Datuk Amar Leo Moggie is the Minister of Energy, Communications and Multimedia Malaysia. He began his career as a Civil Servant in the Sarawak State Civil Service in 1966. His political career began in 1974 when he was elected as Member of Parliament and Member of the Sarawak Legislative Assembly. Datuk Amar Leo Moggie first became Minister in 1976 when he was appointed Minister for Welfare Services, State Government of Sarawak. In 1977, he was appointed the Minister of Local Government, State Government of Sarawak. He held the post for a year. Datuk Amar Leo Moggie became a Federal Minister in 1978, when he was made Minister of Energy, Telecommunications and Posts Malaysia, a post which he held for 12 years until 1989. He became Minister of Works, Malaysia from 1989 to 1995, after which he was re-appointed as Minister of Energy, Telecommunications and Posts Malaysia. The Ministry was renamed Ministry of Energy, Communications and Multimedia effective 1 November 1998. On 10th December 1999, Datuk Amar Leo Moggie was re-appointed Minister of Energy, Communications and Multimedia in the new Cabinet line-up and has assumed the post since.

Datuk Amar Leo Moggie was born in the state of Sarawak, Malaysia in October 1941. He graduated with an M.A. in History from the University of Otago, New Zealand in 1966, and an M.B.A from the Pennsylvania State University, U.S.A. in 1973.

Setting out ones vision of the future is always risky. But setting out ones vision of the future of the ICT sector is surely a task that can only be approached with significant trepidation. Since some form of crystal-gazing is called for in an article such as this, however, it might be safe to say that on the basis of the pace of technology development and the trends in the demands of the marketplace, "convergence" and "mobility" will likely be the key themes that would dominate the ICT landscape over the next decade.

This article will look at the implications of convergence and mobility on the telecommunications services industry and discuss the role of government in making the convergence of the telecommunications, broadcasting and online services sectors as painless as possible.

THE INTERNET

The growth of the Internet had been phenomenal. The Internet has begun to redefine the way people communicate. When connected to the Internet, the PC becomes a communications terminal for accessing information, for listening to online "radio" programs, for watching video-clips, for messaging, and many others.

The Internet has also begun to redefine the way businesses are conducted. It provides global marketing reach, facilitates collaborative product design, integrates supply chain management, and enables information to be widely shared.

The Internet has given users a foretaste of media convergence; it may only be a matter of time before the traditional media such as voice telephony, audio and video broadcast, fax services, and audiotext services become subsumed by a new Internet that will be faster and easier to use.

MOBILE COMMUNICATIONS

Another phenomenon that is taking place is the demand for communications services for users on the move. It started with the explosive growth of mobile cellular services. Although the demand for mobile voice services continues to grow, the demand for mobile messaging and informational services is even stronger. Many countries today experience strong growths in SMS messages. The GSM Association estimates 18 billion SMS are being sent globally each month. The US has seen the explosive growth of Wi-Fi (also known as 802.11b) wireless Ethernet that provides high-speed wireless Internet access to interactive multimedia content.

The marriage between the Internet and broadband wireless access to provide unfettered high-speed connectivity to a rich conglomeration of services and information seems to be a natural extension of the two separate market phenomena we see developing.

NEW DEMANDS FOR A NEW NETWORK

What does this mean for traditional operators such as telecommunications services providers?

Let's not forget that the telecommunications industry has served us well for much of the 20th century. Its key product, voice telephony, has contributed to the rapid growth of trade and commerce by enabling people to communicate efficiently regardless of distance.

The telephone network that was designed to carry voice services is also robust. Apart from voice it also supports fax services for the carriage of text and graphical information. Today, it provides connectivity between machines and computers by carrying the data by which machines and computers communicate.

But the telephone network is clearly creaking at the seams with these new demands. In many countries and on many major international telecommunications routes, voice is no longer the biggest traffic stream carried by the telephony network; a technology developed to carry voice cannot be expected to carry non-voice traffic just as efficiently.

