Transcript - Opening Cermony and Keynote Speeches

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Sonak Kuoy: (Khmer/Cambodian spoken).

Excellencies, Lok Chumteav, honourable speakers, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen.

First of all, I would like to introduce myself. My name is Sonak from ANANA Group and I will be the MC today.

On behalf of the organisers, APNIC and MekongNet, I would like to extend my warm welcome to all the guests to the APNIC 34 Conference being hosted for the first time in the Kingdom of Cambodia.

On this occasion, I would like to invite the guests of honour to take the reserved seats on the stage. His Excellency Chun Vat, Secretary General, National ICT Technology Development Authority Cambodia, NiDA, please take a seat on the stage.

Next, may I invite Ms Sok Channda, president and CEO of MekongNet to come to the stage.

Mr Paul Wilson, Director General APNIC; His Excellency Khiev Kanharith, Minister of Ministry of Information Cambodia; And Mr Maemura Akinori, Chair, APNIC Executive Council.

Thank you.

APPLAUSE Today we have an absence of his Excellency Touch Heng, Secretary of State MPTC Cambodia.

Good afternoon. Excellencies, Lok Chumteav, honourable speakers, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen.

On behalf of the organisers APNIC and MekongNet, we wish to extend our warm welcome and thank you to all participants, guests of honour, delegates and renttives from the Government of Cambodia, Ministry of Information, Ministry of Post and Telecommunication, NiDA, and foreign and local participants to this APNIC 34 Conference in Cambodia.

Today we have about 200 participatants, industrial experts and professionals joining this Conference and the participants come together here to discuss on Internet governance, open debate on the policy and we hope to be able to conclude certain agendas in this Conference today for the region at large.

Excellency, Lok Chumteav, ladies and gentlemen, to begin with, I would like to invite Ms Sok Channda, the president and CEO of MekongNet, to deliver her welcome speech.

Ms Channda, please.

APPLAUSE

Sok Channda: Guests of honour, his Excellency, Minister, Ministry of Information, his Excellency Chun Vat, Secretary General, Mr Paul Wilson, Director General APNIC, Mr Maemura Akinori, Chair APNIC EC.

Honourable speaker, colleagues, ladies and gentlemen.

On behalf of MekongNet, as the local host, I would like to express my gratitude to the presence of all delegates, speakers and participants in the Conference APNIC 34 and a warm welcome to Cambodia We indeed hope to be hosting an APNIC event since 2007. This year, we are excited to host and bring APNIC 34 for the first time in Cambodia and the first time in APNIC history to have the workshop before the Conference. Today, we have about 200 participants across Asia Pacific, making this Conference a truly international one.

While Internet usage has been remarkably increasing, the community is also facing many challenges from network design, security, prevention from cyber attack to IP resource management and planning IPv4 is running out. I recognise this Conference as the platform where experts and professionals from Internet will come together to share practical knowledge, technology, openly debate on policies that best work for individual operators and the community at large.

I'm optimistic that all participants will acquire new skill and knowledge from the five-day Conference and I would encourage all participants to take active parts in the interesting discussion to be able to conclude certain policies for the region.

In closing, I am very much thankful to APNIC and MekongNet team for their diligent work in this project.

My special thanks to delegates from the Government of Cambodia, Ministry of Information, Ministry of Post and Telecommunication, NiDA and Telecom Cambodia and other sponsors for their great support to make this event possible. I wish all delegates and participants a fruitful Conference and a joyful stay in this fascinating kingdom. Thank you.

APPLAUSE

Sonak Kuoy: Thank you very much Ms Sok Channda for the remarkable speech.

Next I invite Mr Chun Vat, Secretary General of NiDA, to deliver a speech. Thank you APPLAUSE

Chun Vat: Your excellency, Khiev Kanharith, Minister of the Ministry of Information, Mr Paul Wilson, Director General of APNIC, Mr Maemura Akinori, Chair of APNIC Executive Council, Ms Sok Channda, CEO and president of MekongNet, your excellency, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon.

This is indeed the great pleasure for me to be with you here today on the occasion of APNIC 34 Conference in the Kingdom of Cambodia.

On behalf of the National Information, Communication Technology Development Authority, NiDA, I would like to take this opportunity to warmly welcome you all.

I would also like to extend my sincere appreciation to the APNIC and MekongNet for organizing this Conference to explore business opportunity sharing knowledge and experiences which are contributed by experts and professionals from different corners of the world.

