"Infobahns" in Asia: promises and perils

Experts tout the "infobahn" or "information superhighway" as a necessary catalyst for development in the emerging economic order, in which information is a prime commodity and the market is a global village. Many Asian economies, having experienced a decade or more of high growth, are poised to match or surpass OECD countries in the development of information and communications technologies. The national infobahn efforts being undertaken in a representative sample of Asian countries demonstrate the possibilities for truly global standardization and interconnection of a wide range of services and applications. Paradoxically, standardization and interconnection are preconditions for global multimedia telecommunications services. A typical infobahn architecture includes the physical network, middleware (protocols, APIs and user interfaces), and user applications (for information transfer and/or interchange), all within the legal and policy framework of a regulatory body. Key players usually include the network operators, service developers or providers, content owners, regulators and end users. This report examines the twin issues of the state of the infrastructure (technology) and possible services (applications), or, alternatively, the activities of the leading network operators and service providers. These criteria serve as the basis for comparisons within the region and with two OECD economies in the Asia Pacific region, Japan and Australia.<>