LIRNEasia Chair, Rohan Samarajiva and I attended the first drafting group meeting for developing the Asia-Pacific Information Superhighway Action Plan 2022-2026 on 25 May. The meeting was convened by UNESCAP, and chaired by Mohamed Shareef, Maldives' newly appointed State Minister of Environment, Climate Change and Technology.
E-Resilience is a system property but poorly understood in Asia and the Pacific because it is understood almost exclusively in terms of continuity and recovery; the “bounce forward” adaptive role of E-Resilience remains uninvestigated doesn’t Included the fundamental enablers of E-Resilience, which are robustness, self-organization, and learning hasn’t fully employed diagnose and remediation programs to bounce forward; thus, ensuring improving telecom survivability/availability, rapid restoration of access to telecoms, real-time data services, dedicated public security networks, and proven business continuity and disaster recovery plans and procedures. VIEW SLIDES – “e-Resilience in support of emergency communication: best-practices.” These facts are worth considering for steering the AP-IS E-Resilience initiatives. As shown in Figure 1, resilience should elevate each additional state above the previous (initial) state. Nevertheless, I’m very excited to see UN-ESCAP AP-IS initiative taking two and half of the recommendations presented in the previous year; i.
ESCAP invited us to introduce the RASTER method to participants of the Subregional workshop on the implementation of the AP-IS and SDGs in Pacific Islands. The tool and its participatory approach reveal "black swans", in telecommunications, to then derive policies and procedures for mitigating those low-frequency high impact vulnerabilities.
United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UN-ESCAP), and their Asia Pacific Information Superhighway (AP-IS) initiative, might consider offering their member states: A set of tools and methodologies for technology stewards to assess their own E-Resilience in their organizations and communities; then, supply the quantitative and qualitative findings to include in an AP-IS database for researchers and practitioners to use in analyzing national, cross-boarder, and regional strategies for addressing E-Resilience. Best-practices for developing community centered communications networks with options for reliable and proven back-haul and interconnection; along with their resilience to various disaster, geographic and socioeconomic constraints. Guidelines for building Business Continuity – Disaster Recovery Plans (BC-DRPs) that comply with emergency communications requirements; taking into consideration survivability & availability and Rapid Restoration of Access to Telecommunication (RReAcT) programs These were three key recommendations contributed to the 2nd session of the AP-IS steering committee and WSIS regional review meeting held 27th & 28th September 2018, UN Conference Center in Thailand. The event was a precursor to the Committee on Information and Communications Technology & Science, Technology and Innovation, Second session. The main contribution, of my talk, was to cover E-Resilience: i.
We thought that long distance carriers would be the primary beneficiaries of Asia Pacific Information Superhighway (AP-IS). That was way back in 2010 and six years is long enough to radically transform telecoms in this century. Now the Internet companies and content providers are outperforming the baffled carriers in every front. That is what I presented in the 2nd Working Group Meeting of AP-IS at Guangzhou early this week. Image source.
In a packed session chaired by LIRNEasia’s Abu Saeed Khan, the next steps in improving international backhaul will be discussed. Affordable International Backhaul Monday, December 08, 2014, 4:30 PM – 6:00 PM, Hospitality Lounge 7 Many countries around the world lack affordable backhaul and cross-border networks that enable local networks to connect to the wider internet. There is still insufficient competition in some regions to facilitate competitive pricing and to allow for international Internet traffic backhaul. The availability of submarine fibre technology has brought prices down in coastal countries where competitive operators are able to bring this capacity to the market. The challenges can be greater for landlocked countries without co-operative neighbours for access to landing stations and other necessary infrastructure.
Last week, I had the opportunity to participate in one of the first discussions on the maritime Silk Road being promoted by President Xi Jinping. I wrote up the two points I made in my five minutes. The second point described in the excerpt below suggests that governments and operators get behind the UN ESCAP Information Superhighway initiative that we’ve been working on with them since 2010. It is possible to place security teams on trains and ships to thwart the attacks of extremists. But it is not practical to guard fibre optic cables, be they placed on the ocean floor or buried underground.
Abu Saeed Khan, who has been leading our engagement with UN ESCAP on the Asia Pacific Information Superhighway will chair the below described session scheduled for Monday, December 08, 2014, 4:30 PM – 6:00 PM, Hospitality Lounge 5: Many countries around the world lack affordable backhaul and cross-border networks that enable local networks to connect to the wider internet. There is still insufficient competition in some regions to facilitate competitive pricing and to allow for international Internet traffic backhaul. The availability of submarine fibre technology has brought prices down in coastal countries where competitive operators are able to bring this capacity to the market. The challenges can be greater for landlocked countries without co-operative neighbours for access to landing stations and other necessary infrastructure. There are also challenges in linking availablecapacity to internet exchange points (IXPs), either because they do not exist or because authorities impose restrictive regulation in areas such as gateways to international facilities, the use of alternative networks and dark fibre, or competitive backhaul from satellite and submarine-cable landing stations.