Philip Tsang
(Director, Business and Publications, Internet Special Projects Group)
James Henri
(Senior Lecturer/Associate Professor, School of Information Studies, Charles Sturt University)
Sandy Tse
University of New England- Northern Rivers
Asia's Internet development has benefited substantially from the rapid deployment of telecommunications infrastructure within the region. The recent deployment of submarine fibre cables has facilitated the Internet growth within Asia. The growth of the Internet capacity has prompted strong demands from the commercial world which identifies the advantages that flow from access to a global Internet.
1994 has witnessed the changing nature of the Internet from a dedicated research related support facility to that of a component of industrial infrastructure. In the Asia-Pacific Region the pressure for change within today's Internet networks in the role of government /industrial funding is being reconsidered by many Asian Internet management councils. This results from the recognition of the benefits available to the academic and research sectors through participation in an infrastructure which offers significant economies of scale.
This paper serves as an overview of Internet growth in Australia and the "Four Dragons". It also discusses the economic, and educational implications of the trend in Internet (WWW/Mosaic) growth in these five countries.
An essential element for the continued rapid transformation of the Asia-Pacific region is the deployment of an efficient telecommunications infrastructure. Asia's Internet development has benefited substantially from the rapid growth in the of telecommunications infrastructure within the region. The deployment of efficient submarine fibre cables (Table 1 and Figure 1), has prompted the growth of the Internet within Asia. This rapid growth has been accompanied by a strong demand from the commercial and business world which identifies the benefits of tapping into the global Internet.
The Australian Academic and Research Network (AARNet) was established in May 1990 by the Australian Vice-Chancellors' Committee (AVCC), with the support of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) and the Australian Research Council (ARC). It's aim has been to promote the exchange of ideas and sharing of information between Australia's academic and research communities as well as with similar organisations overseas. AARNet has grown at an exponential rate both in terms of the number of connected networks and the data traffic it transports, Table 2. Despite its comparatively small population (18 million), Australia is currently among the top three or four of the largest Internet users in the world in terms of data traffic.
The exponential increase in traffic has demanded an upgrade of the bandwidth of both the domestic and international communications links. Australia's US Internet link bandwidth has increased sixfold from 1992 (256Kps satellite link to the current 2Mbps undersea fibre cable link).Figure 2 depicts the current AARNet backbone topology and its transmission capacity.
In the near future, AARNet's US Internet link will be further increased to 4Mbps while the inter-city link will be increased by fivefold from 2Mbps to 10 Mbps by Dec 1994 (ASTC 1994). It has been commented that
"AARNet is a victim of its own success. It has been financed on a goodwill-and-understanding basis community is being forced to recognise it as important shared infrastructure, and to manage and finance it accordingly." (Clarke 93b)
This dramatic growth is mainly a result of academic, R&D; and (mosaic !!) demands, but many sectors of society also want to tap into the global Internet via AARNet.
2.2 Trend for commercialisation and user-pays
AARNet's 1992 Business Plan states:
There are now significant economies of scale to be achieved by a planned approach to procurement and traffic management on a national basis, operating within a broader role as a value-added carrier and supplier of Internet connectivity, responding the high levels of uptake experienced with the Affiliate Membership program. As closer interaction between research and industry is a stated objective of the national publicly funded research program, it is appropriate that the further development of national academic and research networking services be positioned within an environment where industry and government can also participate as peer clients within a common communications and service environment.
There has been much discussion about the proposition that Australia's academic network will implement a user-pays system with a target date of January 1995, (Juddery 1994). It has even been suggested that AARNet may consider listing on the stock exchange as a fully commercial company (ASTC 1994). This proposal would make Australia the third country with such a user-pays policy, the others being Chile and New Zealand, (Varian 94). The AARNet user-pays policy of is likely to be introduced early next year despite the strong opposition from many academics, especially those from the non economic disciplines. Several user-pay charging models and future directions of AARNet were discussed in (Clarke 93b) and (ASTC 94).