In this conjunction, I would like to share some of my thoughts.

First, in the 21st century, one of the iconic figures is the Internet. The concept was introduced many decades ago and it's here to stay. It is up to the technology community to nurture for the best interests of the invention.

Second, on demographic factors, the Internet penetration will exceed 2 billion and mobiles are somewhere in the 5 billion range. The majority are here in Asia Pacific region. IPv4 addresses are on the brink of exhaustion of all of its available space.

In global economic view, Asia Pacific region has the fastest growing Internet market in the world. This market growth represents an opportunity for leading technology based businesses. In the case of Cambodia, Internet offers an essential tool for overcoming barriers to social and economic integration. It also plays a fundamental role in developing our country. It brings information, education and health to the people in the rural areas.

In response, the Royal Government of Cambodia has adopted ITC policy that meets the millennium development goal. The key policies are to address social economic development by encouraging public and private investment in the sector and to effectively deliver public service to serve people better.

Fifth, Internet growth in Cambodia is strong and will continue in the large scale. This is the factor to accelerate Cambodia integration into the region as well as to the world.

Sixth, the future of Internet IPv4 address exhaustion issue has been on the agenda for a number of years. Therefore, APNIC 34 Conference today is proactively working on the IPv4 address space exhaustion issue to minimise the problems and to be prepared for the transition of both on the policy and technicalitychk .

Seventh, technology is changing the way we live and work. Connected and supported by a global cyber infrastructure, technology may come and go, while some has become officially obsolete.

Eighth, innovation has long been a part of human existence. The future success of cyber community will depend on strengthening strategy, partnership with international counterparts to serve a purpose which today is and should be a broader than a simple growth of our economy.

It should assist us in a process now building a healthier, cleaner society, with more social justice and where people feel happy.

To end my speech, please allow me to wish you all the best for your successful deliberation in this Conference and particularly wish our distinguished guests from abroad a safe, happy and memorable stay in Cambodia.

Thank you very much APPLAUSE

Sonak Kuoy: (Khmer/Cambodian spoken) Thank you, HE Chun Vat.

Next, I would like to invite Mr Paul Wilson, Director General of APNIC, to deliver a welcome speech.

Thank you.

Paul Wilson: Good afternoon and thank you very much.

Excellencies from the Government of Cambodia, Mr Chun Vat from the National ICT Development Authority, Mr Khiev Kanharith, the Minister of Information, our colleagues, Madam Sok Channda, the CEO and president of MekongNet, who are our very generous meeting host this week, Mr Chin Daro, my colleague, Akinori Maemura, the Chair of the APNIC EC, to the other honoured guests, to a number of pioneers that we have in the room here who have come to share their presence with us here, I would like to recognise just a few: Mr Norbert Klein from Cambodia, Mr Toru Takahashi from Japan, Kanchana Kanchanasut from Thailand, Rob Blokzijl and Nigel Titley, who are joining us from RIPE NCC, and from LACNIC, Elise Gerich from the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, Prof Ang Peng Hwa from Singapore.

To all members of the APNIC community, I really do sincerely thank you for joining us here for the 34th APNIC Conference, the first time we have held the APNIC Conference here in Cambodia. It really is a huge pleasure for all of us, I think, to be here in Phnom Penh.

I have a couple of minutes, but I wanted to reflect on the significance of what we are doing here at the APNIC Conference.

Today the world relies on the Internet, but we sort of take it for granted. We are building huge infrastructures for broadband and mobile communication for content distribution in the cloud. We are developing amazing technologies every day for devising applications and services and these are facilities that are all designed to carry human communications.

But none of them actually have any purpose at all without the Internet and very soon, I think we know it, every telecommunications function and every transaction is going to be carried by IP packets.

This has already been considered a sort of dynamic and changing environment for some time, but it's now actually getting more dynamic and more changing.

We are coming to terms now with the reality of IPv4 exhaustion for more than a year now, through successful rationing policies, through new policies for global IPv4 transfers which are now allowed and these things actually happened here, these important developments happened here in the policy discussions of APNIC Conferences.

That's just IPv4, because IPv6, as we should know, is absolutely now a prerequisite for the Internet as we know it, as we love it, to keep growing into the future.

But in this meeting as well, in these Conferences we have developed the addressing policies to support IPv6 and outside of this room, many of us and APNIC in particular, is working very hard on supporting the IPv6 transition on encouraging transition through training, human capacity building, through information sharing.

