Asian-Pacific Advanced Network APAN’05
KEYNOTE LECTURE
(50 mins)
{Note:- It is a lecture style presentation to 300 people in the audience who are mainly with technical background from the Internet Technology, Grid and E-Science community. People are from US, Europe, Australia, Canada, South America and Asia.
The presentation can be rather informal. So as the dress code.
We would be happy if you can stay with us a bit longer as immediately after your talk there will be an International Teleconference on Medical Science using high speed link Beijing-Seoul-Fukuoka-Bangkok. From Thai side there will be a presentation on Thalassemia; from genetic background to phenotypic diversity ( Suthat Fucharoen, M.D., Mahidol University, Bangkok )
Also, many experts from Earth Observation community around the world will be attending APAN. They have one session on Asia Pacific Disaster Warning and Response.
It will be a good occasion for your excellency to announce your forthcoming conference to be held in Feb? or other activities which may find they could help technically. Everyone wants to help!}
COVER SLIDE #1
Ladies and Gentlemen,
It is my pleasure to have this opportunity to talking to you today sharing my view on the advancement of the Internet. I am very pleased to have this opportunity to meet with people like yourself, who who are in the forefront of the technology and who have been striving for the advancement of Internet technology.
As we all realize today that the Internet has brought about the power of digital technology to our day-to-day living bringing together people from different part of the world into a global village. Its impact is to such an extent that the United Nations has to address the issue of Information Society through the ongoing WSIS process.
It has become THE technology for the past decade for the world at large. But as we are all aware, it has also brought about yet another dimension of divisiveness in our society, the Digital Divide.
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SLIDE #2 (Digital Divide)
When confronting with the issue of Digital Divide, as a Minister of ICT, the first task I was concerned with was to try to extend the accessibility of the Internet to ALL, whether that be the disadvantaged, disabled or the poor.
We have worked towards universal access by ……….(KHUN CHATCHAI -- please fill in)……
We have managed to succesfully introduced broadband technology,
by reducing its charges,
expanding its coverage,
and improving its service quality.
As a consequence, the number of users has increased dramatically over these past two years.
While working on the the digital divide issue for the general public, we cannot simply ignore our colleagues in univerties and research centers who have different demand from the general population.
They are our valuable human resources; the basis of our knowledge society.
As in many countries, this community have been driving their own digital development.
They are their own architect
knowing their own specific needs
and knowing the type of technology proven suitable for them.
They come to see us, government,
only when they have their blueprints in their hands and are ready to seek for financial support.
The scenario in Thailand is not much different from other countries, especially in Asia-Pacific.
I have been visited by colleagues from this APAN-TH community many times during my term as Minister.
I am aware of the development on this end and am fully supportive of research, education and development networks.
And I am sure that those of us we are here in this gathering, who have been focussing on the research, education and development networks, are fully aware of the digital divide issue which is taking place within this community itself.
It is to my great pleasure to learn from my Thai colleagues that APAN is a venue to work towards bridging such a gap. You work on how to expand the research networks through “connectivities”.
You connect the networks and you connect the people around the networks whether it be the network engineers, application developers or network application users.
It is a knowledge rich society with strong practical blend. Something we should all try to achieve, especially in Asia-Pacific.
This is what I see as a mean to combat digital divide.
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SLIDE #3 (Research, Education and Development Networks)
I would like to consider research, education and
developmet network as
a network with three functions.
[1]
Firstly, research, education and development networks are places where new ideas and innovations can be explored, and experimented.
Technology has its own life cycle so does the Internet.
With its explosive growth,
its new applications
and its new users’ demands,
the Internet is moving on to its next generation.
New requirements such as real-time interactive multimedia applications have led to changes, to new technology and to new solutions.
All these next generation Internet technology, must be explored until it is well understood
prior to introducing the technology to commodity Internet.
[2]
Secondly, research, education and development network is a place where researchers or scientists could view as part of their laboratory.
It provides opportunity which enables them to share laboratory resources, equiptment as well as computing power and storage capacity.
