Asia-Pacific - APECTEL adopted targets for broadband by 2020 for economic and social activities

[japan times] Pacific Rim economies on Sunday set an "ambitious" target for spreading broadband Internet networks throughout the region by 2020 and agreed to cooperate on promoting effective use of information and communication technologies in fields ranging from education and medical care to environmental protection and disaster management.

At the end of the two-day Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum for telecommunications and information technology ministers in Okinawa, the participants adopted a declaration and an action plan for making better use of ICT to improve social and economic activities.

"We reaffirm that information and communications technologies are crucial to drive further development of a robust and innovative global economy and ICT is a key to realizing the APEC Leaders' Growth Strategy," the declaration said.

The outcome of the meeting in Nago, Okinawa Prefecture, will be forwarded to the upcoming summit for 21-member APEC later this month in Yokohama.

"We agreed to cooperate in enabling all the people in the APEC region to benefit from ICT," said Internal Affairs and Communications Minister Yoshihiro Katayama, who chaired the Okinawa parley.

He also said that the Okinawa gathering offered a good opportunity to share the challenges each APEC economy faces in the telecommunication and information industries.

The declaration said APEC ministers welcomed the fact that the target they set in 2000 of getting the APEC members to secure universal Internet access by 2010 had largely been achieved.

But the ministers also said that further efforts are needed to reduce the digital divide. Hence they agreed to set an "ambitious goal of access to next-generation high-speed broadband by 2020."

Internet access varies among the APEC economies. The broadband penetration rate stands at 0.7 percent in Indonesia and 2.8 percent in Peru, but reaches as high as 27.1 percent in the United States and 24.9 percent in Japan, according to the International Telecommunication Union, the United Nations' agency for ICT issues.

For developing ICT infrastructure, the APEC ministers affirmed that wireless Internet networks will be a key method and stressed the importance of smoothly deploying IPv6, or Internet Protocol version 6, which is designed to solve various problems associated with IPv4, the current version, such as address depletion.

After developing ICT infrastructure, the task of effectively using it to improve social and economic activities in the region is important, the ministers said in the declaration. They added that the region will share best practices for ICT applications in areas like education and medical services, for instance, in remote medical services and electronic textbooks.

They also agreed to cooperate more on using ICT in environmental protection and disaster management.

Japan, which is chairing APEC this year, is hosting a series of meetings nationwide.

The Okinawa talks, cochaired by Katayama and senior vice trade minister Tadahiro Matsushita, are the eighth ministerial meeting on telecommunications and information, and the first to be held in Japan.

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