The point is that we really cannot reach the goals and the potential of the Internet from today forward, and even for the next few years, without engaging fully in IPv6. That really means all of us, because without IPv6, the Internet would gradually change, it will gradually change, so that in 5 or 10 years, it actually looks nothing like the Internet that we know and love today and it has lost what we have already heard about this afternoon, the capacity for global communications, truly global communications and for innovation.

In Cambodia, you have the opportunity here, which is shared with many developing economies, to roll out IPv6 from the beginning in all of you knew networks. It's actually not so hard and I hope that this meeting will make that clear and convince you of that. But here, you have the opportunity to leapfrog over a costly transition and to build your Internet with IPv6 from today onwards.

As I say, the IPv6 transition really does involve all of us here in this room and it's something to start now.

To make that progress, we all need to keep listening and keep learning and, importantly, to take action. At APNIC, we are looking forward to the findings of the latest APNIC survey which you will hear about later this week, because this survey tells us what you want APNIC to do. The APNIC EC and the executive leadership team are going to be listening and learning, because we understand that APNIC, like even else in this industry, needs to constantly evolve to meet changing needs and challenges.

With that, thank you again. Thanks to all of our Cambodian friends, in particular, for welcoming us to your beautiful country. I look forward to meeting all of you soon and I look forward to a very productive week this week.

Thank you.

APPLAUSE

Sonak Kuoy: (Khmer/Cambodian spoken) Thank you very much, Mr Paul Wilson, for a meaningful speech.

Next, I would like to invite Mr Maemura Akinori, Chair APNIC Executive Council.

(Khmer/Cambodian spoken).

Thank you.

Maemura Akinori: Thank you very much. His Excellency, Mr Chun Vat, Secretary General of National ICT Development Authority; His Excellency, Mr Khiev Kanharith, Minister of Information; and Ms Sok Channda, the CEO and president MekongNet, honourable guests and colleagues from the APNIC community, I would like to say welcome on behalf of the APNIC Executive Council.

I'm really happy to have the great support from the Government of Cambodia for their hosting this APNIC 34 here in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

I found that in your National ICT policy, you have the really strong emphasis on creating regionally competitive ICT experts here in Cambodia. I am finding some colleagues say that the Cambodians are capable engineers, already helping their industry, and I'm really happy to hear, to make sure what is going on here.

This time, APNIC 34 is the very first Conference which includes the five-day workshops within a standalone APNIC Conference, which is regularly held in August.

The workshops were held in last week and I'm really happy to have 84, mostly local engineers, took this workshop to obtain new technology and skill for network security, routing and campus networking area.

This is a week for the original format of the APNIC meeting and it is starting with some tutorials, so these tutorials will deliver some additional knowledge to the local people.

I am really encouraging those who are relatively new to APNIC Conferences to have a good experience in APNIC meeting and of course not only to hear and learn about tutorial material, but also to make a question and have a talk with other APNIC guys, APNIC community guys, to extend your networking, which will benefit in your capacity building.

Also, I want to recognise our relationship with our local host, MekongNet. APNIC is cooperating with MekongNet. Our histories began in 2007, when they generously hosted the APNIC 20 course here in Cambodia.

Since then, MekongNet and APNIC retains quite firm partnership to do the training and some other APNIC activities.

Additionally, we worked together to set the copy of the root server, which administered by Net Node in year 2010. Needless to say, the root server is the really important part of the Internet infrastructure that will benefit in establishing a new country's Internet.

I'm looking forward to the week ahead to have a lot of talk with you guys and then I hope everyone here enjoys this week.

Thank you very much.

APPLAUSE

Sonak Kuoy: (Khmer/Cambodian spoken) Thank you, Mr Maemura Akinori, Chair APNIC EC.

(Khmer/Cambodian spoken) Next I am honoured to invite His Excellency, Khiev Kanharith, Minister of Information Cambodia, to deliver a welcome speech. Thank you.

Khiev Kanharith: Excellency, honourable foreign and national speakers, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon.

Today I'm delighted to take part in APNIC 34 Conference being hosted in Cambodia with participation of various experts and industry professionals around Asia Pacific region.

I would like to express my sincere thanks to APNIC for selecting Cambodia through MekongNet support as the destination for this 34th international workshop and Conference.

