Cambodia will not send representatives to the Third World Summit on Internet and Multimedia—scheduled to take place in Switzerland next month—because of a lack of funding, according to Leewood Phu, secretary general for the National Information Communications Technology Development Authority.
The summit, to be held from Oct 8 to Oct 11 under the theme of “Bridging the Digital Divide,” is being organized by SwissMedia in cooperation with the International Federation of Multimedia Associations—an NGO with trade-association members in 50 countries.
So far, numerous African countries are planning to send delegations to the summit, while virtually no one from Asia, barring a representative from Japan, has registered to attend, SwissMedia official Marie-Therese Draillard said.
This is why SwissMedia last month sent Draillard to Cambodia in order to persuade officials here to attend the event.
“When leaders of European and US corporations see this strong African influx, they will focus their attention on Africa rather than Asia,” she said. “This could be detrimental to Asia in the middle and long term.”
In order to bridge the “digital divide” in Cambodia, better infrastructure needs to be put in place and Cambodians need more computer training, said Houth Ratanak, director of Open Forum of Cambodia.
“Out of about 12.5 million people in the country, only 10,000 or so really know how to use e-mail and the Internet,” she said.
E-mail access could play a role in reducing poverty in Cambodia by, for example, offering e-mail education programs, Houth Ratanak said.
And bringing the Internet and e-mail to rural areas could be done at no great cost, Leewood Phu said.
Open Forum adviser Norbert Klein said he would like to attend the Switzerland summit, if only to tell multinational corporations how industry trends are widening the digital divide. The tendency toward high-speed and multimedia “are technically and economically beyond the reach of Cambodians,” he said.
For many people in the country, the reality amounts to having old computers, low memory, noisy phone lines and unreliable connections, Klein said. Advanced technology in computers and Internet access remains too expensive for most Cambodians, he said.
One issue may soon worsen the situation, Klein said. “The cost of legal software is more than many people can pay in Asia.”
If Cambodia complies with copyright laws in order to join the World Trade Organization, this will mean no more pirated software programs at markets, he said.
“[These issues] are exactly why this conference was organized,” said Bertrand de Petigny. A former president of the French multimedia trade association now living in Cambodia, de Petigny will moderate the conference’s first roundtable debate, with panelists from the industry and from developing countries.
