U.S. Calls for Creation of Global Computing Network : Communications: Gore urges nations to work together to link homes, schools and offices around the world.
The United States urged all nations Monday to help build a “network of networks” that could pump billions of dollars into the world’s economy by linking computers in homes, schools and offices around the globe.
Vice President Al Gore told a U.N.-sponsored conference on telecommunications development that the world has the financial and technical resources to spin such a web, which he called a “global information infrastructure.”
“We now can at last create a planetary information network that transmits messages and images with the speed of light from the largest city to the smallest village on every continent,” Gore said.
According to the United States, a world computing network could be built and run by the private sector.
Gore noted in his speech that the network is already being built in bits and pieces as fiber-optic cable is laid under seas and across continents.
His announcement coincided with the creation of a joint venture between Microsoft and McCaw Cellular that appears to share the global network philosophy.
Bill Gates, founder and chairman of Microsoft, the world’s biggest software company, and Craig McCaw, who built McCaw Cellular Communications into the largest cellular telephone company in the country, formed Teledesic Corp.
The new company, to be based in Kirkland, Wash., is proposing to build a $9-billion system of 840 small satellites that would circle the globe to form a communications network.
*
In his speech to an audience including some of the world’s top policy-makers and the biggest names in the communications industry, Gore said the United States will throw its weight behind the global network project.
He described a vision of an intelligent web capable of improving international communications, of raising businesses’ productivity, taking education to the farthest corners of the world and even promoting representative democracy.
“The global economy will also be be driven by the growth of the Information Age. Hundreds of billions of dollars can be added to world growth if we commit to the” network, Gore said.
The nine-day conference was organized by the International Telecommunications Union, a U.N. body with 182 members. It will also work on an action plan to extend modern communications to the least-developed countries.
According to the ITU, despite numerous technological breakthroughs and the fact that telecommunications have proved to be a profitable venture around the world, there is a huge gap between rich and poor nations.
While the 24 high-income developed countries have 70% of the world’s telephone lines and only 15% of its population, ITU Secretary General Pekka Tarjanne said that two-thirds of the world’s homes still have no phones.
The ITU estimates the world must invest about $530 billion by the year 2000 to boost “tele-density”--a measure of main telephone lines per 100 inhabitants--to 14.5 from 10.
However, Tarjanne noted recent success stories among developing countries that have managed to build up their telecommunications, singling out Botswana, Turkey, South Korea and Chile.
“There is no blueprint for success, although there are common points that can be adopted by developing countries,” he said.
*
Gore and Argentine President Carlos Saul Menem, who in 1990 opened his country’s ailing telephone system to private-sector operators, spoke in favor of privatization and competition in telecommunications.
Gore noted that privatization has spurred development of telecommunications in dozens of countries, and he urged others to follow the lead of Argentina, Chile and Mexico.
“But privatization is not enough. Competition is needed as well,” Gore said. “Today, there are many more technology options than in the past, and it is not only possible but desirable to have different companies running competing but interconnected networks.”