Continuing to carry out incremental patchwork to extend the functionalities of the telephone network is not a long-term option. It is rather like realigning and widening old roads to convert them to modern highways; the end result can be expensive and less than satisfactory.

We should instead look to building out a separate core IP network designed to carry rich multimedia information that connects to users on the move using technologies like Wi-Fi. Users on the move would mean individuals whose work involves the use of computers away from their desks. They could be salespersons at customers' premises showing the latest range of products from an online catalogue. They could be students working on their assignments in the park. This segment of users would not require 3G technologies. The technologies are available today at much lower costs than any 3G rollouts. There is already extensive global connectivity on fibre. What is required is for service providers to change from a circuit-switched mindset to an IP-based mindset.

This does not mean that the telephone network should be abandoned. It will continue to be the basic communications infrastructure for sometime to come. It can indeed continue to provide an alternative tier of affordable (but slower) access to the Internet. But the IP-based network with always-on wireless broadband access will need to be put in place for those who have already moved to the next tier so that they can keep pushing the frontier of possibilities in communications.

ISSUES

Although a powerful tool for empowering consumers and a new media for businesses to exploit, the Internet provides green-field challenges to both authorities and users. As examples:

• The creation and management of new top-level domain names and multi-lingual domain names need early resolution to cater to the needs of users rather than narrow private interests
• The presence of irresponsible parties who are out to exploit the anonymity of the Internet to disseminate hate messages, to misrepresent, and to conduct unethical businesses must be curtailed to protect the innocent law-abiding masses
• The plight of individuals who may lose control of their privacy to over-enthusiastic marketers and find their personal information used as tradable commodities must be addressed

All these issues require a lot of trust, understanding, patience, and hard work amongst the international community so that equitable solutions can be found to realise the power of the Internet.

REGULATORY MATTERS

The broadcasting and telecommunications industries are normally considered as separate sectors for the purpose of drawing up regulatory frameworks. These barriers become artificial under a convergence environment. Regulatory rules can delay convergence from happening, thus denying consumers and service providers the potential benefits of advancements in technology.

Recognising this, Malaysia had taken the first step towards facilitating convergence by introducing the Communications and Multimedia Act 1998, the world's first convergence legislation that came into effect on 1 April 1999. The government had also instituted the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission as the single independent regulator for broadcasting, communications, and online services.

Prior to the implementation of the new Communications and Multimedia Act, licenses issued were service-specific and technology-specific. So there were licenses for domestic telecommunications services, licenses for mobile telephony services, licenses for free to air television broadcasting, and so on. All other services that did not quite fit in these broad categories were lumped under value added services licenses. In each case the licenses specify the services that may be provided and the corresponding technologies and networks that may be used to support those services.

The new Market Structure for the Communications and Multimedia sector in Malaysia

The Communications and Multimedia Act 1998 has organised the communications and multimedia sector into just four economic markets, i.e. a market for content, a market for applications services, a market for network services, and a market for network facilities.

We believe that our approach in organising the sector into technology-neutral and service-neutral markets will facilitate the introduction of new services using new technologies that are unavailable today without the need for complicated licensing. Thus, the new regulatory framework does not require separate licenses to be issued for the provision of 3G services or for digital broadcasting.

CONCLUSION

The ICT landscape of the near future will likely see convergence services with the Internet as a communications medium that integrates voice communications with rich multimedia content that had traditionally been broadcast over television. Increasingly ubiquitous always-on broadband wireless access services will provide users with instant connectivity to the rich resource of the Internet regardless of where they are.

But a separate IP-based network will be required because the existing telecommunications network was not designed to be a multimedia distribution infrastructure.

Governments must also work together to tackle the potential problems transcending national borders that can inhibit users from exploiting the power of the Internet. Regulatory frameworks must be in place to make convergence not just a technological promise but a market reality.