Preparing for Island-wide wireless access to the Internet; S'pore to treble infocomm exports to $60b by 2015, Ambitious 10-year masterplan also sees creation of 80,000 jobs

[ZHANG Baohui (LST, LSL)]

Dear colleagues,



If the G1:1 needs testbeds and collaboration, you can see the new opportunity in Singapore :-)



For your information.



Best regards,



BaoHui



http://digital.asiaone.com.sg/news/20060621_001.html



S'pore to treble infocomm exports to $60b by 2015

Ambitious 10-year masterplan also sees creation of 80,000 jobs

By Roland Lim - 21 June 2006
The Business Times

(SINGAPORE) Singapore unveiled its ambitious 10-year infocomm masterplan yesterday. It sets out to treble infocomm export revenue to $60 billion, double the industry's value-added to $26 billion, and create 80,000 new jobs by 2015.

As part of the iN2015 masterplan which was unveiled by Minister for Information, Communications and the Arts Lee Boon Yang at the opening ceremony of the Infocomm and Media Business Exchange (imbX), the government also wants to put a computer in all households with school-going children, and increase the number of households with broadband Internet access from the current 55 per cent to 90 per cent by 2015.

A further target is to get 90 per cent of all businesses with more than 10 employees, on broadband.



Read the full text of Dr Lee Boon Yang's speech <http://business-times.asia1.com.sg/mnt/html/pdf/LeeBoonYangspeech_jun20.htm>

At a press conference later, chief executive of the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA), Chan Yeng Kit, said that the amount of investment from the government into iN2015 will be 'multi-billion dollars'.

He said an exact figure was not available, as many of the initiatives were still being worked on. In May, the government announced a $2 billion e-Government masterplan for the next five years, which is an integral part of iN2015.

Dr Lee highlighted four key strategies which are expected to help Singapore achieve the goals set out by iN2015, the first of which was the building of the Next Generation National Infocomm Infrastructure (NGNII).

First announced in March, the NGNII will consist of a new ultra-high speed wired network and an island-wide wireless broadband network. Dr Lee said IDA had already received proposals from local and foreign providers.

The second key strategy is to help the local infocomm industry internationalise and export its IT products and services. 'One such marketable product is Singapore's e-Government solutions,' Dr Lee said.

To further Singapore's leadership in the e-Government space, Dr Lee also revealed that IDA, the National University of Singapore's Institute of Systems Science and the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy will be setting up the Singapore e-Government Leadership Centre later this year.

The centre will offer research, consulting and education services in the area of e-Government.

The third strategy is to develop and nurture infocomm talent here to take on higher value-added activities. 'We will nurture a pool of techno-strategists who have both the technical and business expertise to achieve organisational goals through strategic and innovative use of infocomm,' said Dr Lee.

Of the 80,000 jobs that iN2015 expects to add, 55,000 will be infocomm jobs, while 25,000 will be supporting jobs in the infocomm industry. The IDA says there are currently about 115,000 infocomm jobs in Singapore.

The last key strategy of iN2015 is to focus on seven key industries where infocomm technologies could provide a competitive advantage to Singapore's economy.

The seven sectors identified were: digital media and entertainment; education and learning; healthcare and biomedical sciences; manufacturing and logistics; tourism, hospitality and retail; financial services and government services.

Dr Lee said that the new iN2015 plan was a culmination of a year of input and feedback culled from the public and private sectors and the general public.

He added that beyond exploiting infocomm technologies for economic competitiveness, the government will be exploring ways to use infocomm technologies to help the elderly, less-privileged and people with disabilities, for example by redesigning jobs to accommodate them.

Initial feedback from the local infocomm industry was, as expected, positive.

Patricia Yim, managing director of IBM Singapore, said: 'The iN2015 masterplan reflects the visionary leadership of the Singapore government to leverage technology and other capabilities in integrated and innovative ways that will also benefit Singapore's standing in the global economy.'

Chong Yoke Sin, chief executive of SingTel's IT services arm NCS, said: 'This next phase of Singapore's IT development is going to be an exciting one. NCS sees more government and business services turning 'i' which means that every one will be able to access them through a myriad of mobile devices, any time and anywhere.'





-------------------------------------------------

ZHANG, BaoHui (张宝辉), PhD, Assistant professor
Learning Sciences and Technology (LST) Academic Group
Learning Sciences Lab (LSL)



Block 2, Level 3, Room 27
National Institute of Education (NIE)
Nanyang Technological University
1 Nanyang Walk, Singapore 637616
65-6790-3284 (O); 65-9750-4938 (HP)
Fax: 65-6896-8038
Emails: BHZhang at nie.edu.sg
           BaoHui.Zhang at gmail.com
http://eduweb.nie.edu.sg/lsl/
http://eduweb.nie.edu.sg/lst
@bnu.edu.cn; @umich; @pitt; @cmu; @msu.edu; @nie.edu.sg



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