.
Finally Portugal and Brazil made reference to the work being done in preparation for the next ITU Plenipotentiary Conference (PP-06), which will be taking place in Turkey from the 6 to 24 of November. The two countries also invited the support for their candidatures to the bodies of the ITU, where they would be able to ensure that the interests of other Portuguese speaking countries are properly and actively represented.
The next technical meeting on telecommunications of CPLP countries, which will take place at the end of September 2007, will be hosted by Cape Verde.
