Sixth Meeting of the Subregional Telecommunications Forum (STCF-6): Summary of Proceedings

The Sixth Meeting of the Subregional Telecommunications Forum (STCF-6) was held in Hanoi, Viet Nam on 27-28 October 2004. It was co-organized by the Ministry of Posts and Telematics of the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam (SRV) and the Asian Development Bank (ADB).

The STCF-6 meeting discussed the following:

1. Developments in the telecommunications sector in the GMS countries;
2. Status of implementation of the Telecommunications Backbone flagship program;
3. Status of implementation of the RETA 6004: GMS Telecommunications Policy Formulation and Capacity Building Project;
4. Results of the joint capacity building program (with the International Telecommunications Union) under RETA 6004;
5. Results of the demand study for the rural access to the Information and Communications Technology in Cambodia, Lao POR, and Viet Nam;
6. Future actions for other ongoing initiatives including the GMS Information Highway initiative and telecommunications training program provided by the Ministry of Information Industry (MII) of the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) for the GMS telecommunications officials;
7. PRC experiences in rural telecommunication development as well as universal service obligation (USO); and
8. Priority areas for the sector and the way forward.