For the first time this year, China will send one of its most senior officials to the conference.

Hoyt Zia, executive director of the council said in an interview on the eve of the conference that the exchange would also help open important Asian markets for the major telecommunications companies.

Zia said he was delighted that this year, Wu Jichuan, the minister of the Ministry of Information Industry (MII) will deliver a keynote address on Monday.

"Minister Wu's participation at PTC2002 is an important step for US-China relations, and taken in conjunction with its entry into the World Trade Organization, and its being awarded the 2008 Olympics, reflects China's ascendancy on the global stage," Zia said. He said Wu would be bringing a large delegation and that he hoped his visit would encourage senior officials from other nations to come.

"Financiers worry that the rush to girdle the earth with fiber has resulted in huge amounts of excessive capacity on high traffic routes, including those that cross the oceans," he said. "But in spite of the economic slowdown, usage of telecommunications continues to grow and will undoubtedly continue to do so as long as the economic transmission paths provided by the fiber cables are available. For example, projections of even modest growth in the enormous markets in China and India show that the capacity across and bordering the Pacific that is present active will be used rapidly."

It was the need to harmonize the use of submarine cable systems and satellite communications in the Pacific basin that led to the establishment of the PTC in 1980. He said that satellite and cable systems, once seen as major competitors, are becoming more and more complementary to one another, "With the tiny strands of glass now carrying all of the high-density point-to-point traffic that was once the mainstay of trans-oceanic satellite systems."

The main theme of the conference this year is: "Next Generation Communications: Making IT Work". Much of the world's computer access to the Internet, like the telephone system, relies on the vast cable and satellite networks that girdle the globe.

"Submarine cable systems help to make it as easy, and almost as economic, to place a telephone call from Anchorage to Zululand," said Richard Nickelson, senior advisor to the PTC. "As a telecommunications engineer who remembers scratchy, expensive and unreliable telephone service provided via manual switchboard operators in rural Georgia, USA, in the 1940s, I am constantly amazed by the quality, reliability and ease of use of our modern telecommunication network. Nevertheless, that which has come to be accepted as commonplace by our children and grandchildren is neither simple nor obvious."

Fiber optic networks, both terrestrial and submarine, provide the backbone for telecommunications, including broadcasting services and the Internet. And beyond, their continental uses, Nickelson said, they had become a lifeline for remote and isolated areas, including the US State of Hawaii, which lies over 5,000 km from mainland networks.

In the post-September 11 world, another issue delegates will explore is what Zia called "electronic freedom", and the plethora of security issues that some see as threatening the freedom of speech and open communications, of how to apply law enforcement in an area where technology is always one step ahead of the law. Governor Benjamin Cayetano of Hawaii will open the conference on Sunday afternoon.

The Honolulu-based Pacific Telecommunications Council is an international, non-profit organization, which promotes the development of telecommunications and related industries in the Pacific with an emphasis on developing countries. It has a membership of over 730 organizations and individuals ranging from providers and users of communications systems, to policy makers, lawyers, and engineers to academics.