350 Mb
bandwidth to be available by 2002
The digitalisation of
Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL) is far more advanced
than that in the USA, making the company one of the most vibrant
organisations in the country, only lacking a good management, observed
Salman Ansari, Advisor to Minister for Science and Technology, and
Vice-President of Internet Service Providers Association (ISPA).
"PTCL is a company
with one of the greatest number of fiber penetrations in the
world," Ansari said while speaking at the first session of the
second day of ITCN Asia 2001. The session was chaired by Fakir Syed
Aijazuddin, Honorary British Consul, Lahore. He said in just six months,
PTCL had achieved 95 per cent digitalisation and fiber networking of
even up to its switches.
He said by May 2001,
Pakistan would achieve 230 MBITs and 350 MBITs by February 2002, which
itself would be an exponential growth. He said the Ministry of Science
and Technology was working on various working groups such as healthcare,
agriculture, GIS mapping, chip designing, telecoms, education, content,
network, call centers and venture. "A conference of venture capital
is also going to be held soon," he said.
Ansari also spoke about
"Operation Badr", run by Zia Badr, a US-returned IT
specialist, who is now providing free IT education in different
universities and schools with the assistance of the ministry. Under the
Badr Operations, students from both English-medium and Urdu-medium
schools are selected and provided computer education, specially in the
fields of Java, data entry, medical transcription.
The ISPA vice-president
gave an example of one such project in which students from an
Urdu-medium school scored 100 per cent in an IT competition, beating
students selected from an upscale English-medium school of Karachi.
"We think that the students of Urdu-medium schools are as good as
(those of) English-medium ones," he said.
He said the ministry was
also developing a software through which people could communicate easily
in their regional languages. He said in Pakistan the growth of IT was
mainly hampered due to lack of computers, lack of access to Internet,
computer appreciation, gender sensitivity, cost of access and lack of
applications.
He said that the ministry
had taken a task, along with PTCL, that by June 2002, there would be not
telephone in the country without the facility of Internet access.
"We plan to expand Internet facility to 400 cities and towns by
June 2001 as compared to 350 now," he said. This would carry
multiple network access and peering points to bring stable Internet to
the remotest locations in Pakistan, he added.
He said the Ministry was
also working on setting Internet Community Centers, financing women in
IT, micro-credit loans to students coming up through IT programs and
providing Internet access to all universities of Pakistan.
