Address by Rodolfo C. Severino, Secretary-General
of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations,
at the opening of the First ASEAN Telecommunications Ministers meeting
Kuala Lumpur, 13 July 2001
Today marks the first time that ASEAN’s telecommunications ministers are meeting. This constitutes another step in the expansion of the areas in which the nations of ASEAN are cooperating closely. It is an extremely important step.
I am preaching to the converted when I stress at this meeting the central role of telecommunications in national development. Efficient, reliable and inexpensive telecommunications are essential to the conduct of most businesses, quite apart from the convenience that it gives to people’s lives. This is why investors consider the reliability and cost of telecommunications as a critical factor in investment decisions. This consideration often spells the difference between profit and loss.
This is more true today than ever before. Again, I do not need to tell this gathering of the crucial role of telecommunications in the development and use of information technology. ICT, in turn, is taking an increasingly useful part in doing business and in improving people’s lives.
The leaders of ASEAN are keenly aware of the growing importance of information and communications technology. Last November, they signed, themselves, the e-ASEAN Framework Agreement. At the top of this initiative’s list of concerns is the establishment of the ASEAN Information Infrastructure. The others are the facilitation of e-commerce, the liberalization and facilitation of trade in ICT goods and services, investments in the production of ICT goods and the provision of ICT services, the development of human resources and capacity building in ASEAN societies, and the use of ICT for improved government services.
Although the ASEAN leaders acknowledge the importance of ICT for commerce and industry, they view ICT not as something only for big business. As leaders responsible for all their people, they insist that the benefits of ICT must be accessible and affordable to most of the people. The advantages of ICT, therefore, must be available to small farmers as well as to large plantations, to small and medium enterprises as well as to big corporations. It must enable everybody -- in the rural areas as well as in the cities, the poor as well as the rich -- to link up with the global storehouse of knowledge that is the Internet and to communicate with others around the world. ICT must be used for more effective education, informal as well as formal. The power of the Internet must be harnessed to allow all, including the poor, to have access to the best medical care available. We in the Secretariat are promoting a project called e-Farmers, which would allow small farmers to use ICT for marketing their produce. It is essentially a commercially driven operation run by the private sector. Not only is it meant to increase farmers’ incomes; the facilities set up for the purpose can be used for education, public health and other social purposes.
In response to calls for the widespread use of ICT, the question is often asked: how can most people in the developing countries have access to the Internet when computers and connections through telephone wires are so expensive and the people have such low incomes?
The answer, of course, is to bring down costs. First, open the telecommunications sector to more competition. Many countries, including some in ASEAN, have found, to their peoples’ delight, how much telecommunications costs have come down and services improved by ending monopolies and letting in competition. The old view that telecommunications are a public utility that must be a protected monopoly has been giving way to the recognition that telecommunications companies are businesses providing service to other businesses and to individual consumers and must be subject to competition in order to bring costs down and quality up. Governments’ role in this regard is being transformed from a protector of monopolies to a protector of consumers and of the economy at large.
Keeping costs down and the quality of service high is even more important today, when the Internet and other uses of information technology are so dependent on telecommunications facilities. I am told that one of the reasons for the high casualty rate among Internet service providers is the steep rates of telephone service. In ASEAN, one factor is the fact that as much as 70 percent of intra-ASEAN traffic has to be routed through certain developed countries far away. The distance entailed raises the cost. The answer is obviously to set up within the region an Internet exchange with integrated content caching and mirroring facilities, so as to increase efficiency and lower costs, as called for in the e-ASEAN agreement. We in the ASEAN Secretariat have proposed a project that will do precisely that. The project was recently endorsed by the appropriate ASEAN bodies. It is called ARIX, for ASEAN Regional Internet Exchange. We are working with the private sector on it, and we have met with Internet service providers from around the region.
People also ask how the widespread use of ICT in developing countries is possible when large segments of the population in those countries “have never heard a dial tone.” It is, of course, expensive to run telephone lines to remote villages. The relatively thin population density and low incomes in those areas make such land lines uneconomic to lay and operate. Telephone lines are also expensive by nature, because they are meant to carry voice signals, which require a higher capability than data transmission. Wireless connectivity should thus be encouraged and promoted where the cost entailed in installing land lines would be prohibitive. Region-wide, ASEAN governments might consider dedicating common radio frequencies for intra-ASEAN communications. This would bring down equipment cost and thus consumer charges. I understand that this is technically feasible.
The ASEAN leaders clearly recognize that much of the promotion of ICT can be done best on a regional basis. In defining the ASEAN Information Infrastructure, they explicitly called for interconnectivity within ASEAN, technical inter-operability, high-speed direct connections among ASEAN countries, developing ASEAN content, and regional Internet exchanges and Internet gateways, including regional caching and mirroring.
The ASEAN leaders know that their countries must cooperate, among themselves and with others, in developing the human resources necessary to develop and use information and communications technology. ASEAN has begun by undertaking an assessment of the needs of the ASEAN countries in this regard, particularly the newer members. The next phase is to conduct actual training.
The ASEAN countries must enact laws to govern ICT and make sure that they are regionally harmonized. So far, only four ASEAN countries have laws covering electronic commerce. Another country has a bill still to be enacted. They are largely based on the model suggested by the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law. Other ASEAN members are working on their own legislation. The ASEAN Secretariat has put out a booklet that contains a matrix comparing the provisions of the four existing laws and the draft bill with one another and with those of the UNCITRAL model law. The other countries ought to expedite their own legislation.
The e-ASEAN Framework Agreement calls for mutual recognition arrangements for ICT products in accordance with international standards. This would make trade in such products much easier and less expensive. The ministers will be considering today the mutual recognition arrangement for telecommunications equipment adopted by the ASEAN Telecommunications Regulators’ Council. The speedy implementation of this MRA would be a significant step for the e-ASEAN initiative.
Information and communications technology is a powerful tool for binding our region together, just as it is bringing the world together in a global village. This also means that we must work together to acquire that technology, develop it and use it not only to bring us together but for the good of our people.
Clearly, ASEAN telecommunications ministers, working together, have a central role in this great undertaking. This, to me, is the significance of the launch today of the ASEAN Telecommunications Ministers Meeting.
