In 2010, Senior Policy Fellow Abu Saeed Khan proposed that we address the problem of expensive and unreliable international backhaul in Asia. UN Under Secretary General Noeleen Hayzer of the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) understood the importance of the issue and we began to work with ESCAP. By 2013, the initiative has quite a bit of wind behind its sails. Two studies have been done on South East and Central Asia. The link between the lack of redundancy in backhaul and disaster management is being explored. In ways that are not necessarily provable, private investors are pushing forward some of the ideas by building terrestrial and hybrid cables that work around choke points. And next week there will be a workshop in Manila that will pull together several reports and seek to mobilize greater commitment from Asia Pacific governments.
The presentation that I will make in Manila is here.
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