The Taiwan Academic Network (TANet) is a pilot project undertaken by the Ministry of Education and Universities Computer Centre which is intended to establish a national academic network infrastructure. TANet is the major part of the Taiwan Internet community which includes other industry networks such as SEEDNet. An international link bandwidth was upgraded from 64-Kbps to 256-Kbps between the Ministry of Education (MOE) Computer Centre and Princeton University (JvNCnet) in late 1992. The original 64 Kbps link was installed in December 1991. This link couples TANet with JvNCnet, NFSnet and the international Internet connection (Shiue & Shieh 1994). Figure 4 shows TANet's backbone topology (Source:TANet).
SEEDNet was a project of the Ministry of Economic Affairs to provide a research and development network for the Taiwan information industry. The project was completed in 1990, and provides an international open system-base network in connection with TANet, and provides a link to the rest of the Internet.
There are three major R&D; Internet Networks in Korea. These are: Korea Research and Education Open Network (KREONet), System Development Network (SDN (Hana is the former SDN) and Korean Educational Network (KREN). All of these are non-commercial networks. SDN was operated by Korean Science of Advanced Institute of Technology (KASIT), and was later transferred to Korea Telecom.
Figure 5 is a network map of the R&D; Networks in Korea. While the topology is much the same, the International links have been upgraded- two 256 Kbps links to USA and one 64 Kbps link to Japan.
Korea Telecom announced that it will begin a separate commercial Internet service called "Kornet" in 1994. Dacom, another PTT in Korea, is also saying that it will commence commercial Internet services this year (Park 1994).
The Internet offers a variety of network services or tools including electronic mail, remote login(telnet), file transfer (ftp), interactive electronic conferencing, directory searching (archie) and menu driven access (gopher). A recent innovation on the Internet is World-Wide Web (WWW) which combines information retrieval and hypermedia.
WWW together with Mosaic represent a revolution in human communication technology. Mosaic combines features of Gopher, WAIS, ftp, e-mail and World-Wide Web into a single tool.
In a recent telecommunication term-project, a student (Richter 1993) at the University of Colorado submitted a paper on Hypermedia and Hypertext to one of the authors with this introduction:
In the last few months, World-Wide Web and NCSA's Mosaic have attracted much attention from the Internet world. The degree of interest in Mosaic/WWW is seen from the fact that the First International WWW conference in Geneva (May 23-25, 1994) was fully booked and the conference organisers had to turn away many people who wanted to attend. The May issue of the Internet Business Journal reported World-Wide Web traffic has grown more than 340,000 % recently. As with other technologies eg VCR's, ATM's and cellular telephones, the Dragons and Australia are avid adopters of new technology. All of the five countries have their WWW servers set up. More recently China has made WWW server available on the Internet.
The sparsely distributed population in Australia and the unique requirements of distance education require an innovative approach to solve the twin tyrannies of distance and time. Distance education students are drawn from a region encompassing the entire Australian continent and Southeast Asia. The deployment of AARNet in 1990 has instilled a positive impact on the education, and R&D; sectors in Australia.
With countries such as Australia and New Zealand eager to establish their off-shore learning campuses and expand into China and the Asia-Pacific, the growth of the Internet in Asia will facilitate the marketing of distance learning in the region where Australia's western style education system is highly desired.
As a consequence of recent rapid economic growth in the Asian Pacific region, the demand for suitably qualified professionals such as accountants and financial managers is high. This demand is evidenced by the large number of such vacancies advertised in Australian and Asian newspapers. Other evidence for such demand is the fact that significant numbers of Asian students are enrolled in accredited accounting, business and IT courses in Australian Universities. In response to this demand a number of Australian universities are offering distance education undergraduate and graduate courses in these countries.
All the Universities in the countries discussed have Internet connections and this enables them to tap into the vast information resources on the Internet. Currently, Australia has the highest "out-of-country" Internet bandwidth (2 Mbps).
The fact that Australian immigration policies favor applicants with academic and professional qualifications makes studying in Australia or taking distance education courses offered by accredited Australian tertiary institutions more attractive. It is expected that as economic growth continues in the region, and in China in particular, that the demand for tertiary education will continue.