Information communication technology has played a vital role in national development of all sectors. It has made the world get closer and communication faster.

The Royal Government of Cambodia has been concentrating on ICT development and widely promoting its use in public service, in particular the Internet access used as a medium to disseminate information and new local news locally and internationally.

Under the great leadership of Prime Minister Hunsen, ICT development education and capacity building has been prioritised in the master plan of national development, what we call the rectangular strategy.

Understanding of ICT is essential for it has made effective communication between countries, especially it provides better coordination and efficiency between government and official of all levels.

Having all cities, provinces and rural areas connected by a network with quick distribution and information sharing and facilitate learning of economy, science, culture to reach information around the world.

Despite the significant growth, the community including Cambodia is encountering numerous challenges including fraud, misinformation, cyber crime and data security on Internet, which could only be addressed by tight collaboration between relevant regulators and operators and certain that this APNIC Conference will discuss, educate, mitigate and plan ahead for the challenges.

Excellency, Khiev Kanharith, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of the Ministry of Information and myself, MekongNet and APNIC to bring the 10-day event in Cambodia ... provide learning opportunity to upgrade technical knowledge to Cambodian professional.

Conclusively, I wish excellencies, honourable foreign and national speakers, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, great success in your works.

Thank you.

APPLAUSE

Sonak Kuoy: (Khmer/Cambodian spoken) Next, I would like to invite all guests of honour to return to their reserved seats, as we are having the Peacock Pusat Dance to commemorate this Opening Ceremony as well.

(Khmer/Cambodian spoken) The Peacock Pusat Dance is originated in Pusat, one of the provinces in Cambodia. It usually played in the new year celebration to pray for the rain and good crops in the next season.

His Excellency, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome our peacock performance.

Please give a round of applause for your performance.

Thank you.

APPLAUSE (Peacock Pusat Dance performance).

Sonak Kuoy: (Khmer/Cambodian spoken) Next, I would like to invite Ms Kanchana Kanchanasut to give the keynote speech about the Greater Mekong Subregion and the Internet.

She is a doctor from Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand. Please, Ms Kanchanasut. Thank you.

Kanchana Kanchanasut: Sawadi ka. This is the Thai greeting.

I'm part of this region, so I would like to take this opportunity to welcome foreign participants to the region. Of course, I cannot speak on behalf of everyone, but it is for me a great pleasure to see so many people from different parts of the world come to Cambodia, in particular.

I'm trying to reflect on my own experience, by looking at this region with the Internet.

This region, it has been named the Greater Mekong Subregion. I think I try to trace back who started to call the region as Greater Mekong Subregion. I think it came from ADB, the Asian Development Bank.

The reason why they call this region GMS was because they're trying to build closer collaboration between the six countries which were kind of separated apart due to very long war in the past. You know about the Indo-China War, Viet Nam War, all kinds of war that was ongoing in the '60s and '70s.

The region was kind of torn apart by political problems. The Mekong itself starts from the Tibetan plateau and it flows through China and it touch southern China and Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Viet Nam, so there are six countries involved in this subregion.

The region is very rich in terms of resources, because we have a lot of, you know, Thailand and also resources which are still unexplored. They have found a lot of gas and petroleums and all kinds of unexplored resources, including gold. You may have heard of gold mining in Laos and many new discoveries ongoing.

So we can start from China, looking at China. Part of China we are looking at is Yunan, which is the southern state province of China. Population of Yunan is 46.7 million where the Internet user is 11.4 million.

Facebook is not available and Internet penetration is 24.8. I don't have any more figure or story about China, because to me, to review China is the same -- whatever happen in China is quite -- is strongly related to the whole China, not too much with the region. The Internet progress in China is far above the rest of us, the remaining five countries.

So I would like to isolate China as a developed Internet country. We will have a look at the other five.

Next is Myanmar. Go from China to Myanmar. Myanmar has 48.7 million and Internet users is 110,000. So the penetration rate is very low, 0.98 per cent.

Myanmar, as we all know, has been a country which has been closed for a long time. The email in Myanmar was in service, from what I heard, is by foreigner living in Myanmar, expats. Finally took over by the government, by the Ministry of Telecommunication.

Later on, government allow one ISP began cybertech in early 2000 and the service in those days were very quite limited, so you can only send emails or use the Internet at certain time of the day.

During that time, project in Japan also help connect universities in Myanmar. The University of Computer Science,Yangon, was connected to the Internet by the satellite network provided by wide project from Japan.

