Dr Kamal Shehadi,

Chairman and CEO, Telecom Regulatory Authority (TRA)

Dr Toni Issa

Founder, Association for the Development of ICT Legal Framework (ADIL)

Robert Grossman

Member of the Innovation and Strategy team covering the Emerging Markets, Cisco

Nabil Bukhaled

Father and custodian of the Lebanese Domain Registry, American University of Beirut(AUB)

To begin with, a summary of the state of the sector with a brief SWOT analysis of the Lebanese panorama was presented by Dr. Shehadi to enlighten the audience on the state of the legal framework in the country. Then, Dr Shehadi explained the drivers that the Telecom Regulatory Authority is putting in place to develop this Sector, and shed light on the plans for the liberalization of the Telecom Sector in Lebanon. Dr Issa, in turn, gave the audience an inventory of the major legal issues to be addressed in the country.

On the other hand, Cisco’s Robert Grossman gave an idea about the state of the European countries in terms of Applications and Services, and remarked that the main drivers for the development of Applications and Services in a country like ours are usually around education, health, security, and Small Medium Businesses. Grossman shared his experience with developing digital cities in Saudi Arabia and other regions and described the dynami of service providers and incumbents in other countries. Then, Mr Bukhaled shared with the audience some figures about indicators on the "Infrastructure Readiness”, after which Grossman discussed the possibility of relying on the Private Sector to counter the Government who is playing a role of Disabler in that sense. Conversely, Mr Bukhaled explained how the Government can be an enabler to Leapfrog from our current situation to a more competitive one in the global market.

Finally, Dr Shehadi concluded with his views on the Knowledge Business Opportunity and how can the Telecom Infrastructure (the connectivity, the Broadband) support the Knowledge Economy at large.