In Northern America, Universities and schools of higher education have participated in the Internet for years. The SchoolNet initiative promises to extend the Internet access to every primary and secondary school throughout Northern America.
With the growth of the Internet, the K-12 education in Australia and the Dragons has picked up much momentum in incorporating Internet into K-12 education. The recent ITEC AARNet/K12 conference which was conducted in Sydney was an important initiative in setting the scene for K-12 Internet education in Australia.
In Australia, most schools are not connected and it appears that this situation will continue for some time despite the fact that there are projects like the Internet Signature Project initiated by one of the authors and colleagues (Ken Eustace & Geoff Fellows) to bring Internet experience to regional high school students and teachers. It appears that school children and their teachers will lag behind children in Northern America in terms of the Internet access. Despite the fact that the changes in AARNet business policy do enable schools to join, this policy has only been a few schools that have 'spare cash' to join. Not surprisingly, an elementary school in the Australian Capital Territory made headline news in Australia when it was connected to AARNet via an affiliated program.
Unlike Australia, Taiwan has an Internet/K-12 plan. The Ministry of Education of Taiwan decided to extend TANet services to senior high schools, professional schools, junior high schools and even elementary schools (Shiue & Shieh 1994, p 829) and they already have plans to achieve this. In Hong Kong there is the ClassLink project which brings Internet experience to the high-schools, but again there isn't a plan to bring Internet experiences to all of the schools. The MOE of Singapore connect high schools to the Internet via Technet (Leong 94).
A notable situation of professional migration in the Asian-Pacific region is the growing importance of return flows from the industrial countries (USA, Canada and Australia) to rapidly growing countries of origin in the region. A significant number of professionals from South Korea, Taiwan , Hong Kong & Singapore origin have returned from the USA, Canada or Australia to their countries of origin, because of the 'glass ceiling' that prevents movement from research and development into management positions and the opportunities opening up in their countries of origin to meet these unmet career ambitions.
The return of overseas graduates to their country of origin may have implications for the Internet growth in these countries as these professionals access resources only available through the Internet. Such needs will act as a catalyst to expand the Internet.
Table 2 shows the major written languages used in the five countries
Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore are most influenced by the Chinese language, but all countries use English as a form of Internet language. The comparative low participation in discussion lists on the Internet from the Four Dragons may be attributed to the cultural inheritance of being less outspoken, the difficulty of expressing one's idea in English or simply as a result of being too busy. As quoted in HK-FAQ people in a country like Hong Kong have more serious things to do than "talk to the terminal". Much of the information on Korea Internet site is stored in Hangul.
In this information age, the new resource of wealth is timely information. The pursuit of wealth is now largely achieved by the pursuit and application of information There is no use knowing about a resource on the Internet, if one lacks the basic hardware, software or skill to utilise the resource. The continued Internet growth in Asia will also mean a greater demand for telecommunications infrastructure equipment, such as PABX, optical fibre cable, phone sets, computer software, personal computers, modems, computer peripherals, switches, video conferencing and users services.
By analysing the memberships of the Asia Internet (AARNet , Australia; HARNet, Hong Kong, KOREONet, South Korea; TANet, Taiwan; Technet, Singapore) and their policies, we noted that Hong Kong has many active commercial organisations providing full services (telnet, ftp, archie, mosaic, email etc) from the Internet to commercial clients. Notable among these are Hong Kong Internet and Gateway Services(HKGIS), CompuServe, AT&T; Mail and Hong Kong Supernet HKUST R&D; Corporation, Ltd (a commercial arm of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology). Similar commercial setups are also found in Australia, Singapore, Korea and Taiwan.
While AARNet has the user-pays and Listing on Stock Market proposals, the other three countries have somewhat different policies for commercial use of their part of the Internet. There is a clear trend to seek additional funding via fee-paying affiliate programs which provide services from full Internet connectivity to simple off-line e-mail.
As information is the most important commodity in the development of successful business activity, the cost effective (particularly due to the economies of scale) transfer of data via Internet provides many unforeseen business opportunities for commercial organisations regardless of their size in the blooming China-Asia-Pacific.