With Grid computing,
research scientists are able to use high performance computational platform for their own works from their own locations.
Sharing expensive lab equipment, like telescopes, and resources on the network
has open up new opportunities and enhanced the level of competitiveness for those with disadvantaged research environment.
It is very encouraging scene for us,
from this part of the world,
to see that our young scientists
could now manage to stay in the field
which needs sophisticated computational tool.
It is very encourgaing also to see medical scientists
getting closer to one another,
sharing and exchaging their research works and knowledge, with very rich multimedia contents,
through these networks.
The network is the BASIC part of their lab facilities.
I believe there is an international teleconference for medical scientists in Beijing-Seoul-Fukuoka-Bangkok held later today here in this venue at this conference.
[3]
Last but not least, research, education and development network is a natural center for LEARNING.
Through learning, we develop our own people.
As we all realize that nowadays education is no longer confined within classroom walls.
Research, education and development network enables rich educational content to be housed,
delivered and made available on demand to learners.
However, with high speed network,
I hope we can all one day achieve effective live teaching and learning with real-time interaction.
Just like our traditional classrooms which we are familiar with.
As a network for teaching and learning, I have been informed of high definition TV over the Internet
which works very well provided you have sufficient bandwidth. Uncompressed VDO images can be sent across the net enabling medical education on the Internet.
I have been told that there are several demonstrations of such real-time VDO to be held at this conference as well.
These technologies will dramatically change the way education is organized.
However, what I have mentioned so far, is HRD for end users of the Internet.
I have left out the HRD part for the Internet engineers and application developers.
Being involved in research networks,
these network engineers are continually being updated or being under constant pressure to learn ne wtechnologies and to share their knowledge and experiences.
Research, Education and Development network is thus a venue for R&D as well as for technology transfer or HRD for network engineers.
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SLIDE# 4 (Research, Education and Developmen Networks in Thailand)
I would like to mention to you
on what happen in Thailand in this respect.
Our attempts to establish a network for universities and research centers
went back as far as 1986
where the government tried to link up a number of centers of excellence.
However, a number of our scientists and engineers
worked among themselves to form a network,
called (Thai Computer Science Net) TCSnet.
They used dial-up connections only.
They received help from their friend, Mr. Robert Elz, who at that time was at the University of Melbourne, Australia.
Their activities last for 3 years led to a TCP/IP connection from Chulalongkorn University to UUNET in the US in mid 1992.
Later that year, the original government led initiative was turned to ThaiSarn under the National Electronic and Computer Technology, or NECTEC.
The Ministry of Education, which was at that time the Ministry of Higher Education,
had their own ATM network with VDO conferencing facilities for their IT Campuses.
This network has finally be turned to an Internet network, called the UniNET, in 1996.
We are now at a preparatory phase of forming
Thailand Research and Education Network or ThaiREN.
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SLIDE#5 (ThaiSarn)
ThaiSarn is connected to APAN via a link to Japan.
It is now in its 3rd cycle called ThaiSarn3.
It connects research institutes and universities for R&D only.
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SLIDE#6 (UNINET)
UniNet is a university network linking 133 member universities together for Research and Education.
It is linked to Internet*2 .
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SLIDE#7 (ThaiREN)
We are NOW setting up ThaiREN .
ThaiREN will be our top layer Research, Education and Development network infrastructure
with high speed backbone
and with an exchange point
which acts as a connecting point to the international Research, Education and Development Internet,
such as the Internet2, APAN, the fourthcoming TEIN2
AND other forthcoming global R&D Internet.
ThaiREN will be under the care of my Ministry.
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SLIDE#8 (R&D Network Related Projects)
To support our Internet R&D community,
our government has granted special budget to support their interest and activties.
These are the
“Wireless Campuses” project which expands hotspots in 12 state universities with a budget around 72 million Baht (approx USD1.5 millions).
It is expected that each university will have more than 250 Wireless Access Points.
Another project we have provided support for is the “Grid Computing”.
