UN bash gets Asian Pacific connected

13 May 2008 | 15:24 BST

By Sylvie Barak

THE UN’S GLOBAL ALLIANCE for ICT and Development has announced that it will be hosting a forum on issues of "Access and Connectivity " with regards mainly to the Asian-Pacific region. The forum will be held in Malaysia, and will coincide with the 2008 World Congress on Information Technology (WCIT), which runs from the 18th until the 22nd of May.

The UN forum, which will span the 19th and 20th of May will also be held in Kuala Lumpur and will apparently be bringing together a bunch of people from various IT sectors who will spend their time networking and discussing various ways in which they can cash in on the whole "affordable connectivity" malarkey, as well as applications and services throughout the region.

On the Who's Who list of invitees, Intel's Chairman Craig Barrett is a familiar face, doubling as the Chairman of the United Nations Global Alliance for ICT and Development. The Afghan Minister for Communications, Amirzai Sangin, along with representatives from Azerbaijan, Ghana, Jordan, Malaysia and Tunisia will also be in attendance. Bit of a strange mixture for a conference on the Asia-Pacific region, but maybe the UN were short on reps.

The United Nations is, however, making sure that Sha Zukang, the Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs, will be there. The Under-Secretary, eh? Sounds like this is really an important forum for the UN then.

A UN press release reckons that most of the sessions will be built around the topic of how best to close the gaps in region's high-speed broadband infrastructure, which lags behind much of the rest of the world.

Under discussion will be extending IT connectivity to island States (Intel’s WiMax anyone?), building up the IT workforce through training programs for young adults (sponsored by Intel), coming up with new funding for building IT infrastructure (Intel infrastructure) and what the UN calls "applications and services for multilingual communities". Whatever that actually means.

Global Alliance Executive Coordinator Sarbuland Khan reckoned that, "While the region has some of the most advanced broadband and IT-related technologies and policies, major gaps in broadband infrastructure in the least developed countries continue to limit investment, economic growth, employment and development".

Apparently one session will focus on an initiative called "New and Refurbished PCs for Schools", which both Intel and Cisco have already eagerly signed up to, which aims to dole out 500,000 new and used computers for 10,000 schools, or 35 million students, by 2012.

What’s the bet that most of them will be Intel’s classmate PCs? µ

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