Right now, I was in Myanmar a month ago and everything was changing very fast. So the Internet is everywhere and I think we need to do more data collection and update ourselves. I think things are looking very exciting.

Next, Mekong flow through Laos, which is across the river from my own country, Thailand. Laos is big in terms of area, but very small in terms of population, only 6.5 million. They say that there are more Lao speaking people in Thailand than in Laos, which could be true. Even north-eastern part of Thailand is very densely populated and in Laos, you have plenty of room.

In Laos, you can see that people are sifting for gold in the Mekong River, so Laos is going to be very, very rich, because of the natural resources.

The telecommunication infrastructure in Laos became -- that sector became very active in the 1990s, but the government allow for joint venture and many projects started to build infrastructure, most of them connecting from infrastructure from Thailand.

Laos government did not pay attention to the Internet in the '90s. Again, expats living in Laos could not wait for their Internet and they wanted to -- because the international phone call is very expensive, so they would like to have email. They started to build their own email system. At that time, they used dial-up service to the US. So they kind of do based on the cost sharing basis. Until 1996, the IDRC, which is funded by Canada, is the organization called -- I forget the full name. We all call IDRC. So they have the project called Pan Asia Networking and that is the project that try to help Laos, Cambodia and Viet Nam to get started with the Internet.

So this project organised the email service in Laos and try to educate government officials to appreciate Internet, so they registered .la, which is the domain name for Laos.

That domain name was registered in 1996 and commercial service for the Internet started in 1998 in Laos by using satellite link to the Philippines.

In terms of policy, Laos set up a committee called Laos National Internet Committee in 1999, which was very early as compared to other countries.

You can see that the Internet in Laos can set up by users, you know, which the expats, actually by expats and as well as the Laosians overseas, because their university only started in 1995, National University of Laos was set up in 1995, which was quite late.

Let's move across the river to Thailand.

This is the bridge, our friendship bridge linking Thailand and Laos, which was built by Australian government. Right along the river is pretty much the same, whether Laos or Thai. The population in Thailand is 65 million. Internet user is 18.3 and Facebook is very popular. Internet penetration is 23.7, which is lower than the global average.

For in Thailand, we started much earlier than our neighbour to get involved with the Internet much earlier than our neighbours. We did UUCP, we started to build, to be connected with UUCP community in 1987. We connect by UUCP to University of Melbourne in Australia and University of Tokyo in Japan and also to UUnet in the US.

.th was registered by AIT, my institute, in 1988.

So next year, we are going to celebrate 25 years in Thailand.

APPLAUSE I extend our invitation, but we haven't set a date yet.

The domestic academic network, called CSNT, was established with three active members: AIT, Chulalongkorn University and Prince of Songkla University. This was done because of the Australian Government. They offer us the software that we can run kind of -- actually, it's similar to UUCP network, but they are using the software developed in Australia.

So with that three universities, we connect to Australia by two gateways, one from my institute, from AIT, another one from Prince Songkra University. Of course, Australia call us. We could not afford to call them. So we thank Australian colleagues in this room, because we know that is from Australian taxpayer that we manage to get our email operation working in the past.

In 1992, the Chulalongkorn University decided to establish a permanent link, so we had our first leased line to UUnet in the US and the second link was a service soon after that by Ministry of Science and Technology, by the National Electronic Technology Agency under the Ministry of Science.

These two links became our gateway and our academic network inside the country kept expanding during that time.

So we were busy with our expanding our academic connection within the country and, at the same time, we try to talk to the Communication Authority of Thailand who had the monopoly of international gateway. So we try to tell them that we realise that we didn't do -- we kind of did not obey the declaration. However, we did not plan to harm their business and so on. So finally, we reached an agreement that they would allow commercial ISP. We started to have commercial ISP in 1995 and two licences were issued by the Communication Authority of Thailand. One is to the Ministry of Science. They had an ISP called inet and another one is for university in Thailand, which is called KFC.

Going down the river to Cambodia. This is where we are. If I make any mistake, I apologise.

Population, from what I could find, was 14.5 million. Internet users is almost 500,000, which is very high, you know, for the growing very fast, for the past few years.

Facebook is almost the same as the Internet users.

The penetration rate is now 3.1. The year before was less than half of this. So Cambodia is growing very fast.