Academic Research/Survey, Advertisement, Conference announcement, Database Services, Database Services, Delivery of Software/Patch , Document Transfer , EDI on the Internet, Electronic Publishing, Electronic Shopping Mall, Electronic Tutor, Expert Advice and Help, fax on the Internet , Market Analysis , Marketing Research/Survey, Movie on Demand, New Book Market, Online Help Desk, Product Analysis, Real-Estate Transactions, Recruit Employees, Video Conferencing(E.g. CU_SeeMe), and Internet Training.
The business potential in the Asia-Pacific Superhighway is mind blowing and many of these business opportunities are not unique to Asia.
Reduced to its essentials, an answer to the question, "What makes the commercial opportunities with Internet unique to Asia?" is that Asia is the largest market in the world. The four Dragons and Australia are part of the region and have a concentration of the right communications technology and are becoming major communications centres of the region. Many studies have linked economic development directly to the growth of telecommunications. Other studies on the value added nature of telecommunications activities contribute a significant percentage growth in GDP. Internet as a global telecommunications network will contribute to the economic growth of all those connected but the Asia-Pacific Internet is a particular important segment because Asia is now the largest market in the world and the entire region is being positively influenced by China's increasingly market-oriented approach to economic development.
The telecommunications industry is very much like the PC industry was ten years ago. Often the hardware was in place but the software was lacking. The software wasn't developed by the giant computer companies, but rather by small entrepreneurial firms. The wider access by small and medium enterprises should help these enterprises to carry out market research, expand their marketing and enable them to use resources normally only available to large companies (ASTC 1994).
This paper provides an overview of the Internet growth in Australia and the Four Dragons. The manner in which this paper was prepared and the range of sources (such as e-mail, www & Mosaic) used provides some indication of changing communications technology and how we will learn and conduct business in the next century. Consultation among the authors, friends from the Four Dragons and conference organisers took place in part via electronic mail on the Internet and many of the references are located via Internet tools such as WWW and Mosaic. While education and training is one of the greatest potential uses of the superhighway (Lucky 1994), the facilitating of the Internet access to small and medium business will certainly have many positive implications to the overall economy. However, the process of commercialising the Internet or the Asia Internet can be a dangerous move which may lead to, in Roger Clarke's words, the cooking of the Golden Goose.
The authors would like to thank the following people who have assisted directly or indirectly in the preparation of this paper: R. Moore, Dr. Gary Gorman, C. McDonald, Dr. J. Louis, J. Miller, Geoff Fellows, Ken Eustace, Richard Hintze, Dr. Frank Ng , C.H. Cheung ; Wilson Leong; Uhhyung Choi,, sidney@gopher.ntu.edu.tw, Dr. Taeha Park and L. Campbell. However, any errors or misinterpretation of data that may have appeared are those of the authors.
James Henri is a Senior Lecturer (Assoc. Professor) in the School of Information Studies at CSU. His special interests include: information literacy and effective learning, collaborative learning cultures and managing change. He has been involved in distance learning since 1981 and has a strong belief in the use of technology to enhance flexible open learning.
Sandy Tse received her MBA from the University of New England-Northern Rivers (Southern Cross University). She is working on her PhD in business applications of hypermedia.
3.0 Singapore's Technet
Technet is Singapore's academic, and R&D; network. It was established by the National Science and Technology Board of Singapore (NSTB) and is managed by the National University of Singapore (NUS). Technet was connected to JvNCnet by a 128Kbps satellite link in early 1994 but has recently been upgraded to a 512Kbps undersea fibre link. As in the case of AARNet, the trend is to go fibre! Within NUS, the backbone runs on 10Mb Ethernet and Technet provides leased line connections and dialup services. Some of the on-campus R&D; organisations are also subscribers to Technet. Most of the external leased line subscribers use a 64Kbps connection or 19.2 Kbps link. Two of the special subscribers to Technet are the Ministry of Education (MOE) and Singapore Telecom (Technet's largest customers). The MOE are able to connect all schools to them to access the Internet via Technet. Singapore Telecom will be offering a commercial Internet service in 1994 (Leong 1994)
Under Singapore's IT2000 plan, computers in virtually every segment of the community; home, office, school, government, and factory will be connected. This has the implication that most citizens will eventually be connected and have access to the Internet resources. Singapore's growth as a communications, business, and economic centre for the Asia/Pacific region has been achieved as a result of a consistently high rate of economic growth over the past 30 years. This sustained growth supported by government initiatives, suggests that there will be continued expansion of Technet and access into the Internet will increase.
