ICT can play in the provision of other social services like health and education

Dionisia Tabureguci  
It is not an easy thing in the Pacific to plug for competition in the telecommunication sector, remove the sovereignty tag tied to national telecom companies and hope for a regional market that transcends all boundaries, real or imagined, that separates one island nation from another.

It has been the experience over the years of those who have tried to pass on the benefits of technology to as wide a Pacific community as possible to face resistance and, where innovation could have, by now, seen much progress and development in the Pacific’s rural areas, exclusivity laws favouring incumbent telcos have been known to be a major deterrent.

Pacific governments are often criticised by those who hold the view that they act more in the interest of their government-owned telecom companies  than in the interest of their population.

As a result, some believe government policies in the region have historically left very little for Pacific consumers, who have lived through the years of high communication costs stemming from the need by incumbents to recover heavy capital investments. 

For example, in the Solomon Islands, the now quite successful community-based UNDP (United Nations Development Programme) project called PFNet (People First Network) initially began operation in rural Solomons in 2000 and its biggest challenge then, according to its technical adviser David Leeming, was the lack of telephone access in the rural areas and very expensive communication costs.

PFNet proceeded to connect rural Solomon Islands via a computer/modem/radio telephone combination, a practicable and innovative solution that provided an email service at a cost that rural people could afford.

“We have extremely high costs partly because of the regulatory environment that has locked us into traditional old-fashioned technologies which are very expensive and not always available,” Leeming told ISLANDS BUSINESS. 

Variations of this theme could be found throughout the Pacific and arguably, the region would have continued along this path hadn’t it been for the foreign-owned, foreign-funded company Digicel which came in and showed the Pacific islands how it ought to be done. 

Lots of cash, backers who can have a hand in government policies to persuade islands governments to visualise the benefits of an open market and then linking islands together to get a Pacific-wide GSM mobile footprint to get the mass market.

There is no grappling with sovereignty issues or politics and the focus is on connectivity because getting the numbers would ultimately determine the viability of the business.

As well, a Pan-Pacific network is not only possible but makes perfect sense in a world where technology is increasingly making distance and geography a non-issue.

These days, as Digicel busies itself establishing roots in each island country, there are those who follow it with some curiosity.

They wonder how the high debt reportedly carried by its main operation would couple with the repercussions of the global credit crunch to determine Digicel’s service pricing or even survival in the Pacific. 

And then there are those who follow Digicel’s progress in the hope that Pacific governments would learn from it, do away with protectionism, let the corporation fight out the business battle while governments formulate policies that obligate these operators to produce results that work for community, whether rural or urban. 

“If governments want to make money from telecommunications, then it can tax telecommunication services - still within a competitive model. 

"By having governments get out of telecommunications as an operator, the benefits of competition still become available to the citizens in lower costs, better service and - most importantly - choice and innovation,” said Pacific ICT consultant Don Hollander.

Pacific politicians will probably be struggling over the next decade to figure out whether that would work but there is every reason for governments to shift their focus from protecting one or two companies to exploring the benefits that ICT can bring to the entire nation.

Models worth noting are emerging all around the world to demonstrate the role that ICT can play in the provision of other social services like health and education and, everyone politician’s dream - poverty alleviation.

In Africa, for example, mobile phones are being used to facilitate remittance transactions and is said to be an industry now worth billions of dollars.

In China, one project explored the way in which agricultural universities could become local content providers for Chinese farmers once infrastructure is rolled out to farming communities and telecentres are established in those communities.

“What I would like to see (for us here in the Pacific region) is a “Pacific school of the air” modelled on the Australian one where the best teachers in any subject can have regional classrooms,” said John Budden, Infrastructure Adviser at the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat (PIFS).

“They can be virtual classrooms where teachers are located in their home countries and students in theirs. The advanced Maths teacher could be from Tonga in Tonga, while the Advanced Science teacher could be from Vanuatu and we could have special interest classrooms on, say, Pacific music which everyone could share in real time. 

"Similarly, I would like to see a “Pacific Referral Hospital” where scans, x-rays, pathology reports and patient histories can be electronically referred to the best medical brains in the Pacific or outside.  The technology is there. What is required is the vision and leadership.”

There is much hope pinned on the success of the two projects RICS (Rural Internet Connectivity System - a donor funded project aimed at providing connectivity to rural Pacific) and SPIN (South Pacific Information Network - a private sector initiative that proposes to link interested Pacific island countries through an undersea cable network to provide connectivity in the islands). 

However, they would fall short of expectations if little is done to make connectivity work for the average Pacific islander.