New Delhi, The Internet Service Providers Association of India (ISPAI) is organizing a day long Conference on "BWA - The Empowerment Way" to discuss various dimensions of BWA, on 27th January at Hotel The Lalit, Barakhamba Lane, Connaught Place, New Delhi, India, starting from 0930 hrs. The conference would provide an excellent platform to interact with the stake holders, decisions makers from the ISPs, Telecom/VAS Industry and also, from the Government/Regulator.
Broadband and Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) are the catalysts for The National e-Governance Plan of Govt. of India (NeGP) which seeks to make all government services accessible to the general population through common service delivery outlets, thereby, ensuring efficiency, transparency and reliability of such services at affordable costs.

Mr. Rajesh Chharia, President, ISPAI said, "BWA could be a very effective tool to empower people of India specially Rural by providing them public utility services online thereby curbing the corruption and saving precious time and resources".

In societal applications, the focus areas of Broadband include e-education, e-health, and e-governance. It can be an effective tool in empowering our rural community. Commercial applications are about entertainment on demand, e-commerce, and business applications. "BWA would only facilitate VAS such as telemedicine and e-education for our country," said Mr. Naresh Ajwani, Secretary, ISPAI.

According to PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), the quality of governance and the quality of services delivered by the government are more important today than before. Nasscom, India's trade body and chamber of commerce for the country's IT-BPO industry, adds that the government needs to implement a nation-wide skills development program and leverage IT expertise to enable education and impart employable skills. IT can facilitate skills building at a national level, making people more employable. Technologies such as telepresence and videoconferencing can be used to broadcast lectures given by professors across India to overcome the scarcity of good teachers in rural and semi-urban areas. This will have a multiplier effect on the economy.

The Internet Service Providers Association of India (ISPAI) was set up in 1998 with a mission to 'Promote Internet/Broadband for the benefit of all'. ISPAI is the collective voice of the ISP fraternity and by extension the entire Internet community. ISPAI works closely with the Government, the Regulator as well as the major Industry Chambers. It supports exchange of delegations, business visitors from across the globe which provides ISP members a chance to network widely and seek opportunities elsewhere too. ISPAI is a platform for the Solution Provider's community such as Hardware and Software manufacturer's and suppliers to gain easy access to their ISP clients, promote their products and services through personal meetings and through events supported or sponsored by ISPAI.