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KEYNOTE speakers at
the Acacia conference challenged us to think of “whose information society
is this anyway”.
Robert Calliau, a founder of
the world-wide web at CERN, the institution that proposed and
demonstrated the linking of various networks into a
world-wide web, pointed out that the higher levels of information processing
was a specialised domain that few information users ventured into. And
so, unwittingly, they
became mere consumers of dominant software.
QUOTE
'Research by the
IDRC and others clearly demonstrates that communities that have more
access to ICTs have products that fetch better market prices, have
greater opportunities for employment and ultimately have the ability
to generate and sustain economic growth and thereby new employment
opportunities.'
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Prof
Bill Melody pointed out how the
continued legacy approaches to networks exclude and prevent many
from interconnecting with each other. Public
enterprise policy and myopic policy and regulation are the root
problem. By simply allowing existing
networks in a country
like South Africa (Telkom, Eskom, Transtel, the cellular
providers and the Value Added Network Services) to be interconnected with
each other we would probably be close to achieving universal service.
Farther
Godfrey Nzjamujo
showed us how rural communities with VSat access in remote areas,
gaining public access through telecentres,
can apply this to their vital livelihoods in
agriculture and education. We
saw evidence of how access to market prices through communication
intermediaries like Manobi raises incomes and
improves livelihoods.
And then the
revolutionary thinker, Onno Purbo, asked the
question “what if no telcos were necessary?”
He went on to demonstrate how his own government
adopted a World Bank solution.
I quote: “It seems the traditional
Telco and the Indonesian government believes that any ICT infrastructure
required highly skilled and trained personnel to run expensive sophisticated
equipment that can only be funded by multi-national investors. Such belief
is highly embedded into all legal and policy framework
within the Indonesian telecommunications industry.”
While ICT technology is becoming more
powerful, faster, smarter and with greater memory
capacity, Purbo points out that these features
could be obtained a much lower costs, with easier
configurations, and greater ease of use and
control. He suggested that infrastructure
investment could be drastically reduced to a level
affordable to communities and households in developing countries.
This would apply even to those
with limited technical skills to operate the infrastructure.
This
techno-revolutionary demands a paradigm shift.
He calls himself a jobless
Indonesian ICT evangelist who dreams to see a
knowledge-based society in Indonesia. He
quit his civil service job in 2000 and dedicated himself to delivering
ICT knowledge to Indonesians via various media: CD
Roms, the web, books, talk shows, seminars and
workshops. He answers
email in 100+ internet mailing lists,
demonstrating how the knowledgeable society can use ICTs
and develop as well as self-finance its
own infrastructure. This would release poorer countries from
dependency on the Telcos for telecommunication services.
Removing
constraints
In my view and that of others at the
conference, this is more than a paradigm shift. From
the policy maker's
and regulator's
point of view it requires a way of removing
constraints in the law that prevent broad participation in
and expansion of the networks, especially now that the technologies are
available and not the domain of highly skilled experts any longer. Communities
in the under-serviced areas of Indonesia can work within unlicensed frequenies
using VoIP, which is not outlawed there, to
achieve such a high level of access to the internet. Countries
in Africa could also open up participation in this
sector, allowing the non-experts to take control,
install what they need and invest in their own
technological futures.
Training should be making the
technologies more accessible to all, and not
merely be the evidence of multinationals penetrating the markets. We as
development workers and ICT activists should be, giving communities more
access to the internet. This implies popularising
access by using open source software, and
linking networks them with the
least costly and cumbersome infrastructure such as
wireless (WiFi) nodes. The latter would extend the
existing services into the last-mile which is always reputed to be the most
expensive.
We saw a similar groundswell in the
United States of America in the late 1920s through to the 1960s where
farmers strung their own copper wire along farm fences to get voice
communication with their neighbours and beyond. Now it is the youths who are
motivated to gain cheap access to the internet
and who, with a little
training, are able to do so.
Purbo’s efforts have resulted in 4
million Indonesians getting on the Internet, 2000+
cyber cafes coming into being, and 1500+ schools
accessing the Internet on 2500+ WiFi nodes. By
using free VoIP infrastructure on top of Internet
infrastructure more than 150 VoIP gateways were deployed in just over three
months using freeware. Over a 1000 calls per gatekeeper per day for 3000
registered and 8000 unregistered users are pushing up communication traffic
over infrastructure that bypasses the telco’s last mile, enabling the
lowering of access costs for telecentres and cybercafes.
Purbo is adamant
that this has been achieved because the Indonesian
students he works with are dedicated and hardworking, enquiring and
committed to changing their livelihoods and life opportunities in the face
of adversity.
Access
means opportunities
Research by the
IDRC and others clearly demonstrates that communities that have more access
to ICTs have products that fetch better market prices, have greater
opportunities for employment and ultimately have the ability to generate and
sustain economic growth and thereby new employment opportunities.
Innovation and incubation of new
technologies and skills is therefore not, as we have seen, a by-product of
the information society or trickle-down from the
national utilities. Development in ICTs for under-serviced communities
requires a concerted effort to pursue, demonstrate, develop, train, use
cheaper open source solutions, lobby, create policies and ultimately
bring the resources and channels for new knowledge
to the developing world. Then we can claim the benefits
of the information society for those communities who do not now have access
to these technologies. Their livelihoods,
education and employment opportunities will be changed. By
expanding the virtual cloud and wireless connections they too can
participate in and own the information society.
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