But this year it had been more like a weeklong sectoral funeral under the gloomy sky of Geneva from October 11. The very last Telecom World was held in 1999, when the industry was riding at the peak of its rollercoaster of speculations.

Booths were filled with chocolates, coffee, wines and giveaways. The discussion programmes were dominated by rhetorical speakers and packed with cheerful audience. It was difficult to attend all the extravagant parties after every sunset. Those are now memories.

The global telecom industry has been suffering from its worst epidemic. Bankruptcies, layoffs and scandals have been collapsing the towering operators and vendors across the sectoral skyline. No wonder the industry stalwarts like Alcatel, Ericsson, Motorola, Siemens and Nokia have not showed up in Telecom World 2003.

Only Nortel, HP and Cisco had individual presence. Asian vendors like Samsung, LG, Sony and Mitsubishi had high profile presence. But most of the Palexpo, the gigantic venue, has been quite roomy. The crowd had been so thin that the pre-winter winds from the Swiss Alps could easily make its way up to the exhibition entrances.

Emerging vendors from Asia and East Europe dominated with fifty per cent of the total exhibitors. Yoshio Utsumi, ITU's Secretary General expressed high optimism of these new entrants. Many of such vendors boast of serving numerous markets. But the big operators remain sceptic of these new faces.

Selling products to the African, East European or impoverish economies do not reflect the equipment's true character. Obtaining excellent performance certificates from such operators is possible due to the corrupt governance at respective national level.

In his opening ceremony comments, the ITU Secretary General Yoshio Utsumi blamed the woes of the industry on the "avarice and greed of a few." His fingers were clearly pointed at the top management of WorldCom, Enron and Tyco.

Carly Fiorina, the CEO of HP clearly took the centre stage while delivering her keynote address at the opening. She said "It's possible to win if we all work together" and that working together means shouldering Utsumi's blame for what went wrong.

The bubble of global telecom industry started getting inflated in the mid-1990s, with massive deregulation and privatisation. It collapsed in 2000 due to the lack of a critical component, the effective sectoral regulation. That's what had ultimately caused the collapse like the house of cards in the global telecom industry.

We are watching the crawling in of similar gluttony in Bangladesh. Instead of introducing competition in the international gateway, the bubble of sectoral reform is being inflated in the name of legalising VoIP technology. Violating the government's procurement regulations, the multi-million dollars public sector mobile equipment purchase is in progress. Despite issuing five pre-paid calling-card licences, the government has been hindering their launching. These are for the "avarice and greed of a few" as the ITU Secretary General condemned in the Telecom World 2003.

The writer is a telecom analyst