With its theme "Next Generation Communications: Making IT Work," the PTC2002 conference is bringing together people from such telecommunications giants as Verizon, IBM and Fujitsu to discuss the complexities of a broad range of communications technologies and services for the user and technologies in the developing world and distance learning as well.

Despite the high-powered list of attendees and the pressing issues on the program, for the PTC the venue for the conference is as important as its content. As North America looks East to trade, Hawaii is a natural stepping stone, and maximizing its potential as a technology hub is at the forefront of the PTC's agenda.

Hoyt Zia, President of the Pacific Telecommunications Council, says he envisions Hawaii as a series of cyber islands, bridging the "virtual" Pacific for Internet content to flow from the US to Asia. In many ways Hawaii is ideally situated to be such a bridge: It is the eastern edge of all Asian communications satellites and the western rim of all North American satellites.

For the most part, Asia lacks the "hard" fiber optic wiring required for high-speed Internet access. It therefore must rely much more heavily on satellites to beam down Internet content.

The focus at this year's conference will be largely on the single largest market in Asia (and the world): China. The Chinese are sending their Minister for New Technology to the conference. And despite the recent slump in the global telecommunications industry, thousands of North American companies are lining up to do business with the Chinese.

China's participation is "significant because our business partners have usually dealt with Taiwan in the past," said Zia, "due to cultural and political and historical ties."

The first PTC conference was organized for the Japanese and Americans to discuss bridging telecommunications after the antitrust break-up of AT&T, known familiarly as "Ma Bell." Although the birth of the baby Bells cut the planned meeting short, the council had been born and it has since brought together telecommunications leaders not only from North America and Asia but from Central and South America and Europe as well.

The council's biggest event of the year is the annual meeting, always held in Honolulu's Waikiki Beach. Zia said he hopes that Hawaii's potential will lure some of the conference's bigger participants to come and set up shop here.

"We have the advantage to be able to deal with New York and Tokyo on the same day," said Joseph Blanco, executive assistant to the governor and special adviser on technology development. "The fact is that many people here are multilingual and we know both Asian and western culture, and people from both areas feel right at home here."

But while the number of local participants is on the rise, many Hawaiians say that there are many challenges to making the state a tech hub. "If we were to compare Hawaii and Silicon Valley on a scale from 1 to 10, Silicon Valley would be a 10 and we'd barely make 0.5," said Elden Ito, Chief Strategic Officer of Revacomm, an Internet start-up based in Hawaii.

Many say that the biggest challenge is the lack of qualified workers, a void that the University of Hawaii is scrambling to fill--somewhat unsuccessfully, some critics have said.

"Government funding is our biggest problem," said David Lassner, Director of Information Technology at the University of Hawaii. "Being a state-run school, we rely almost solely on government funding. And Hawaii needs doctors, lawyers, nurses, all kinds of professionals taught and trained here in addition to computer scientists."

Some critics charge that the government has, at times, worked against the interests of many of the start-up companies already based in Hawaii. "They invite in direct competitors," said Eric Epling, Chief Marketing Officer at Revacomm. "They get benefits that we don't even get. We are just asking for a level playing field and perhaps to support the companies that you already have." (A law possed recently gives a 100 percent tax rebate to any investment in tech companies for up to five years.)

Still, the government is not entirely convinced that it wants to promote the tech industry in Hawaii at all. Hawaii is already advanced in certain niche areas in technology. Maui is the home to the second most powerful super-computer owned by the US Army, and handed-down military technology is a potentially big business. Hawaii is also a major astronomy center, ocean science center and medical research hub. "We don't want to compete with Singapore and Palo Alto, nor should we," said Blanco. "Just as there could never be another Las Vegas, there can never be another energy lab. Those are the kind of industries we have to build on, not the technologies of the Silicon Valley. That is what people need to understand: That is not what we are aspiring to. We have our own niche where we are kings because we have assets that nobody else has. They are the strengths on which Hawaii can develop its technology industries."

Nevertheless, Zia said he would like to increase the growth of technology beyond these specialized areas, and he has been using his conference as a platform to showcase the technological delights of the island. "We started a tech tour last year," said Zia, "which was quite successful. So successful, in fact that three or four other conferences have picked up the idea."

He has also begun involving local schools, inviting them along with local intellectuals from places like the East West Center to participate in the five-day conference.

"The PTC needs to regain its relevance with its members," said Richard J. Barber, adjunct fellow at a research program at the East-West Center. "While the current focus on industry brings money in, business doesn't always know what its needs are, and there is always a need for a more integrated dialogue with academics and others. PTC is now a place to make deals, and we need to regain the sense that we are also there to explore new ideas and make new partners and contacts in other regions and other areas--to be able to see the trees as well as the forest."