The leaders of the 10 nations of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have pledged to make the region IT-friendly and to use the internet to boost trade and prosperity.
Executives from major IT and telecom firms including Oracle Corp chairman Larry Ellison and officials from IBM and Telekom Malaysia were due to meet the leaders yesterday in Manila for informal briefings and discussions on the communications and electronics industries.
The leaders aim to establish a good physical infrastructure for fast communications, improve IT education and lay down legal and policy ground rules to harmonize information technology industries across the region.
We have a long way to go to catch up with the rest of the world, said Robert Romulo, former chairman of Philippine Long Distance Telephone, who is helping coordinate the initiative.
Analysts were not convinced the leaders’ words would actually result in any concrete action. In the past you have had a whole load of these summits and nothing has really come out of it, said Neel Sinha, head of research in Manila for SG Securities. I am a little skeptical about it. You can come up with a master plan but it depends who is in the driver’s seat.
One of ASEAN’s problems is that it encompasses 10 countries with hugely different stages of development and wealth. Impoverished Laos, Cambodia and Burma have little significant telecoms or other developed electronic infrastructures, while Singapore and Malaysia have both spent billions of dollars building high-speed data networks. Teledensity in Singapore is close to 65 lines per 100 people but it is only around 10 in the Philippines and close to zero in Laos. Thailand, Indonesia, Brunei and Vietnam are also members of ASEAN.
