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ICT industry has been branded few years ago as a thrust sector in our
country. Many hi-tech experts think that like garment industry the
sector can earn much from the international software market.
E-Governance is a must for ensuring better services as well as for
creating transparency at the all levels of the government.
We started using computer here from 60s while many developing nations
could not even imagine on the emerging power of info-tech. But compare
to our neighbouring countries we came in the race of info-tech very
lately. We still have lack of confidence for investing in the sector as
well as being sluggish in taking bold steps with a new vision. Many
opportunities for software, hardware and computer re-exporting are
slipping out of our hands. We expected gaining successes from exploring
the SEA-ME-WE-4 submarine cable at Jhilonza in Cox's Bazar
It is very strange that we could not build up a strong ICT
infrastructure for grabbing international businesses and making offices
paperless. Our ICT ranking in international area is below a hundred. We
could not place ourselves in the remarkable stage of the e- readiness
ranking. The cover story of the Weekend of The Independent has given a
brief sketch of our ICT industry.
Submarine cable without ICT infrastructure
Our country's log on to the submarine cable network indeed was a
breakthrough in the history of our ICT industry. The fibre optic
connection is supposed to give our ICT sector a mammoth data and
information transfer capacity. The speed of data transfer capacity will
make it possible to transfer big files relating to the likes of
software, data entry, music, movie, drama etcetera. Overseas call charge
should be falling noticeably.
Our country signed the submarine cable accord with a consortium in 2004
for installing the fibre optic networks underneath the Bay of Bengal at
a cost of Taka 628 crore. The 20,000 kilometre SEA-ME-WE-4 submarine
cable project involved 14 countries of three continents from Singapore
to France for 15 years. The South East Asia-Middle East-West Europe-4
project connects our country with undersea fibre-optic cable passing
from Singapore through Malaysia, Thailand, Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka,
Pakistan and a number of Middle-Eastern countries to finally land in
France. Now our country has a 10-gigabyte data-transfer capacity per
second, 68 times higher than the current speed.
According to an analysis, voice and info-dependent software industry of
our country will need between 5Gbps to 10Gbps by 2010, which is almost
enough to fulfil our country's present requirement and further data
transfer capacity could be increased by additional investment, if we
need more data transfer capacity.
Nigeria logged on to submarine cable some years ago than us, but failed
in exploring the potentialities of the cyber connection as it lacked the
supporting required infrastructure. So despite having submarine cable,
many countries failed, like Nigeria, to achieve their goals in promoting
the rich prospect of the ICT and telecommunication industries. Before
joining global fibre optic connection a country needs the requisite
infrastructure for being able to benefit fully from the submarine cable.
It is very saddening to note that the requisite ICT infrastructure is
not available in our country.
The submarine cable connection is lagging behind for lack of back up
support. Frequent disruptions of the connecting by sabotage is causing
huge damage to the businesses as well as IT sector. For the disruption
we have to reinstall previous satellite based connection, which is so
slow. Many countries enriched their cyber and telecommunication sectors
by joining many submarine cable connections. Currently Myanmar and our
country are the only sea-accessing countries in this region having only
one submarine cable.
Software export and outsourcing
Many examples are shown in print and electronic media about how India
and China benefited from global outsourcing. Their earnings derived on
outsourcing business from Europe and US are now giant contributions to
their GDPs. Not only are the two countries beneficiaries from
participation in the process of outsourcing; but also Malaysia,
Philippines, Nepal and Africa
Our software export stands at 7.2 million US dollar in FY 2003/4, a
growth rate of more than 70 per cent over the previous year. In the
first six months (July-Dec, 2004) of the fiscal year (FY 04/05), the
growth rate has been more than 120 per cent.
The current situation in the country is pushing IT people towards
software export and students are heading for expatriate jobs. The both
tendencies are contradictory to promoting software export. Software
industry is always suffering for dearth of skilled manpower.
Domestic software
Only concentrating on outsourcing will not expand our IT expertise.
There is no creative work in outsourcing. You have to work here
according to the instruction from your foreign bosses.
We should create demand for local software besides striving to grab
overseas markets. We need to develop our domestic software market
profitably. Then we will be able to increase the number of IT graduates
and they will get good job opportunity in their own country. In such way
our expertise on ICTs and infrastructure will begin to improve.
One of the requests of BASIS to the government is allocating 2 per cent
of ADP for IT spending. To make E-Governance a success story its has
been suggesting that our government should spend 100 core Taka for
E-Governance software. According to its information the market size of
software and IT enabled service industry is estimated to be more than
Taka 300 crore every year in our country. Along with hardware, for
example – PC, server, network equipment, Internet and other different
network services; the total ICT industry size would be roughly Taka
1,000 crore each year.
Bangla computing
There is controversy about the Bangla keyboard. We have got a Bangla
standard keyboard after 19 years of endeavours and experiments.
Professor Munir Chowdhury designed a keyboard in 1965 for the Bangla
typewriter. Then in the 80s there were many endeavours by individuals
and groups to make a standard layout for the Bangla keyboard. In 2004
the Bangla keyboard was finalised by the representatives of Bangladesh
Computer Council, Bangla Academy, Bangladesh Standard and Testing
Institute (BSTI), Dhaka University, Bangladesh University of Technology
and Shahajahal Science and Technology University. But immediately after
the finalisation, Mostafa Jobbar of Bijoy software claimed the Bangla
keyboard was nothing but a copy of his Bijoy software and thus it was a
violation of the copyright law.
You will see numerous Bangla composing software in the market. All
composers cannot be acquainted with all the several varieties of
software. In fact, we do not require so many varieties. However, files
cannot be saved in your computer, if you do not install matchable
software and font in your computer.
