Yet another blogger at the Jordan ICT forum today :) It only makes sense for us JP bloggers to stick our noses in such an event - Roba, Ahmed, Isam, Laith, Ameen, Mohammad, and MommaBean, (whatever the reason or work channel that got us there) right?
For those of you who don't know, the Jordan ICT Forum has been taking place once every two years since the year 2000, following the launch of the REACH Initiative - Jordan's IT Strategy (in October 1999).
Some of the main targets for this 5-year strategy were:
30,000 new jobs
$150m in Foreign Direct Investment
$550m Annual IT Exports
…To be achieved by the year 2004.
So, I have in my hands now the IT Industry Statistics for 2005 prepared by Intaj (Jordan's Information Technology Association). We have:
- An export revenue of around $163m (105% growth from 2004)
- $93m in Foreign Direct Investment
- … and… a meager 10032 jobs in the IT sector (with a growth of 17.7%)
I'm not the cynical empty-half-of-the-glass person, and we have some good achievements which were highlighted today by the director of Int@j, but what I was curious about is why the forum is not intended, at least partly, to evaluate the execution process of Reach 1.0 and where we have failed to achieve the targets. It's great to look to the future and to have a new plan set and ready to move forward, but we always seem to have a problem with evaluation. I mean, when we only reach one third of the job target, we should at least question where our strategy failed to deliver!!
I can go off on a tangent and wonder where the government's evaluation and investigation after the ITU elections is, but again, I will leave it for that separate post that I've been intending to write for the past two weeks.
So, back to the ICT forum and some of today's interesting discussions… a key point that is being put forward is how to increase internet penetration. If we look at the GSM network, mobile operators have reached a remarkable 90% penetration rate of the addressable market (75% of the population). Internet subscriber penetration in Jordan is at 2.37%!!! Ahmed mentioned the comment from Fastlink's CCO, Bashar Arafeh, on how we can achieve the goal of 50% internet penetration rate, and it's basically about the cost barrier. He described how, five years ago, mobile operators had to pay millions in subsidizing handset prices, but this is what has made the difference in the penetration. He said that perhaps ISPs should do the same for PC prices, and then he pointed out the problem of the high bandwidth costs ISPs are paying, simply making the ISP model one that doesn't work.
Yet we can't talk about Jordan's education initiative, or the e-government project, with the current internet penetration rate! It's the urgent challenge to be addressed. Or perhaps it's all connected… as one speaker mentioned, many parents wouldn't get internet at home because they want to protect their children from its negatives – adult content, obsessive instant-messaging, and the likes. But when kids at school are required to do their homework and research using the internet, parents will no longer be able to keep it out!
Will the coming few years bring us packages of 4 GB broadband subscriptions for 10 JDs per month? Now that would be progress to look forward to :)
More on the forum tomorrow… or by now I should say in a few hours. Some of today's interesting topics include Media and Telecom Convergence (NGNs, IPTV, Mobile TV, and "Triple Play"), Financing of Innovation, and Regional Innovation and Entrepreneurship Centers. I'll keep you posted :)
For those of you who don't know, the Jordan ICT Forum has been taking place once every two years since the year 2000, following the launch of the REACH Initiative - Jordan's IT Strategy (in October 1999).
Some of the main targets for this 5-year strategy were:
30,000 new jobs
$150m in Foreign Direct Investment
$550m Annual IT Exports
…To be achieved by the year 2004.
So, I have in my hands now the IT Industry Statistics for 2005 prepared by Intaj (Jordan's Information Technology Association). We have:
- An export revenue of around $163m (105% growth from 2004)
- $93m in Foreign Direct Investment
- … and… a meager 10032 jobs in the IT sector (with a growth of 17.7%)
I'm not the cynical empty-half-of-the-glass person, and we have some good achievements which were highlighted today by the director of Int@j, but what I was curious about is why the forum is not intended, at least partly, to evaluate the execution process of Reach 1.0 and where we have failed to achieve the targets. It's great to look to the future and to have a new plan set and ready to move forward, but we always seem to have a problem with evaluation. I mean, when we only reach one third of the job target, we should at least question where our strategy failed to deliver!!
I can go off on a tangent and wonder where the government's evaluation and investigation after the ITU elections is, but again, I will leave it for that separate post that I've been intending to write for the past two weeks.
So, back to the ICT forum and some of today's interesting discussions… a key point that is being put forward is how to increase internet penetration. If we look at the GSM network, mobile operators have reached a remarkable 90% penetration rate of the addressable market (75% of the population). Internet subscriber penetration in Jordan is at 2.37%!!! Ahmed mentioned the comment from Fastlink's CCO, Bashar Arafeh, on how we can achieve the goal of 50% internet penetration rate, and it's basically about the cost barrier. He described how, five years ago, mobile operators had to pay millions in subsidizing handset prices, but this is what has made the difference in the penetration. He said that perhaps ISPs should do the same for PC prices, and then he pointed out the problem of the high bandwidth costs ISPs are paying, simply making the ISP model one that doesn't work.
Yet we can't talk about Jordan's education initiative, or the e-government project, with the current internet penetration rate! It's the urgent challenge to be addressed. Or perhaps it's all connected… as one speaker mentioned, many parents wouldn't get internet at home because they want to protect their children from its negatives – adult content, obsessive instant-messaging, and the likes. But when kids at school are required to do their homework and research using the internet, parents will no longer be able to keep it out!
Will the coming few years bring us packages of 4 GB broadband subscriptions for 10 JDs per month? Now that would be progress to look forward to :)
More on the forum tomorrow… or by now I should say in a few hours. Some of today's interesting topics include Media and Telecom Convergence (NGNs, IPTV, Mobile TV, and "Triple Play"), Financing of Innovation, and Regional Innovation and Entrepreneurship Centers. I'll keep you posted :)
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