MAIN PAGE | EVENTS & PROGRAMS | 2001 | IGM | SPEECHES | MIRZAN MAHATHIR
PACIFIC BASIN ECONOMIC COUNCIL
MAIN PAGE | EVENTS & PROGRAMS | 2001 | IGM | SPEECHES | MIRZAN MAHATHIR
Regional Vitality in the 21st Century
April 6-10, 2001 — Tokyo, Japan
Mr. Mirzan Mahathir
Ladies and Gentlemen, we'd like to start the session soon. Would you like to come up to the chairs in front then we can have a real roundtable session. Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to welcome you to this session on "Information Technology and Telecommunications in the new economy". My name is Mirzan Mahathir, I'm the chair for this session. The topic IT and Telecommunications in the new economy is a very vast topic, its one where there is a lot of interest but it covers from A-Z. So we're going to try to, I guess, get going with a bit more of a theme perhaps following the PBEC theme which is Regional Vitality in The 21st Century. The new economy is about the Internet and the technologies related with the net. It's really a way of reaching a group of people in an effective manner, a new way, very focused and there's a lot of opportunities from being able to do that. As you well know the acceptance of the Internet is overwhelming generally in the developed world but increasingly also in the developing world. There are many statistics out there and I'm just going to take from one source called Global Reach. It says that in March of this year, there are over 390 million online users. Of that, 47.5% accessed English pages, 23.5% Asian, 4.5% Spanish and 9% of that population in Chinese. It goes on to predict that by the year 2003, there will be around 774 million people on the net. I don't know how he can be so specific but that's the number they came up with. And of that, 270 million or 35% would be Asian or at least accessing Asian sites in Asian languages and out of 270 million, 160 million or 21% will be in Chinese and 60 million or 8% are in Spanish. So there is significant growth with regard to other languages than English. And this was really a reflection of the pervasiveness of the Internet in the way that the people who are accessing the net want the information that is coming to them. There are a lot of issues obviously that emerge due to this phenomenon. The whole idea of the new economy is based on the convergence of Information Technology and Telecommunications. And there are a lot of technological issues on how to do that, as well as societal and political issues. Also as you well know, we are facing a scenario where there are a lot of resource constraints at this point in time and therefore a lot of attention has to be paid to where these resources are supposed to go. Be it for each company, each IT and Telecom company or indeed any nation. Where should the resource go in terms of R& D as an example? And of course in the IT and Telecom world, the amount of competition that exists is tremendous. Everyday we are seeing new players coming on, small start-ups challenging big established players and the continuing change and introduction of new technology that is occurring in the developed world as well as also in developing countries. In this scenario that we have, where are the opportunities? And what are the threats or challenges? How can Pacific Basin countries benefit from these technologies? Where should countries be spending their resources and how do countries stake a claim? In the new economy how can they nurture IT and Telecom companies? We will today be listening to a panel of distinguished experts who will be talking from a broad view to the narrow, from what the general trends are through to specific examples of where opportunities and challenges may be. With that, I would like to invite our distinguished panelists to speak for about 15 minutes each and then I think that the real value of a roundtable is to have a discussion going and therefore we would like to then open it to the floor. If you could have your questions ready, feel free to make your comments and ask a question so that all of us here in this room can benefit from the insights that we get out of this session. With that, I would like to start by asking Mr. William Krueger who is the President and CEO of Xin De Telecom International Ventures from Beijing to make his presentation. Moving right along, I'd like to invite Mr. Takashi Kitaoka, the Executive Corporate Adviser of Mitsubishi Electric Corporation to make his presentation. Thank you. Thank you Mr. Kitaoka. I think we do want to get to some questions at the end so I hope that speakers coming up will try to be concise and to the point in their presentations. The next presenter is Mr. C. D. Tam who is the Executive Vice President and President, Asia Pacific Region for Motorola. Thank you Mr. Tam. Moving right along, I think we are reaching 4pm very shortly and I still think that we should have questions. We go on to Dr. Lee Young-Kyung, President and CEO of Korea Telecom Freetel. Thank you Dr. Lee. Since there is a break until 4.30pm, I think it might be good for us to just go through with the next presentation. I hope that we would conclude thereafter. Last but not least, I'd like to welcome Mr. Thom O'Gara to make his presentation. Thank you. Unfortunately, we've ran out of time, I don't think we will have time for any questions for this session. I hope you've come away with some insights in the various markets that were described, the various applications and technology that were described in this session. Please join me in thanking all the panelists that have made their presentations today. I hope that we all have gained significantly from this session. |
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