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Subject: IP: US experts to hold talks in M'sia on the Next Generation
[ I have had NO part in the language used or in any part of it, but it is
fun to read djf]
>From Star News Malaysia
Monday, May 11, 1998
US experts to hold talks in M'sia
on the Next Generation Internet
By Alex Yong
TWO United States top-level government advisors on
Internet policies are
expected to participate in a discussion with Malaysian
IT policy makers
and industry players on June 1.
Presidential Advisory Committee on High Performance
Computing and
Communications, Information Technology and Next
Generation Internet
member Dr David Farber and senior adviser to President
Bill Clinton on
policy matters, Ira Magaziner, would be in Kuala Lumpur
to raise the
awareness of the potential change caused by the Next
Generation Internet.
Farber, also a professor at the University of
Pennsylvania, has confirmed
his participation for the event entitled Roundtable with
the Internet
Visionary, a Future Direction of the Internet -- its
evolution on
technology and policy while Magaziner would confirm his
attendance in
the next few days.
Farber helped develop the local area network (LAN)
technology during
the early phase of Arpanet and played a key role in
starting the National
Science Foundation (NSF) Network, which later gave birth
to the Internet.
Co-organised by the National IT Council (NITC), Asia
Network
Research Sdn Bhd (ANR) and Association of the Computer
Industry
Malaysia (Pikom); the event is expected to gather local
policy makers and
industry players together to discuss about global
Internet trends and policy
issues such as governance, taxes and security.
According to ANR principal Izumi Aizu, who together with
NITC
permanent secretary Tengku Dr Azzman Shariffadeen, will
moderate the
discussion, said that the roundtable discussion is
designed for the
participants to have a good interactive session.
"Therefore, we are limiting the attendance to 50 who one
way or another,
plays a significant role in developing the Internet
locally," he said.
Aizu warned of the potential challenges faced by
traditional firms from
more efficient companies which uses emerging
technologies to provide
better level of services to the consumers.
"In the US, there is a whole new breed of
telecommunication companies
that are listed on Nasdaq and competing with giants such
as AT & T and
MCI," he added.
"They are physically building new networks based on
Internet technology,
which costs only a fraction of traditional networks, to
carry data bits
across the US," Aizu said.
"Malaysia should learn from such trends and be prepared
for the
eventuality of it happening here. Traditional
telecommunications firms
should ask themselves whether they are ready to compete
with them," he
said.
Aizu also said that Third World countries especially,
should be careful
when buying technology. He said that several major
companies which have
spent millions on developing Asynchronous Transfer Mode
(ATM)
switches for example, have yet to gain their return on
investments.
"We are worried that they would try to sell their
technology to countries
such as China, Malaysia and Singapore," he added.
He cited a case within the Singapore ONE (One Network
for Everyone)
project where there were incompatibilities between the
Internet routers and
the ATM switch software.
Aizu said that Magaziner, who will be presenting a
keynote address at the
Communic Asia '98 exhibition and conference in Singapore
on June 4, is
likely to make a stop-over in Malaysia to lobby for the
government's
support for its global framework on electronic commerce
(e-commerce),
one of the fundamentals which it has outlined for
economic growth in the
next century.
The Internet, it envisions, will see the actual sale and
delivery of software,
entertainment, financial services, architectual works,
medical diagnosis and
professional consultancy.
Clinton and Vice-President Al Gore first unveiled the
document entitled A
Framework for Global Electronic Commerce last July,
which addresses
issues such as Internet intellectual property, privacy,
encryption, electronic
payment method and technical standards accounting.
Clinton is expected to hold discussions with governments
worldwide,
beginning with European Union countries, Japan and South
Korea with the
aim of achieving and adopting a global framework by Jan
1, 2000.
Six issues are expected to be raised during the next one
year by Clinton,
including proposing that the Internet be declared a
tariff-free zone so that it
would not run the risk of stifling its economic potential.
Although Malaysia has not stated that it is entirely
against the idea of the
Internet as a tax-free medium of trade, its official
stand on this issue would
likely be known when it presents its policy framework on
e-commerce
during November's Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation
(Apec) meeting
in Kuala Lumpur.
Recently, Magaziner said that the US government would
hand over its
top-level domain responsibilities to the private sector.
His proposals, outlined in the green paper which was
released last week,
are still fluid and many of its controversial
suggestions could change based
on input over the next month.
An interagency task force has been working on a proposal
to turn over the
US government's authority for the Net domain name system
to the private
sector since the middle of last year.
When it released its recommendations on the Internet
last week, they
sparked some criticism, including some from the
international Council of
Registrars (CORE), which had drafted its own plans.
Magaziner said many of the administration's most
controversial proposals
for the Net would last only through a transition period.
The question of how many new generic top-level domains
-- the extensions
such as .org or .com that form a part of all Internet
domain names -- to
add to the Internet's address system has proved
particularly contentious.
Magaziner's task force suggested five new names, while
the Geneva-based
CORE wants to add seven new domains, including .firm and
.shop.
Some companies are asking for even more, based on the
belief that the
more domain names there are, the larger will be the
business of registering
them.
Among the other major topics lined up for the dialogue
include the Next
Generation Internet (NGI) initiative by the US.
The advisory committee was appointed by Clinton in
February 1997 to
advise him on the implementation of the High Performance
Computing and
Communications (HPCC) programme, the implementation of
the NGI, and
on whether the research and development funded by these
programmes is
helping to maintain US leadership in advanced computing and
communication technologies and their applications.
The NGI initiative was proposed to conduct the research
needed to
develop advanced networking technologies and stress test
the building
blocks that are necessary to create applications,
reliability, security,
stability and performance needed for a cheaper and
easier way to use
future versions of the Internet.
In his testimony before the Committee on Science of the
US House of
Representatives last year, Farber said that the
presidential advisory
committee is truly excited about the possibilities for
new innovation to be
fostered by the proposed NGI initiative.
It has also reviewed the concept paper and advised on
some conceptual
and implementation changes, which has been accepted.
Hopefully, participants of the roundtable discussion
would obtain a deeper
understanding of the evolutional direction through the
few real movers and
shakers of the Internet.
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