Welcoming address for INTERNET@TELECOM.95 Conference
Dr Pekka Tarjanne - Secretary-General, International Telecommunication Union
Geneva, 7 October 1995
As Secretary-General of the International Telecommunication union, it is my pleasure to welcome you to this special session of the TELECOM 95 Forum entitled Internet@TELECOM.95.
For the International Telecommunication Union, 1995 has been a year of doing things differently. We’ve started making all our publications, databases and Recommendations, some 7’000 of them, available electronically. In the month of June alone, we received some 2 million hits on our World Wide Web and Gopher sites. We’ve also started communicating with our Members electronically; sending and receiving messages, documents and contributions to ITU work. The traffic generated is equivalent to 4’000 messages per working day or 300’000 pages of text per month. And as you will see here today, we’ve even started working weekends! What’s going on? Has the 130 year old bureaucracy discovered a new religion?
What’s new is that the ITU, like many other organisations around the world, has started offering Internet-based services. The Internet, the network of networks that grew out of attempts in the 1970s to establish a decentralised communications system, has come of age. During 1994, it doubled in size to around 27 million users and it looks likely to double again in 1995. Internet-based services such as the World Wide Web are doubling their traffic flows every month. Some of the companies represented in the Internet@TELECOM.95 conference didn’t exist when we held TELECOM 91 but now have stockmarket valuations measured in billions of dollars. More than 50 Public Telecommunication Operators worldwide are now offering Internet access.
Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised at the success of the Internet. After all, many of the standards which make high-speed computer-to-computer networking possible—such as ATM, SDH, X.400/X.500—were developed here at the ITU. What’s more, most Internet services run over the global telecommunication network, or some part of it such as private leased lines. ITU has been in the business of promoting the development of public telecommunication services since 1865, when state-of-the-art in computer technology was still represented by the abacus.
Over the two days of the conference, we will be hearing a lot of claims about what the Internet can do today and the even more amazing things it will do tomorrow. But let’s look at some hard facts to create a proper perspective:
· Internet-based services are certainly the hottest show in town at the moment. But the estimated 14 million new users added to the Internet worldwide last year were less than the 15 million new cable television users, the 19 million new mobilephone users or the 38 million new telephone subscribers;
· Some forecasts you might read use projections of exponential Internet user growth rates to forecast that the number of users will exceed the human population sometime in the next century! More realistically, even if every user of personal computers received an Internet connection tomorrow, there would still be four times as many telephone users and six times as many television viewers;
· Internet advocates boast of having direct connectivity with some 96 economies worldwide and indirect connections with a further 77. But this does not make up for the fact that fully 97 per cent of Internet users are based in the high-income countries which account for just 15 per cent of the world’s population;
· The World Wide Web contains some three million or more pages of information. But it still has fewer users and is harder to use than teletext services.
If these comments sound negative, that is not the intention. Rather the aim is to manage expectations about what the Internet can and can’t do. It can’t take you to heaven, but it may help you browse the scriptures that purport to show the way. The Internet won’t take you to paradise, but it may put you in touch with a travel agent that can sell you a ticket. The Internet won’t feed the world, but it may help you order a pizza.
What is the aim of the ITU in hosting this event? Let me quote from one of the books you will find on the Internet, the ITU Constitution. It states that one of the purposes of the International Telecommunication Union is to “promote the extension of the benefits of new telecommunication technologies to all the world’s inhabitants”. Housing 5.6 billion people would probably stretch even Geneva’s fine hotels beyond the limit. But here at TELECOM 95, we do have the chance to reach at least 200’000 of them, the largest number ever to have attended a telecommunications event. In the exhibition you will see telecommunications technology that will be available tomorrow as well as today. The role of this Internet conference is to create a vision of where the network might be heading rather than where it already stands.
I would urge you to spend time at this conference considering the challenges as well as the opportunities that Internet brings.
· Does the Internet require regulation or greater central control?
· How can the problems inherent in common ownership—such
as lack of security, privacy or traffic priority—be resolved?
· Will the growth of entertainment applications, such as teenagers sending home videos to each other, mean that the Internet ceases to be useful for educational or business applications?
It is sometimes claimed that the Internet treats regulation or censorship as “damage” and routes around it. It is seen as a fine defender of free speech and democratic expression. But that does not help the public image which casts Internet service providers as a haven for pornographers, terrorists and hackers. Of course, such uses represent a tiny fraction of 1 per cent of total use and the content is no worse than the average magazine display stand. But try telling that to the popular press which sees a good story in the making. The recent cover story in Time Magazine which focused on so-called “Cyber-pornography” is a good illustration of the difficulties that those who promote the benefits of the World Wide Web will face. If the industry itself is unable to come up with a response to public concern over this issue, then they may find a response imposed upon them by politicians who have never used the Internet in their life but who can measure the size of the postbag it generates.
Earlier this week, the ITU released its World Telecommunication Development Report which this year examines the topic of information infrastructures, notably the Internet. The report is available from the ITU stand in the book fair but I’m sure you’ll want to have a look at it first on the Internet (http://www.itu.ch/WTDR95). The report tries to separate the hype from the reality and concludes that “The generation that will build the global information infrastructure may not see the benefits. Even if it is built in their lifetime, many will be unable to cope with information overload, since they will not be used to exercising choice, and will not be accustomed to interacting with electronic information applications. To date, access to communications facilities has been largely dictated by wealth: the wealth of a country, an organization or an individual family. But the shift from voice to multimedia networks is likely to facilitate a significant change. The ability to use the network, and the information it contains, will be almost as important as the possibility of subscribing to it. Ability to use is closely related to level of education and, more significantly, to age. Our children are the ones that will really benefit from the global information infrastructure.”
The weekend during TELECOM is traditionally the time when the children and students of Geneva descend on PALEXPO, devouring all the free food on offer and competing to see who can pick up the most brochures from the stands. This year the children of Geneva will have competition from the children of the rest of the world, logging on to follow what is happening here at TELECOM via their home computers. In a sense, it will be the children that are the most important of all the visitors here because they are the ones who will need to make sense of all the changes that are taking place in our industry. For those of you attending this conference, I would advise you to take on the mind of a child and not be afraid to ask simple questions: why, when, where and how? For myself too, I hope this conference will be a learning experience.
Have fun!
The Internet in pictures
