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Local web content can drive ICT investment, say university lecturers
Wednesday, July 07, 2010
Jamaica and the rest of the Caribbean needs to upload more Internet content in order to drive investment in future broadband technology, which has become commonplace in Asia and Europe.
Increased demand for content will lead to the supply of new infrastructure to support that content university lecturers stated at a Regional Forum on Policy and Regulation in the Electronic Media Sector at the Pegasus Hotel in Jamaica, this week. The forum was hosted by the regulator the Broadcast Commission of Jamaica (BCJ).
"We need to push the demand side which means driving content," stated Dr Paul Golding, senior lecturer at University of Technology yesterday.
Golding who presented at the forum stated that the digital "frontier" keeps extending and "we are always playing catch up". He added that when doing recent research he noticed the technology divide between urban and rural Jamaica. "I actually saw a child buying a floppy disk and I asked her what she was going to do with that."
Since last month, all citizens of Finland are entitled by law to broadband access with download speeds of at least one megabit per second. South Korea, according to Dr Golding, will go even further, not via law, but defining broadband as offering download speeds of at least one gigabit per second by 2013. Contrastingly, Jamaica and the region have about 20 per cent broadband subscribers, according to Dr Hopeton Dunn who was also a conference presenter. He added that broadband was defined as download speeds of at least 250 kilobit per second or one quarter that of Finland.
"There is the need for the Caribbean to engage more in a culture of uploading because we are cultured into the notion of downloading. I think that is the main way we can make an impact," stated Dunn who is chairman of the Broadcasting Commission of Jamaica and director of Telecommunication Policy Management in the Mona School of Business. "Of course we must download to see what else is happening in the world but we must also put up what we have because we have something to say and we can also be global leaders, similar to athletics and music."
Jamaica's top 10 visited sites are all US sites except the Jamaica Observer at number eight, according to data website Alexa.com. It the same in Cuba and Puerto Rico with only one indigenous site Cuba Debate and El Nuevo Dia respectively in the top 10. Contrastingly, Trinidad & Tobago, Dominica Republic and Barbados have no indigenous sites in the top 10. Consistently the US sites Facebook, Google and Yahoo are the top three sites in the region.
In March, Jamaica dipped 13 places to rank 66th in the Global Information Technology Report 2009-10 but the island still ranks third in region as it benefited from latest technology and broadband infrastructure. The island's access to the latest technology and its growing Internet usage are now among the top 50 in the world but it also was among the worst 30 in regards to venture capital availability and the quality of its math and science education, a key indicator for absorbing technology, the report produced by the World Economic Forum (WEF) and Insead Business School stated.
The report stated that Jamaica dipped for the third consecutive year from 46 among 127 countries in 2006-07 to 53 among 134 countries in 2008-09 and then to 66 among 133 countries in 2009-10. Despite the absolute fall in ranking, the report added that Jamaica actually improved its ranking relative to its peers or decile group from eight to five between 2001-02 and 2009-10. Jamaica ranked 56 in the initial 2001-02 report.
The ICT sector has generated net foreign exchange earnings of approximately US$199.2 million for Jamaica between 2001 and 2005. Exports from the call centre industry alone is estimated to be between US$300-400 million from the 22 contact centres operating in Jamaica. However, only four of those firms are local companies which means that profits are often expatriated from Jamaica. One of those firms eServices was sold for US$85 million last year.
The industry currently employs over 14,000 persons in telecommunications and call centre activities. The ICT sector is another of the priority industries within Jamaica's National Export Strategy (NES) a plan geared at increasing export earning to augment the ailing economy.
The UN views ICT as a important impetus to the achievement of development goals. In fact the UN set up APCICT in 2006 as a subsidiary body of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP). The Centre's mission is to strengthen the efforts of the member countries of ESCAP to use ICT in their socio-economic development through human and institutional capacity building.
Wednesday, July 07, 2010
Jamaica and the rest of the Caribbean needs to upload more Internet content in order to drive investment in future broadband technology, which has become commonplace in Asia and Europe.
Increased demand for content will lead to the supply of new infrastructure to support that content university lecturers stated at a Regional Forum on Policy and Regulation in the Electronic Media Sector at the Pegasus Hotel in Jamaica, this week. The forum was hosted by the regulator the Broadcast Commission of Jamaica (BCJ).
"We need to push the demand side which means driving content," stated Dr Paul Golding, senior lecturer at University of Technology yesterday.
Golding who presented at the forum stated that the digital "frontier" keeps extending and "we are always playing catch up". He added that when doing recent research he noticed the technology divide between urban and rural Jamaica. "I actually saw a child buying a floppy disk and I asked her what she was going to do with that."
Since last month, all citizens of Finland are entitled by law to broadband access with download speeds of at least one megabit per second. South Korea, according to Dr Golding, will go even further, not via law, but defining broadband as offering download speeds of at least one gigabit per second by 2013. Contrastingly, Jamaica and the region have about 20 per cent broadband subscribers, according to Dr Hopeton Dunn who was also a conference presenter. He added that broadband was defined as download speeds of at least 250 kilobit per second or one quarter that of Finland.
"There is the need for the Caribbean to engage more in a culture of uploading because we are cultured into the notion of downloading. I think that is the main way we can make an impact," stated Dunn who is chairman of the Broadcasting Commission of Jamaica and director of Telecommunication Policy Management in the Mona School of Business. "Of course we must download to see what else is happening in the world but we must also put up what we have because we have something to say and we can also be global leaders, similar to athletics and music."
Jamaica's top 10 visited sites are all US sites except the Jamaica Observer at number eight, according to data website Alexa.com. It the same in Cuba and Puerto Rico with only one indigenous site Cuba Debate and El Nuevo Dia respectively in the top 10. Contrastingly, Trinidad & Tobago, Dominica Republic and Barbados have no indigenous sites in the top 10. Consistently the US sites Facebook, Google and Yahoo are the top three sites in the region.
In March, Jamaica dipped 13 places to rank 66th in the Global Information Technology Report 2009-10 but the island still ranks third in region as it benefited from latest technology and broadband infrastructure. The island's access to the latest technology and its growing Internet usage are now among the top 50 in the world but it also was among the worst 30 in regards to venture capital availability and the quality of its math and science education, a key indicator for absorbing technology, the report produced by the World Economic Forum (WEF) and Insead Business School stated.
The report stated that Jamaica dipped for the third consecutive year from 46 among 127 countries in 2006-07 to 53 among 134 countries in 2008-09 and then to 66 among 133 countries in 2009-10. Despite the absolute fall in ranking, the report added that Jamaica actually improved its ranking relative to its peers or decile group from eight to five between 2001-02 and 2009-10. Jamaica ranked 56 in the initial 2001-02 report.
The ICT sector has generated net foreign exchange earnings of approximately US$199.2 million for Jamaica between 2001 and 2005. Exports from the call centre industry alone is estimated to be between US$300-400 million from the 22 contact centres operating in Jamaica. However, only four of those firms are local companies which means that profits are often expatriated from Jamaica. One of those firms eServices was sold for US$85 million last year.
The industry currently employs over 14,000 persons in telecommunications and call centre activities. The ICT sector is another of the priority industries within Jamaica's National Export Strategy (NES) a plan geared at increasing export earning to augment the ailing economy.
The UN views ICT as a important impetus to the achievement of development goals. In fact the UN set up APCICT in 2006 as a subsidiary body of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP). The Centre's mission is to strengthen the efforts of the member countries of ESCAP to use ICT in their socio-economic development through human and institutional capacity building.
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