To solve the Bangla computing problem, our programmers are taking help
from Unicode. It is an international programme, which has been universal
from the 1990s. Unicode is the unique programme for giving specific
number to each character of any language. It does not care what is the
language or programme or which is its platform. The programme assigns
numbers for an alphabet of any language. That is why the encoding system
is becoming internationally acceptable. Unicode consortium is
responsible for maintaining and upgrading the programme.
Previously we used to compose Bangla by using the English alphabet, we
had no codes for Bangla composing. So now Unicode can remove English
influence from our composing operation. However, we need more time to
standardise our keyboard. Bangla conjuncts are complicated; therefore,
the standardisation should come through necessary stages for the final
edition. Suggestions were proposed by some programmers to solve the
complication in spelling. They advised reducing a few alphabets for easy
and quick computing. Blind lovers of our language opposed outright the
idea of leaving out a few alphabets. Liberal perspective is needed here.
Conservative China has recently been changing their vertical writing.
For comfortable composing they have started writing horizontally on the
computer screen.
Developing grammar and spell checking software will be a challenging job
for our programmers. If we want to write correctly, we have to develop
spelling and grammar software like MS-Word, which gives us good sense of
grammar and spelling when composing in English. One of the primary
requirements for introducing Bangla operating system in our country is
developing data based dictionary and thesaurus. Bangla linguists and
programmers jointly have to write the vital data base systems. Bill
Gates of Microsoft said during his visit in the country Windows will
include Bangla in its next edition.
Translating software English to Bangla can be a way of enlightening
people. That kind of software development in our country is possible if
large number of programmers would be assigned to develop the translation
software. However, accurate translation is not yet imaginable with the
knowledge of fourth generation computer. But English information
contents of a write up can be converted comprehensively into Bangla. We
need to popularise Bangla computing in every sector besides English,
especially if we are to accelerate local development and poverty
alleviation.
Software piracy
Recently the so-called finding of IDC mentioned our country has been
ranked with the fourth piracy rate in the world. According to their
study more than 9 out of 10 software installed on new personal computers
in 2006 in our country was unlicensed or obtained illegally through
software theft. There is a big question against the study and certainly
IDC is serving purpose of a few corporate people.
Software piracy pioneers and open source heroes are pitted against one
another regarding to the issue of copyright and piracy. Open source
software is the demand of one group who are advocating that software
needs to be universal and everybody will access it from anywhere in the
world. They claim high commercialisation of software should banned. The
other group is against the pirated software because they say the
industry will never get a boost without handsome value to the works
software engineer. Therefore, pirated software should be prohibited
everywhere in the world.
Although some Western software industries are making special version of
their software for developing countries and offering discount, this is
still not affordable for non-commercial users. That is why, even after
offering these reduced prices, software piracy continues to be rampant
here, as in other developing countries; even in the developed world.
The moral or ethical concept of pirated software is, particularly in
public knowledge, different in those countries that are far behind in
implementing international copyright laws or Intellectual Property (IP)
acts in their countries. In these countries the general mass do not have
much basic idea about what is software piracy, even a number of IT
vendors themselves are not clear about CD piracy being legal or illegal.
Software engineers of our country will not get encouraged while our
authority is neglecting to enforce laws to protect Intellectual
Properties (IP). Primarily we should stop local CD and software piracy
for the sake of encouraging creativity and talent. It is in fact true
that our general computer education and diverse computer use are not so
expensive like some countries because pirated software is available in
our country.
Mobile phone penetration
A study showed to maintain a phone set you have to pay only 14 per cent
cost for mobile phone, 15 per cent for tax and 71 per cent for service
charges. So affordability in keeping a phone set depends on paying phone
bill. So now price of SIM card and phone set is not customers' main
headache.
The mobile phone was so expensive in 1984 in the international market.
About 1800 dollars rich people had to pay for buying the phone sets,
which were even not enriched with many options like the present sets
have. A survey in 2003 showed us less than 100 dollars you need to buy a
set from the international market and its price is declining. Similarly
mobile phone in our country once was out of grip of the commoners. Now
less than 2000 TK you can buy a phone set.
There is significant impact on a country's economic growth for the phone
penetration. Infodensity accelerate growth of GDP. Increase of 10 mobile
phones per 100 people boost GDP by 0.6 percentage points.
In the context of our country it is appearing that mobile phone is
causing teledensity more than computer with Internet. For lack of proper
electricity still we have difficulty in booting up computer use in the
rural areas. But a mobile phone set with better battery you do not need
regular electric charging. The phone is more user-friendly than
computer; illiterate people even can operate the phone for calling and
receiving call. Proper guidance can make them capable to explore other
options of the mobile phones.
Open source
To save huge investment in establishing E-Governance and domestic uses
of software we can popularise open source software besides the
commercial software application. In front of the country there is big
money saving option with open source software. Open source operating
system of Unix and Linux now are more virus protective and server
manoeuvrable than Windows.
Although open source software developers have introduced a different
kind of business. They are saying the 'source codes' of the open source
software to be free for all users. However, based on these 'source
codes', whatever is developed can be sold to clients. Now Red Hat Linux
is offering about 3000 Taka for the software in our country, a price
that is just a little bit high in the context of our country, especially
when Microsoft is offering especial discount for the developing nations.
Cover story of Weekend Magazine of The Independent
23 November
http://www.theindep endent-bd. com <http://www.theindependent-bd.com>
The writer is In-charge of IT and science pages
Cell- 01715245459 after connecting our nation with the global
super-speed- info-highway. have become similar beneficiaries like the
two pioneer outsourcing countries.
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