Students to attend annual telecom conference
Advertiser Staff
More than 100 students from high schools on O'ahu and the Neighbor Islands will participate for the first time in the 24th annual Pacific Telecommunications Conference next month.
The Pacific Telecommunications Council and the Hawai'i Department of Education have invited students from local public and private high schools to meet exhibitors during the conference and learn about the latest products and trends in the telecommunications industry.
Participating schools include Castle, Kalani, Kapaa, Kealakehe, King Kekaulike, McKinley, Mililani, Farrington, La Pietra, Iolani and Wai'anae.
Council executive director Hoyt Zia said the move is an effort to broaden the conference's reach, and offer Hawai'i students more exposure to the rapidly expanding telecommunications industry.
The annual conference — titled "Next Generation Communications: Making IT Work" — draws hundreds of representatives from business, education, and government from the Pacific and the Mainland for networking, workshops, discussions, exhibits and meetings.
Exhibitors at the conference Jan. 13-17 will include Boeing, France Telecom, General Telecom, Intelsat, JSAT Corp., Kapolei Hawaii, NetEnterprise Inc., Pihana Pacific, Redcom Laboratories, Time Warner Telecom and Worldcom.
Keynote speakers will include Sir Christopher Gent, chief executive of U.K.-based telecom giant Vodafone Group Plc, and Yang Seung-Taik, South Korea's minister of information and communication. Gent has overseen the growth of Vodafone into the largest company in Europe based on market capitalization and the largest telecommunications company of its kind globally.
The Honolulu-based council is an international, non-profit membership organization that promotes development of telecommunications and related industries in the Pacific with an emphasis on developing countries.
