Feel the Net buzz

Moyeen Khan speaks at the inaugural ceremony

Once again, the collaboration between the government and the private sector, to contribute and boost a prospective platform for creating newer models of such endeavors in the near future has been undertaken through the inauguration of the fair.

"It is amazing to see such endeavors from the private sectors of the country," said Science and ICT Minister Moyeen Khan, while referring to Ispab's continuous efforts in developing a better networking environment. Mentioning events of SANOG V programme arranged by Ispab and Metronet Ltd., another local company, who is putting in their threads in creating fiber optic networks throughout the city of Dhaka. "Soon Dhaka will be recognised as one of the unique cities in the world," said Khan in confidence.

"Efforts by local government is shedding on promoting e-governance, which will surely be a presentable model for other countries in the neighborhood," stated Judith Chammas, acting ambassador of United States of America to Bangladesh, shedding her opinion on how the efforts by the government should be absolutely transparent on its efforts. "This approach is sure to pull in international investors on Bangladeshi grounds," she continued, which in turn is definite to create a positive impact on the local economy.

"We may assume that we will soon compete with the rest of the world in ICT terminology once the long awaited submarine cable lands inside the country," cited Akhtaruzzaman Manju, president, Ispab, while highlighting hopes on poverty alleviation through the right manipulation of the ICT industry of the country. "Once the cable is active, we may right on start working towards minimizing the gap in net experience and availability that currently exists in the country," he said. While 70% of the net users are from Dhaka, and 15% from Chittagong, the remaining 5% are from the rest of the country.

"It is time these differences even out," said Yousuf Abdullah Harun, former president of the Federation of Bangladesh Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FBCCI) and the current chairman of Insoft Systems Ltd, while addressing the event as special guest, and insisted on the attention of the government on legalizing VoIP without delay, lifting excessive taxes on networking equipment, introducing wire transfer of cash, and giving ICT incentives to the successful ICT exporters.

The fair having the theme, "Feel the net", expects to show the enormous potential and the various use of the internet in our daily lives to the greater mass and create awareness. The event is also holding several series of seminars on different topics related to the internet and its attribution towards creating a more stable ICT platform for the country's economy to stand on. Two seminars, "Broadband everywhere" arranged by Alcatel, and "Opportunities in open source and Red Hat Linux" by Proshika Computers Systems took place on the first day of the fair bore titled. The second day started with a seminar offered by Computer Bichitra on "10 years of Computer Bichitra and our ICT sector", followed by "How the internet can help your business", organised by Computer jagat and ISPAB.

"We now have to continue uplifting our own efforts on creating a hardware and software industry of our own," Manju said in one of the seminars. On this issue, per his advice, focus should be on building UPS technology on local grounds. Manju also mentioned a sum of Tk 422 million was pulled in as profits from exports of local software. "Other than USA, the neighboring countries may also harvest chances for us to export our local ICT products to their markets," he said.

A total of 76 stalls were offered to the participating companies at the fair, most of which had been crowded with curious visitors, including school children accompanied by their parents, for the entire scheduled period per day. The fair will run till May 1.

While the internet is considered to be one of the greatest achievements of man in the 20th century, today it boasts a huge numbers of applications, from sending and receiving mails to checking and spending one's money from his bank account. For a developing country like Bangladesh, the internet should be weighed not only as a gateway of ICT applications, but at the same time as a tool to develop and strengthen the use of ICT among all private and public organizations, as well as to create countless job opportunities for local IT graduates. Such depth of understanding among the potential users of the net is expected to be initialized by efforts such as the Internet Fair 2005, while the countrymen will wait to see the kind of amazing future applications that will come forth from the net.