Events, ITU, Bulgaria, CEE: Telecom Europe 2007 was all set to be one of ITU’s prestige events, choosing Bulgaria as its venue to demonstrate the organisation’s trust in developing markets. The reality is that Telecom Europe 2007 has been cancelled...

The reason given by ITU for the cancellation is that it wants to focus capacity and resources on upcoming ITU Telecom events as well as a number of new initiatives. This, of course, is no consolation to the conference organisers in Sofia, Bulgaria - and one wonders who foots the bill for the publicity so far disseminated.

The decision also casts a shadow over two more ITU events, the ITU Telecom events scheduled for Asia and Africa in 2008. One is tempted to suspect that the event in Asia, presumably to be held in the security of Hong Kong, will continue at the expense of Africa. After all, the African event is in a continent only just setting out on the journey to high tele-density. In fact, an announcement on ITU Telecom Africa is expected imminently.

Pessimistic it may be but the telecoms community must reconcile itself to the fact that all regional ITU Telecom events might be cancelled, leaving just a global event. Developing Telecoms did get the impression that something was going wrong when we reported on last December’s ITU World (see “Seamless mobile is the trend at ITU World” 19 December 2006).