Fwd: Municipal owned fiber accelerates new applications andservices

[Gene Hastings <hastings@info-ren.org>]

--- begin forwarded text
Date: Sun, 2 Apr 2000 14:20:55 -0400 (EDT)
From: CAnet-3-NEWS@canarie.ca
Subject: Municipal owned fiber accelerates new applications and services

For more information on this item please visit the CANARIE CA*net 3 Optical
Internet program web site at http://www.canet3.net
-------------------------------------------

[Excerpts from a recent column by David Crane in the Toronto Star - BSA]

http://www.thestar.com/back_issues/ED20000323/money/20000323BUS02_FI-C 
RANE23.html


Sweden's broadband-for-all shames Canada

  QUEBEC CITY - SWEDEN'S decision to provide high-speed broadband Internet
access to everyone in the country is a good example of how societies have to
move decisively if they want to establish a leadership position in a new
technology.

Legislation indicating how this will be accomplished is to be introduced
next week by industry minister Bjoern Rosengren.

There are at least three clear benefits from this kind of strategy, which is
a demand-led approach to new technology:

It creates a society of sophisticated Internet users since interactive
broadband will enable many applications beyond what's currently possible
today.

It encourages broadband technology suppliers to build up their production
capacity and to advance the technology, which could provide an advantage in
export markets as other countries adopt broadband.

It creates an environment in which entrepreneurs have an incentive to
develop new content, software, e-commerce and business-to-business
applications and technology.

....

Canada has done some of the right things, such as getting Internet access
into all schools and libraries and into many community centres.

And the CANARIE (Canadian Network for the Advancement of Research,
Industries and Education) project is developing applications for the
Internet.

In addition, Canada has completed the first national fibre-optic network,
CA*net3, while federal and Ontario centres of excellence are advancing our
research in these fields.

A recent report of the expert panel on skills for the federal governments's
Advisory Council on Science and Technology recommended that Ottawa commit to
making high-speed, affordable bandwidth available for ``the last kilometre''
to every home, classroom, business and community access site across Canada
by 2003.

Canada, the report said, ``can be the leader today, or we can be the
follower tomorrow.''

For a whole variety of reasons, Sweden has become the leading digital centre
in Europe, with Stockholm the hub.

This is a remarkable achievement for a country with a population smaller
than that of Ontario.

Paul Saffo, director of the Institute for the Future in California's Silicon
Valley, declared in a recent Newsweek interview that Sweden ``is definitely
the most vibrant hotbed of Internet innovation anywhere outside of the
United States,'' which may explain why Microsoft Corp., Nortel Networks
Corp., Intel Corp., Hewlett-Packard Co., Sun Microsystems Inc. and Finnish
telecom leader Nokia all have research and innovation centres in Sweden.

Sweden's move to provide universal access to broadband dates back to a
government decision in 1998 to appoint a commission to study the country's
need for information and communications technology infrastructure.

The commission submitted its report last summer and recommended an ambitious
private-public initiative to give Sweden ``the world's best information
technology infrastructure.'' This, it argued, would help Sweden ``achieve
more growth everywhere in the country, and better international competitive
capacity.''

We need to pursue a similar, and given Canada's size, even more ambitious
national project to achieve similar results.

This can only happen through private-public partnership and with strategic
government leadership, areas where, unfortunately, we are weak as a country.
But this shouldn't stop us from trying to do better.



----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----

David Crane is The Star's economics editor. His column appears Tuesday to
Thursday, Saturday and Sunday.



-------------------------------------
To subscribe or unsubscribe to the CANARIE-NEWS list please send e-mail to:

majordomo@canarie.ca

In the body of the e-mail:

subscribe testnet
end

-------------------------------------

Bill St. Arnaud
Senior Director Network Projects
CANARIE
bill.st.arnaud@canarie.ca
+1 613 785-0426

--- end forwarded text