Personal Reflections
By
Director, National Electronics and Computer Technology
Center, and
Executive Secretary, National Information Technology
Committee
Thailand.
Mr.Chairman, Your
Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,
I would like to thank the
German Federal Government, and the DSE for the invitation to this International
Policy Dialogue and for providing me this opportunity to take part as the
final speaker of the final session, for which, I am honoured to be here.
Germany as I know is the
innovator in road transportation with the name Autobahn so well known. In some points in time, I also heard of
the word InfoBahn being used for same the meaning as the Information
Superhighway. We have yet to
find the low-cost equivalent of the Volkswagen of the Infobahn and let people
drive at high speed so that the can do better with their normal lives: work,
live, play and learn.
I would like to divide my
talk into three parts. First, I
would like to share some experiences in Thailand in working toward the digital
inclusion in the country. Then I
would make some observations in the construction of digital bridges to move
society to the right side of the digital gap. And in the last part, I would like to call for some actions
which may reflect some ideas of the participants in this dialog.
There are six points
regarding the experience in the ICT development which may be put into the
perspective of my country, Thailand:
There are several
observations in this two day which I can add into my personal reflection:
1.
International bandwidth of
commercial ISPs in my country is about 50% to 70% of the whole expense of the
companies. Developing countries
run their Internet business by investing the full communication circuit to
North America or Europe in order to let the information flow in both
directions. And this is
irrespective of which side of the line initiate the information request. In this respect, the developing
countries are subsidising the users in North America whenever they access
information elsewhere. This
bandwidth cost must be brought down through international cooperation if we
want to declare a global digital inclusion.
2.
The development of
telecommunication backbone is a must for every country. Financing this large project can be a challenge
and good examples could be brought up and followed whenever possible. In Thailand, we opted for two laws: one
to manage the common infrastructures such as the radio frequency spectrum,
fiber-optic network and satellite, and the other law deals with the Universal
Access Obligation. Both laws were
required by our Constitution of 1997.
3.
The so-called “last mile”
problem can be solved by leapfrogging in technology. Instead of using copper cables to link the access points to
the home, which can be ver costly for the last few kilometres in the rural
area, the Wireless Local Loop (WLL) technology van be used effectively to lower
the cost and expedite the installation for homes. Not only this technology can bring in the voice phone, but
it also allows connections to any digital network at the speed of up to 128
kbps.
4.
The language problem is one
of the major concern in developing countries, especially in Thailand where only
small percentage of population can read and write English. It would be a pity investing all of the
infrastructure just for the people to see what they understand and they go for
some other things such as entertainment sites, porno or downloading mp3
music. I would call this problem
in my own words as “the last meter” problem.
Challenging tasks are ahead of all developing countries! Your either have to create more
contents in your language, or teach the citizen to be more fluent in other
languages, or use ICT to help with this.
So far, we put all three tasks in our agenda. Our quick fix for this is to provide an automatic machine
translation from English to Thai language on the web (http://www.nectec.or.th/services). The translation website gained instant
popularity since its launched in June 2000.
Another last-meter problem deal with people with disability who may not be ale
to use the keyboard and display, or they are at a remote site where voice
input/output is necessary.
Strategic R&D program dealing with this at the national level has
been successful in my country.
5.
Building the NII is so
crucial (if not critical) to the development of any country. By NII, I mean all sorts of
infrastructure which is a basis for knowledge-based economy; and this include
people’s literacy, communication facilities, laws to protect the society and
means to create trust and popularity of e-Commerce. Governmetn need tp create a level-playing field to
facilitate the win-win-win atmosphere as suggested by Dr. K.J.John. It should also provide all the means to
lower the risks and the ost of doing business in a liberated atmosphere.
It is imperative that the government and the private sector work out to
legislate new laws and deregulated unnecessary rules which prevent the progress
of ICT and K-economy.
Started in 1998, Thailand planned for the reform of business and creation of
ICT related laws. There are six of them:
·
The NII Law (Universal
Access Law)
·
Electronic Transactions Law
·
Electronic Signature Law
·
Data Protection (privacy)
Law
·
Electrtonic Funds Transfer
Law
·
Computer Crime Law
We do expect certain updates in the Intellectual Property Law and
Consumer Protection Law to assist the safe passage for e-Commerce.
At the moment, the first three laws have been drafted and submitted to the
cabinet for approval, while the eTransactions and eSignature laws have been
approved by the House of Representatives, and are nearing their final stage of
approval by the senate.
6.
The last part of affordable
of the NII includes low-cost PC and Internet applicance, low cost of GUI
operating systems, office suites, database. There have been a strong collaboration program based on the
Opensource movement in Thailand in order to bring Linux and Star Office for
Thai language into popular use.
Call for Actions:
There are several actions
which can be done at the national level.
However, this will require commitments within each economy and a strong
program to convert the sceptics into the realistic believers of ICT. If one can make five big wishes to the
Digital Opportunity Task Force (DOT.force) or the UN’s ICT Task Force, here are
my wishes:
1.
Can we effective build a new
kind of cooperation to construct a symmetrically financed digital
connections? The current bandwidth
financing for Internet infrastructure is naturally a digital exclusion for
those who cannot afford the link to the developed countries.
2.
Would each participant
propose the strategies to go for solving the “first-order problems” with ICT
and knowledge as part of the solution? The “first-order problems” are meant to be what
defined by Tim Kelly of the ITU: the poverty, hunger, health and basic
education. Would this approach
bring up real progress and leapfrogging with some realistic landing point?
3.
How can community access
centers be set up with the initiatives of the local communities, using the
lowest cost model? Could it be
started with just telephones, fax and pagers? PC and the Internet can be a second-level option which
should come with some good information dissemination program to improve the earning
of people in the rural areas?
4.
In addition to the WWW and
free web browser software, could
there be a few versions of WWL (world-wide Linux), WWO (world-wide Office) and
WWX (world-wide translation service)?
The development program for all of these software can be well below
USD50milion each, through the Open Source concept.
5.
Shall we convince the
sceptics and high-level decision makers in each country to see the
best-practice examples? Will
Estonia, Brazil and China be willing to host visitors from developing countries
to see how they are successful in bridging the digital divide in their
countries so well?
The partnership concepts and true actions should be
able to help providing the desirab le digital inclusion that we are all looking
for. Let’s look for the WWP
(world-wide partnership). Thank
you for your attention.