4.0 Hong Kong's HARNET
Hong Kong University (HKU), Chinese University (CU), Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), HK Polytechnic, HK Baptist College and a few other higher education providers have Internet connection. Currently, Chinese University is the main hub in Hong Kong for the higher education institutions. HARNET is connected to the NASA location in Mountain View, California and also serves other connections in Australia, and Korea. Figure 3 shows the HARNET topology and its transmission bandwidth. There are 7 backbone links of HARNET which are all T1 (1.544Mbps) DDS leased circuits. The Internet link of HARNet is a 128 Kbps satellite leased circuit and will be upgraded to a 256 Kbps terrestrial link by Sep 94. The touch down point of this Internet link is NASA Ames Research Lab, (same as AARNet). The two major commercial Internet service providers, Hong Kong Internet & Gateway Services (HKIGS) and Hong Kong Supernet, have their own links to the USA. Both are 64 Kbps terrestrial and will be upgraded to 128 Kbps terrestrial by the end of 1994 (Cheung 1994).
5.0 Taiwan's TANet and SEEDNet
6.0 Korea's R&D; Networks
7.0 Educational implications of the Internet growth in these countries.
7.1 Tools available on the Internet
As I sit here at my desk writing this paper, I am utilising the
tools of the Information Age. The fact that I am typing on
a personal computer is not so impressive to most people
today. In fact , I don't even think a whole lot about it. Yet,
only ten years ago, word processing was just entering the
scene with the proliferation of the personal computer.
Today, in order to write
this paper, I went to the library to check out
some books, did some electronic research on
Lexis/Nexis, and used the internet to retrieve
some files about a hypermedia application called
Mosaic. Now that doesn't even sound too
surprising.
However, what would be different about this paper
if I was creating it using a Hypermedia/Hypertext
word processing program? Imagine, instead of quoting
a source in writing I could inject a small segment
of full motion video (with audio as well) of an
interview I conducted over a network with the actual
author of a source. If there were sub-topics within
my paper that the reader was not familiar with, I
would be sure to include hyperlinks to additional
information on that subject which the reader could
access by simply clicking on the word or object
using a mouse, or maybe by saying something like
" enhance ADT" to the voice recognition
process. . . Well, you get the picture. The
future picture, that is. Hypermedia/Hypertext are
pieces of the future within our rapidly expanding
Information Age.
7.2 Tertiary Education/Training
7.3 K-12 Education
" We are now at a point where we must educate our children in
what no one knew yesterday, and prepare our schools
for what no one knows yet."
quoted in the signature of blackl@bvsd.k12.co.us
7.4 Return of flows of professionals/graduates
7.5 Languages/Culture
8.0 What makes the commercial opportunities with Internet unique to Asia?
8.1 Demand for telecommunications equipment
8.2 Commercialisation of the Asia Internet
8.3 Some specific Internet business related applications/value added services
8.4 Internet and Economic Growth
8.5 Small business and medium enterprises
9.0 Summary
10.0 Acknowledgement:
11.0 References
11.Authors Details
Philip Tsang
is director of the division of Business and Publications, the Internet Special Projects Group. He learned about Mosaic from a seminar given by Oliver Mcbyran while he was a visiting telecommunication assistant professor at the Univesity of Colorado in 1993. He was awarded a British Telecom Fellow early this year. He lectures in telecommuncations and networking. Currently he supervises two master students and one PhD student . Together with Prof. David Green of the Australian National University, he is planning to host the 4th International WWW/Mosaic 1995 conference in Australia.
contact author: ptsang@csu.edu.au
Abstract