[Telecentres] Basic Telecentre Items/ICT Definition

[ashish Saboo]

An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman-new.greennet.org.uk/pipermail/telecentres/attachments/20041004/260f2486/attachment.htm
-------------- next part --------------
  Don , Taran , 
 
  The Pandora box needs to be addressed. Wherever the Telecentre (Cyber cafe) business model was based on shared usage or pay per use model to bring in the services within the consumer's reach have faced similar obsolescence.
   Our estimates put even in the up market locales in Metro cities of India, cyber cafes have reduced to a third from its peak in 2000 (Dot Com boom). 
The telecentres have been the business martyrs but look at their contribution: 
   Much of the success of South Korea in bringing over 70% broadband penetration is attributed to the PC Bangs, The Bangs have offered as a " Technology Introduction center “ further have played an important stop gap role in bringing IT to Koreans. 
  To get the requisite ubiquity in Internet access needs good indigenous & relevant content. While content development industry needs numbers to justify the investment. In this chicken and egg situation, The PC Bangs offered the numbers in this gestation period.    Some reports estimate, the Korean local content industry took over 4 years to develop after the infrastructure was in place. (Imagine your investment in computers would have been redundant before you could figure out the purpose to use it!). 
 This model is relevant to many countries like India, Pakistan, and Ghana from a perspective of " ICT test drive center " and well as a shared usage approach. Others where the cost of acquiring a computer is over 150% of annual per capital Income! 
  It is unfortunate the large numbers of bangs could not reinvent themselves and adapt to the new scenario. 
    In developing countries where investment in basic infrastructure competes with investment in ICT, The government bodies have limitation in committing investments to Telecentres. The private initiatives are best bet & hopefully our exchange of view may offer insights to make investment in such ICT centers lucrative. 

Refer: 

http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/biz/200402/kt2004021318581511860.htm
http://www.asiaweek.com/asiaweek/technology/2000/1006/tech.net.html


On another point which Taran brought Quote : 
  
Regards 

Ashish Saboo



On Sun, 03 Oct 2004 Taran Rampersad wrote :
>Don Cameron wrote:
>
> >A recent discussion on another forum really strengthened the need to clarify
> >just what the term 'Telecentre' means. A proponent of South Korea's 'PC
> >Bangs' (Korean parlance for an Internet Café) described the 20,000 South
> >Korean 'PC Bangs' as Telecentre's. The use of this descriptor was argued by
> >other respondents as inappropriate because not one of these commercial Cyber
> >Cafés is community based or driven by development objectives (most are
> >simply computer gaming venues). None are true Telecentre's as all commenced
> >life as commercial ventures vying for an ever decreasing market; a market
> >where home PC adoption makes 'PC Bangs' largely obsolete (South Korea is the
> >worlds most wired nation and while there were more than 50,000 PC Bangs in
> >year 2000, today there are less than 20,000 due to changing market
> >conditions). I can only wonder at a market where 30,000 small businesses
> >vanish in the space of 4 short years!
> >
> >
>And when those businesses disappear - what will happen to the community?
>So the community may not have originally been the driving factor, but
>the community is now a driving factor...
>
> >There are many lessons to be learnt from the Korean experience and to me,
> >the two most evident are:
> >
> >1/ Sustainability is not as simplistic as a choice of software or venue as
> >it contains many variables of importance; not the least being the matter of
> >a mission driven by need and supported by the community. A Telecentre that
> >looses community focus is doomed to the anonymity of being 'just another
> >provider' in a highly competitive market.
> >
>Well, this goes back to the Cluetrain Manifesto - 'Markets are
>discussions'. Telecentres are water, and we can provide water, but
>people have to want to drink it. In a business, it's in the interest of
>the business to create something attractive, but in the case of funded
>Telecentres... is there such a need? So there's also the issue of
>motivation of the Telecentre itself. Those that meet a need or want of a
>community survive, and are good investments. Those that do not...
>
> >2/ WSIS makes scant reference to the threat of ICT's and totally fails to
> >provide deliverables for threat mitigation other than a few oblique
> >references to Spam and security - yet South Korea teaches that development
> >is also not as simplistic as 'build it and they will come and prosper'. The
> >populace of this highly wired nation are increasingly called to deal with
> >the downside of interactive ICT's. Quite apart from the loss of 30,000 small
> >businesses, one-third of South Korea's online population; more than 20% of
> >the total population are now considered to be 'Internet Addicts'. The
> >Government is so concerned about the social implications that South Korea
> >has established a "Centre for Internet Addiction Prevention and Counselling"
> >that receives thousands of requests for help per day.
> >
> >
>Wow. I wonder why people feel that they have become addicted. Do they
>surf the internet to the point where they lose interest in other things?
>
> >We are potentially opening Pandora's Box and WSIS seeks to hasten the
> >process by placing unrealistic timeliness on Governments to achieve a vision
> >yet to be tested or evaluated, even less understood. If Telecentre's can
> >promote anything to this process I hope it is that of caution; of slowing
> >down the zealous nature of WSIS to drive change overnight. Telecentre's have
> >a long history of promoting managed and contributory development and
> >acknowledge that development does not occur in quantum leaps - I hope we can
> >bring our culture, ethos and work ethic to the table of WSIS.
> >
> >
>This makes a lot of sense. Could we talk about this some more? I think
>this is pretty important...
>
>--
>Taran Rampersad
>
>cnd at knowprose.com
>
>http://www.linuxgazette.com
>http://www.a42.com
>http://www.worldchanging.com
>http://www.knowprose.com
>http://www.easylum.net
>
>" It requires greater courage to preserve inner freedom, to move on in one's inward journey into new realms, than to stand defiantly for outer freedom."— Rollo May
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>telecentres mailing list
>telecentres at wsis-cs.org
>http://mailman-new.greennet.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/telecentres
>To unsubscribe, send a message to telecentres-request at wsis-cs.org with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message.