Telecom
Time To Catch Up
On The Information Super-Highway, Most Islands are Driving Scooters
The Internet’s capabilities are expanding rapidly. The capacity to use the Internet to facilitate new dimensions of all aspects of life are being enhanced daily. This may seem like it pertains only to the high-tech wizards who attend the annual Pacific Telecommunication Council (PTC) conference in Honolulu every January, and to those people in the Western advanced world, but many of the applications are relevant to island life.
Some island nations, for instance, in their quest to keep in tune with technological developments are becoming increasingly involved in Web-related initiatives such as tele-health projects. Cook Islands, Niue and Fiji come to mind. Not only does it reduce cost by preventing unnecessary referrals it places responsibility in the hands of people in these countries to operate the system on their own.
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Connectivity, speed and instantaneous communication is key. International Telecommunications Satellite Organization (INTELSAT) provides what it claims to be 99.99 percent reliable communications service to the Asia-Pacific region for Internet, video and data, corporate network and multimedia applications. The Orion satellite over the Marshall Islands and Peacesat’s satellite initiative through the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) give Pacific islands opportunities to join the communication free-flow.
This year’s PTC showed that the Western world is booming with technologically advanced means of communication that is affecting the way the global economy operates. Sony Corporation chairman and CEO Nobuyuki Idei, in his multimedia presentation at PTC2001, spoke of how the United States leads the rapid shift with other countries equally adjusting their standards.
To prevent an information overload, Idei suggested ways to increase bandwidth. Tied to this is an adjustment from an IPv4 IP system handling 4.3 billion IP addresses globally to an improved IPv6 system allowing storage of up to a trillion addresses. Paving the information highway in the Australasia and North American regions is the fiber optic cable network Southern Cross Cable linking New Zealand, Australia, Fiji, Hawai’i and the United States spreading over 140 Gbit/s across the Pacific.
Increased bandwidth through broadband access will further the development of multimedia and on-line operations within these countries and associated market economies. Instant gratification is in. Mobile phones now provide portable options for Internet accessibility. Mobile Internet will become a one-stop shop for news, sports, weather, horoscopes and even karaoke, integrating m-commerce with pleasure through wireless solutions.
Telecom Asia reports that the Internet is expanding between 70 percent and 150 percent a year across Asia and that cellular phone subscribers grew from under 50 million in 1996 to approximately 160 million last year. In 1999, 27 million Japanese people enjoyed Internet access. The figure is expected to increase to 77 million by 2005. Worldwide, there are approximately 300 million Internet users. Tadashi Nishimoto, Japan’s KDDI operations vice chairman, notes that the Internet and mobile are becoming standard multimedia.
Along with the development of Information Technology (IT) is, as PTC participants stressed, the need for new regulatory policies and the development of Internet and telecom infrastructure. From Fiji’s telecommunication deregulation and ISP issues to Japan’s January 6, 2001 enactment of a law governing the formation of an advanced Information and Communications Network-based society, the need for integrated systems is high. In the Pacific, regional cooperation is critical to achieve advanced standards in technology. The Japan example aims to create an advanced IT network across that country giving priority to E-commerce through regulatory reform.
The urgency to embrace technology brings with it ethical issues. Columbia University professor John V. Pavlik explains that while digital technologies offer various opportunities for journalists and news organizations in the Pacific, there are also downsides. He notes how ethical issues relate to how journalists do their work, news content, newsroom structure and the relationship between journalists and their publics, especially sources.
"As journalists in the Pacific and elsewhere grow increasingly reliant on on-line sources for news gathering, they face an ethical mandate to not grow overly dependent on the Internet for news gathering," says Pavlik. Use "good old shoe leather reporting", he stressed.
Technology’s snowballing affect is tremendous. Pacific island countries are gradually moving towards technological growth. As PTC presenters demonstrated, challenges are external and it is up to individual island countries to adapt to these changes in the global market and to implement the needed technology to participate.
