As 3G licensing proceeds, a national R&D campaign arises | Bangkok Post: tech

REDUCING THE DIGITAL DIVIDE

Now that 3.9G spectrum is finally on its way, the real work begins: a roadmap for making broadband's impact meaningful.

Wanting Thai broadband to be something other than simply a way to push Facebook, Twitter and K Pop into remote villages, a national campaign among academics was launched this week at Digital Divide Institute at Chulalongkorn University. Its aim: to make sure that broadband markets are actually helpful to all Thais.

The group adopted a radical departure from the conventional wisdom of broadband policy in Asia. They decided not to look to the nation's broadband-penetrated neighbours for answers to the puzzle of what Thais should do with the 21st century's most powerful tool. Singapore, South Korea and Malaysia have brought broadband to most of their citizens without stopping to consider its purpose.

In Thailand, the campaign begins with access. The Thai regulator, NTC, which sponsored the event at Chula, astutely requires 3G licensees to bring cell towers within range of 80 percent of the population in just two years, and connect all schools and tambons to fast Internet. That quick connectivity is necessary but not sufficient. It still leaves unanswered the questions about what the nation should do with broadband.

Luckily, the prime minister, who ignored this topic till now, stepped in just in time. He chairs something called the National Broadband Commission, organised by the new ICT minister, whose embrace of this theme may well be the most significant initiative ever taken by that ministry.

So far, news reports about this commission were dominated by its willingness to take one of the most taboo subjects in Thai policies - straightening out the messy, overlapping and redundant Thai telecommunications sector (ie, redeploy ToT Telecom and CAT Telecom into more productive roles.) But the commission is also embracing an even more difficult task: creating demand for new broadband-enabled products and services among the Thai low-income majority which so far can find no uses of the Internet worth spending their hard-earned baht. The new Secretary-General-Designate of NESDB, Arkom Termpittayapais, was the astute choice for heading the commission's inquiry into demand.

To find how broadband can serve Thailand, the group rejected the formulas of the sophisticated broadband-penetrated neighbours: Singapore, South Korea and Malaysia. Their policymakers see broadband as a public good in itself, and have not stopped to consider how broadband can be harnessed to strengthen traditional cultures, reverse rural-to-urban immigration, or halt mindless consumerism - all topics on the Thai broadband agenda.

Operating under the ambience of His Majesty the King's sufficiency economy concept, Thailand's ICT stakeholders seem ready to reinvent broadband on their own terms.

At the Chula event the commission learned about the Digital Divide Institute's (digitaldivide.org) model, several years in formation, for using broadband to unlock human potential. It consists of five innovation domains, each with its own institutional sponsor, and they proposed a research agenda in each field.

1. Public policy and regulation: The government aim is to find a formula for carrots (incentives) such as subsidies and tax abatements; and sticks (legal requirements), such as new legal requirements.

As the regulator moves on to license Wimax and other new frequencies it must find the right formula mix of both approaches, pushing the private sector towards the public good. NTC commissioner Prof Prasit Prapinmongkolkarn, in his keynote speech, proposed a research agenda to do just that.

2. Management: The private sector in many vertical markets - from banking to tourism - must adopt more sophisticated management practices that allow them to leverage 3G by serving the upcountry Thai citizens, without losing their grasp on affluent consumers.

NIDA's business school indicated that it wants to take on this challenge.

3. Technology design: The group encouraged Thai research institutions like NECTEC, TRDI, and its research universities to stop trying to compete with Silicon Valley techies or brandish careers by proving their worth in academic papers written for international conferences.

Instead they advocated looking to upcountry Thai villages for clues about how to deploy the talents of academic researchers. At the Chula event, a team from Thammasat University seemed ready to take on this task.

4. Finance: The telecommunications industry must rethink how to share the costs and risks of bringing the benefits of broadband to the nation.

3G broadband services could serve the national goals faster, cheaper and better than the government's own bureaucracies. If so, the government should share the risks. Prominent Chulalongkorn economist Dr Kitti Limsakul laid out an economics research agenda to find answers.

5. Ethics: The most challenging part of the proposed model is to formulate a "meaningful technologies" index, a project of the Chulalongkorn Centre for Ethics in Science and Technology, led by Prof Soraj Hongladarom.

Drawing its methods from diverse sources, such as ethnography and new insights from neuroscience, researchers must measure the difference between helpful and harmful technologies - and give "preferred provider" status to 3G-enabled software and devices that score high on the scale.

The magic may come when all five of these innovation domains begin to intersect, creating a win-win model that could woo investors and social activists at the same time.

The Chula seminar seemed more a pep rally than another dull 3G seminar for techies. With the National Broadband Commission eagerly awaiting the outcome of Digital Divide Institute's research efforts, a vision of a distinctly Thai approach to broadband policy began to take shape.

Craig Warren Smith, a visiting professor at Chulalongkorn University, is the Director of Digital Divide Institute. See digitaldivide.org.