Low-income Thais to see web benefits | Bangkok Post: tech

'MEANINGFUL BROADBAND'

Chulalongkorn University has launched the Digital Divide Institute to support the Prime Minister's National Broadband Commission in its aim to offer meaningful broadband products and services to 45 million low-income Thais who would otherwise not use the Internet.

The institute brings together academics from multiple disciplines to set a research agenda.

Craig Warren Smith, a former professor of Harvard University, who founded the Institute, said the group will work with other labs throughout Asia, the US and Europe to formulate a model of Meaningful Broadband specifically suited to the needs and values of Thailand, rather than looking to Singapore or South Korea.

The model builds upon the past reports of Meaningful Broadband Working Group, based at Chulalongkorn's Center for Ethics of Science and Technology, which for the past two years has tied broadband to sufficiency economy advocated by His Majesty the King.

Prof Prasit Prapinmongkolkarn, Chairman of the National Telecommunications Commission, explained how the NTC added a number of radical provisions in 3.9G licensing arrangements for closing the Digital Divide. 3.9G cell towers must reach 80 percent of the Thai population in two years and all schools and tambons must be connected.

"Academics and the private sector must work to formulate applications that activate these towers in ways that uplift circumstances and awaken motivation in low-income Thais," he said.

Prof Kitti Limskul, a noted economics professor at Chulalongkorn Faculty of Economics, will head efforts to formulate the financial model of meaningful broadband, using quantification techniques to define how public and private sectors will share costs and risks.

The National Institute for Development Administration will formulate models that would allow new strategic alliances to use 3.9G to expand the domestic economy, creating jobs and entrepreneurship upcountry.

NTC's Akaraporn Kongchanagut, will consider regulatory innovation which, in combination with public-private partnerships, would create incentives for "meaningful apps".

Thammasat University's Srindhorn International Institute of Technology considered steps for defining a research agenda for mobile data services, scaled-down devices and other innovations that would create demand for broadband among the low income population.

Professors Soraj Hongladarom and Craig Warren Smith, both of the Center for Ethics of Science and Technology at Chulalongkorn formulated a research agenda for a Meaningful Technologies Index, that would allow regulators, censors, concerned parents and technology designers to distinguish between "meaningful and un-meaningful technologies".

But what does meaningful mean? Prof Smith said they would call on experts in fields ranging from anthropology to neuroscience to use their guidance to develop objective criteria.