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News from ICTP 115 - What's New
ICTP is working closely with the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) to provide developing countries with access to the new information and communication technologies (ICTs).
ICTs at ICTP
More than 20,000 people from
170 nations, including 50 heads of state, met in Tunis, Tunisia,
from 16-18 November 2005 to participate in the second and final
phase of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS).
"We reaffirm," WSIS representatives noted in the conference's
communiqué, the Tunis Commitment, "our desire to build
an information society that will allow people everywhere to create,
access, utilise and share information and knowledge."
ICTP has worked closely with the International Telecommunication
Union (ITU), WSIS's lead organising agency, for more than a decade,
as part of a larger effort to bring access to new information
and communication technologies (ICTs) to developing countries,
and especially to the world's poorest countries.
"Like digital information itself," says Sandro Radicella,
head of ICTP's Aeronomy and Radiopropagation Laboratory (ARPL),
"the partnership between ICTP and ITU took off in the 1990s.
In 1997, we organised a joint workshop on the use of radio for
digital communications and, one year later, we held a school on
the same subject." The latter has become an annual event
with its ninth edition scheduled for February 2006.
"In total," Radicella notes, "more than 1000 students
have received training on how to efficiently build and then utilise
low-cost radio wave technology for bringing email and the internet
to universities and research institutes."
"We all know that electronic communications has become the
preferred method of communication, particularly in universities
and research institutions," says Hamadoun I. Touré,
ITU's director of the Telecommunication Development Bureau (ITU-BDT).
"In fact, communications experts estimate that some 90 percent
of all official information---in business, government and science---is
now produced in an electronic format; yet 80 percent of the world's
population remains wedded to print material," adds Touré.
"In today's world, being disconnected from electronic information
spells deep trouble for an entire society, but for modern-day
scientists it marks a death note to their careers."
Touré visited ICTP in February 2004 to sign a memorandum
of understanding with ICTP director K.R. Sreenivasan that called
for greater collaboration between the two organisations (see "Dot Dash Digital," News
from ICTP, Spring 2004, p. 2).
Since then, the two institutions have co-organised three training
activities, including an advanced workshop for the use of wireless
technology at universities and hospitals in rural areas, which
was held on the ICTP campus in Trieste, and a regional training
workshop on wireless technologies for countries in southeast Asia,
which took place at the International Institute of Information
Technology (I2IT) in Pune, India. An additional three workshops
will take place in 2006 when the focus will be on Africa, the
continent that faces the greatest shortfalls in meeting the challenges
of the digital age.
At the WSIS in Tunis, Marco Zennaro, a consultant with ICTP who
represented the Centre at the Summit, spoke before a group of
participants in the exhibition hall on the final day of the event.
Amid displays showcasing mouse-less computers, where fingers drag
files from one folder to another, and high-tech gadgetry that
enables information to be transmitted through a 'wired' handshake,
Zennaro reaffirmed ICTP's commitment to bring the new information
and communication technologies down-to-earth for those most in
need.
"By training individuals to use off-the-shelf equipment---antennas,
micro-transmitters, and radio links---and then providing them
with access to free software to drive the flow of information,"
Zennaro notes, "we can lay the foundation for modern wireless
communications in the most remote and poorest parts of the world."
Such efforts, which have already borne fruit, will help the WSIS
achieve its noble goal of allowing people everywhere to "create,
access, utilise and share" knowledge.
And that, in turn, will enable the global age of information to
become truly global in its reach and impact.
For more on ICTP's wireless research and training activities,
see http://wireless.ictp.it.