At least 20 British broadcast, cable, satellite and telecom companies will participate in the eighth Middle East International Cable, Satellite, Broadcast & Telecommunications Exhibition (CABSAT 2002) from 5-7 March.

Organised by the Dubai World Trade Centre (DWTC) at its exhibition complex, CABSAT 2002 will offer a platform for companies and professionals across the world to make inroads into the west Asian market.

Says DWTC international project manager Vijay Menon: "The larger UK presence at the show this year highlights the level of confidence the exhibitors have in the event and the excellent business networking opportunities the show offers in the region."

The UK pavilion at the CABSAT 2002 will include Motorola, one of the world‘s leading mobile phone providers, which recently launched its Global Packet Radio Service (GPRS)-enabled mobile handsets in west Asia and North Africa. The GPRS service with new digital compression techniques enhances data transfer speeds more than ten times as compared to GSM technology.

Encoda Systems will exhibit solutions for programme planning, airtime sales and multi-channel delivery, while Quantel will showcase the latest editing technologies including multi-format, multi-resolution post-production platforms. Rydex/CDT, manufacturers of telecommunication and data network cable for switching, transmission and wireless applications will exhibit their latest protocol and exchange equipment.

168 exhibitors representing 21 countries participated in the exhibition in 2001, attracting 4,500 trade professionals from the region.

Pearson, the owner of The Financial Times, the paper which has been itching to launch its India edition for the past decade but has been stopped from doing so, has managed to do so in China.

The country that has resisted overseas media influences for years, finally opened its doors to its first overseas alliance spanning television, broadband services and publishing this week. That should give some food for thought to Indian mandarins and politicians, considering the issue of foreign direct investment (FDI) in print media. Indian bureaucrats have often cited a 1956 Cabinet decision which had decided that FDI is a no-no.

The reason China decided to open up to Pearson: the 2008 Beijing Olympics. CTV Media, the multi media production arm of China Central Television (CCTV) has announced a joint venture with the London based media and education company. The alliance will centre on English language training as China prepares to greet the world in English at the Olympics, seven years from now.

The new Beijing-based company, Pearson CTV Media, will provide education and consumer content across television, broadband services and publishing for China?s 350 million television households. As part of the cross media effort, CCTV will provide Pearson CTV Media with unprecedented distribution across its television network, which reaches more than one billion viewers every day.

Pearson already has a presence in India through Penguin India Publishing and Fremantle India, a production house which has been behind such TV series such as Kricket, Family Fortunes, Born Lucky, Let‘s Make a Deal and Small Talk in India