"Today's Internet a force to be reckoned with" - But it's still a jungle out there...

Interesting article from the NST here. The Internet was used to pressure a mobile operator in the US. With community based websites, it’s possible that state/corporate level command and control model can be directly influence by the citizen/consumer. Democracy would strive best when decisions are made bottom up.

The corporate and Gov’t sector must embrace social networking platforms. It not only connects them to untapped knowledge resources but most importantly it links them directly to citizens who puts them into power, the voters. In Malaysia, governing the majority group is not as easy as it used to be. It’s almost like when a company used to be a monopoly and suddenly, the market liberates and they grapple with competition. And hopefully, the political competition would push the incumbent to be more citizen centric.

Governance model in Malaysia is very unique and I think the country has the opportunity to showcase the world how we use broadband to enable citizen centric governance. Multi ethnicity, religions and social history demands differentiated services from the Gov’t. And these differentiated services, not the one size fits all approach can be delivered through the Internet or Web2.0 apps. 1Malaysia to me means treating each citizen as a unique individual with their own rights as a Malaysian.

The question is how does a Telco play its role in enabling this? Do we just supply infrastructure services and be detached from the application value layer? Or do we marry or embed application layer into the network? The Internet is a force to be reckoned with. But as it is, it’s like a jungle out there. It has it’s pros and cons. IP network provides ubiquitous connectivity. What does is it mean really? Are we making the ‘jungle’ even more denser?

A telco could provide a more robust and federated interconnecting world. It could make the Internet more secured and organized. People have been talking about the effect of information overload as we have to increase our capacity and capability to assimilate and synthesize information. This is an opportunity for a telco to provide crucial value in terms of transporting the right information at the right time to the right audience. In a knowledge and innovation society, a federated network is critically important especially in the area of governance, health care, security and financial sectors before we extend it to the consumer or citizen.

To deliver this value, for a Telco, being customer centric is a must. By being customer or industry centric, we could map industry, social, legal or governing standards into the network. And that’s how we add value to the network. That’s how we bond the application layer and infrastructure layer. It’s a deep jungle out there and no one else is going to cut the under growth, collect rubbish or clear the trail for you. No rangers to come to the rescue when you’re in trouble. By integrating infrastructure with the application value layer, a Telco can make this ‘jungle’ clearer, safer and more sustainable for everyone to use.