Internet expands its tentacles across Asia

Internet expands its tentacles across Asia

Authoritarian governments, military juntas and freedom
fighters across Asia are scrambling to get wired. Johanna Son
reports for Inter Press Service.

MANILA: Vietnam's premier gets electronic mail from his
foreign counterparts. The Indonesian military plans to post its
own information on the Internet and Tibetan exiles use it to
report the latest on what the Chinese are up to.

As communication costs plummet and cross-border electronic
avenues expand Asian governments, separatist group and activists
are all busy building links to the global information
superhighway known as the Internet.

The region now has more than 1.5 million of the world's 50
million Internet users, two-thirds of them in Japan. Businessmen,
activists, journalists and governments are logging on as Asia-
Pacific personal computer sales soar and Internet providers
proliferate in countries like China, Vietnam, Singapore, the
Philippines, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. Suddenly no place is too
remote: you can dial up from Mongolia or Nepal.

Singapore's information minister, George Yeo, says the city
state "needs to establish borderless communication in order to
develop Singapore as a regional information hub".

But some experts warn that while the glitter of technology
promises to bring countries closer to the information age, the
information superhighway also has pot-holes that may affect its
utility for Asia and the developing world.

Roberto Verzola of the Manila-based E-mail Center says it may
be worth looking beyond electronic communication itself, which is
after all a technological tool that can be used in many ways.
Much of the information on the net is free because the network
began as a non-commercial endeavor, but Verzola says this is
likely to change. "It is actually going to become infrastructure
for distributing goods by rich countries to poor countries."

As North America and Europe increasingly become information
economies, Verzola says the flow of information-based products
and services to the developing world, which is often at the
receiving end of such information, will pick up.

"There is very strong pressure from the commercial sector and
its-free market ideology, which does not speak about free goods
but goods for sale," he said, "Originally this is the public
commons of information available worldwide, but it is slowly
going to be privatized."

Northern users, ranging from business to activists, have
easier and cheaper access to electronic communication and the
Internet than developing countries, many of which are still
struggling with high computer and communication costs.

In an October review of the Internet and the South, the
London-based Panos Institute said: "Worldwide, the flow of
information, like the balance of power, is essentially North to
South rather than the other way around."

The danger of the information superhighway ending up a one-way
street carries over to its use by activist groups, which are
among those most benefited by e-mail and the Internet and have
galvanized global protest campaigns in cyberspace.

While getting hooked up is a matter of putting together a
computer, modem and phone line, in developing Asia this is still
out of reach of most individual and organizations. And an
Internet surfer in Indonesia could spend 12 times more on access
fees than a European user.

"Because it is cheaper than other forms of telecommunications
and gives access to a huge amount of information, it has the
potential to narrow the existing North-South information gap,"
the Panos report said. "but it relies on technology which is much
less accessible and much more expensive in the South than in the
industrialized world."

Eighty percent of the world's people, do not even have access
to a telephone. And while the United States has more than one
Internet host computer per 100 persons, nearly 50 countries, many
of them in Asia and Africa, have less than one telephone per 100
people.

These numbers are likely to change in the coming years, as
governments open up telecommunications sectors. Today, over 160
countries have links to the Internet, over 100 nations directly
and best by e-mail networks.

Far from disregarding the Internet, activists say Asian
nations that come on-line must not be content with just being
consumers and receivers of data and must use and generate
information that makes their presence felt on the Net.

For the growing number of Asians who have discovered the
wonders of electronic communications, on-line links have been no
less than liberating. Activists in Malaysia can talk freely with
the outside world, discussing matters too sensitive at home.
Chats on the Internet's World Wide Web trash Vietnam's Communist
Party and political restrictions in Singapore.

Some Asian governments have mixed feelings about opening up to
global on-line links. But electronic communication is much harder
to censor, and they know opening up comes with boosting
competitiveness and integration into the world economy.

Yeo says Singapore, whose state-owned telecoms firm leases out
Internet lines, will still try to police the infobahn even if
censorship in the electronic age "can no longer be 100 percent
effective". Singapore's twin aims of becoming a regional
information hub and keeping out cultural and moral pollution from
the West are "not a contradiction but a challenge".

He said the government, which keeps a tight watch on media and
bans private ownership of satellite dishes, could be less harsh
on discussions on the net. "It is such a jungle there. You can
have all kinds of discussion in odd corners, and no one except
the most determined will take notice."

Singapore's officials suggest countering "falsehoods" that
crop up on the Internet, while Indonesia's military says it will
go on-line to fight "misinformation" about Jakarta.

China, whose first commercial supplier began operating in
June, wants to ensure that political dissent and pornography can
be kept out. Telecommunications Minister Wu Juchuan said: "By
linking with the Internet, we do not mean the absolute freedom of
information."

Already, electronic communication has opened up frontiers in
societies unused to open debate. And as the ease of hooking up
increases, the price of controlling information is going up. For
many countries, that alone may make getting wired worth the
effort.

-- IPS