We set up a national wide grid facilities and infrastructures with a budget of 211 mlilion Baht (USD5 millions).
These are on-going projects to enhance activities on our
research, education and development networks.
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SLIDE#9 (Major Regional Initiative from Thailand (1))
On the regional scene around this part of Asia-Pacific, there are several initiatives which you be interested to hear.
First, the Thai-Laos Internet Project
In Dec 03: Our Ministry has connected up all provinces in LAO PDR.
The provision included: a one-year free 512 Kbps Internet Bandwidth
and dispatching technical staffs to conduct training and installation the Internet System in Vientiane, Luang Prabang and Champasak provinces
as well as providing computers and accessories
In addition, our Ministry provided computers to Supanuwong University, Luang Prabang, LAO PDR.
We plan to extend a sponsorship of the free bandwidth for another year according to Laos’ request
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SLIDE#10 (Major Regional Initiative from Thailand (2))
Second project is the ICT Corridor Project (Thai-Laos-Vietnam).
In Feb 04, at the Thai-Vietnam Joint cabinet meeting, both countries agreed to develop cooperation on ICT related fields
such as Open Source Software,
Intellectual Properties,
Human Resources,
e-Government and so on.
Apart from these, Thailand also proposed the ICT Corridor Project which was adopted by Vietnam.
By Mar 04, at the Thai-Laos Joint cabinet meeting,
Thailand proposed the ICT Corridor Project and Laos accepted the proposal.
Both countries agreed to extend the cooperation of the Thai-Laos Internet Connectivity Project into the ICT Corridor Project.
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SLIDE#11 (Major Regional Initiative from Thailand (3))
Related to the ICT Corridor is the Information Superhighway in GMS.
During a visit to Thailand for a Ministerial Conference on Broadband and ICT Development organized by the Asia Pacific Telecommunity (APT),
Mr. Xi Guohua, Vice Minister of Information Industry of China PRC made a courtesy call to my office on June 30, 2004 where he expressed a great interest in the ICT Corridor Project and its collaboration framework.
As a consequence of Mr. Xi Guohua’s visit,
Mr. Wang Xudong, Minister of Information Industry of China, arranged a discussion among the GMS Ministers during the 4th TELMIN on 5 August 2004 in Thailand.
The discussion focused on China’s proposal on Jointly Pushing Forward the Construction of the Information Superhighway in the Greater Mekong Subregion.
ASEAN Ministers expressed their support to the proposal and agreed to hold a Telecommunications Senior Officials Meeting in China to further discuss a Memorandum of Understanding on the Joint Cooperation in Pushing Forward the Construction of the Information Superhighway in the Greater Mekong Subregion.
That meeting took place and the MOU was signed at the last ASEAN summit held in Vientienne, Lao PDR in November 2004.
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SLIDE#12 (Sustainable development in the 21st Century)
You may ask why are we in such a hurry to build up information infrastructures?
Why now? Or why can’t we wait 10 years from now like what we used to do in the past?
As you all know that we are in the 21st century,
an era of information society,
where globalization is having much greater impact to the well-being of all.
To strive for sustainable development in the 21st century, we need to strive for a balance with what globalization has brought to us.
We need capable human resources, or E-people, urgently to accommodate the fast pace of new technology penetration.
We need a healthy Research and Development community as our society moves forward.
We need these E-people for the development of our sustainable E-society capable of dealing with
the global e-business. We need them to develop our industry under this rapidly changing pictures of our world due to globalization.
We need to pay much more attention to the security our community and the safety of our citizen.
Problems as such could now easily involve cross-border or cross-continent activities. So prevention and responses to disasters must be extremely well organized. International collaborations in this direction are becoming far more important than in the past.
We need these E-people for the development of our individual E-life with the changing paradigms
of our welfare and our day-to-day life style.
ICT is fundamental to our today’s society. It is ONE of the society’s major pillars. We need to eliminate the Digital Divide by considering information infrastructure . We should strive for equality of Information flow globally as well as within our own region, the Asia-Pacific.