I really appreciate the hardship that our Cambodian friends has to go through, because they have to start from almost nothing, because their communication infrastructure was destroyed during the war and, you know, they manage to build up their educational system as well as their telecommunication system. This is very hard job.

The reason why I say that, because I came to Cambodia I think more than 20 years ago to interview students for my institute and I now really find the difference, that you have made. Because 20 years ago, it was almost nothing. The students, educational system also was totally destroyed and you had to start from scratch.

In Cambodia, the telecommunication infrastructure is using wireless, so it's kind of biggest mobile telephone -- you have the biggest mobile telephone subscribers in this region. In terms of Internet, email service started in 1994 by an NGO Open Forum, led by Norbert Klein, so I'm happy to see him here. And .kh was also registered in 1996 and commercial Internet started in 1997 by again with the assistance from IDRC.

The second commercial Internet was by Telstra Australia.

Next, at the mouth of the Mekong River is Viet Nam.

Viet Nam has the biggest population among the six members of GMS, 88 million, and the number of Internet users is 30.5 million. A lot of people are using Facebook, 3 million over, less than Thailand. Internet penetration is 35.07 per cent.

The development of the Internet in Viet Nam is quite similar to Thailand. It's a bit, a few years later, but take very similar pattern. It started from the academic sector, where they started to build up dial-up email to Germany and ANU in Australia. The activity was carried by Institute of Information Technology, IOIT, in Hanoi.

Then similar to Thailand, they also form VAREnet, Viet Nam Academic Research and Education Net, to share the services among the Viet Namese institutes. They registered .vn, which is the ccTLD for Viet Nam in 1994.

They even formed a company called NetNam to provide Internet service so they became an ISP themselves. This is done by the support of IDRC again. So IDRC was involved in three countries. They set up a connection apart from universities, they also extend their membership to NGOs, non-profit organizations.

The first permanent Internet international connection was established in 1997. The delay was due to the registration process. I found that Viet Namese government, they are very active to support the Internet, but they need to understand what it is and really, you know, pass a few laws before they allow you to the freedom to do what you like to do, like deploying the Internet and so on. But even though they delay this process, once the Internet started to reach Viet Nam, everything expanded very fast.

In my observation, throughout these years, all of us, these five -- I would leave out China, because they are so different from us -- the five countries in GMS all had very high telephone tariffs and also insufficient coverage of telephone. So that was the main motivation for us, particularly those from academic community, to push forward to get Internet connection started, email and so on, in order to have a lower priced more efficient communication with our colleagues outside the country.

Our telecommunication operators in those days were all State-owned, and they always tried to go by their own pace. They didn't want anyone to push them to move faster, so they want to -- they don't like to listen to us. But in Thailand in particular, we try to be friendly with each other and we try to work with them.

Then I found that launching email and Internet in these countries were driven initially by international communities in the country, either in the country or outside the country.

In Myanmar, the same thing.

In Laos, some expat community from LaoNet. In Cambodia, Open Forum is the -- I don't think Norbert Klein is Cambodian. In N Thailand, even though I'm a Thai, but I work for the Asian Institute of Technology, which is kind of outside the Thai system.

Somehow, I found that the first push came from expat, external forces.

All of us found that our government did not put priority on ICT in the late '80s/early '90s, because there were many other issues, there were many kinds of expenditures that our government had to deal with, like whether they build other infrastructure, try to get clean water for people, instead of building ICT. So it's understandable that they could not foresee that the Internet would be so important.

In Cambodia and Laos, the Internet was driven by expats and, since the market is very small, this is one of the reasons why I feel that the penetration of the Internet was very slow until last few years.

In Thailand and Viet Nam, we had very strong academic community that took the leadership and also tried to protect the way the Internet was shaping in our countries. So this helped a lot in terms of the development of the Internet.

Again, I would like to thank the Australian universities that helped us in building our knowledge and also help us in terms of connectivity.

Cambodia, Laos and Viet Nam receive support from IDRC.

The key players in the development, the academic institutions like Asian Institute of Technology, actual long Corn University in Thailand, IOIT in Viet Nam and another component of the key players are the expats and NGOs, like, for example, in LaoNet in Cambodia, Open Forum of Cambodia, external agencies involved in IDRC; now I got the full name, International Development Research Centre, which is supported by Canada.

After we started to build our network, we had to try to convince our government that this is something, you should support us. First of all, most of us would work with the Ministry of Science and Technology. But the first application that in Thailand and Viet Nam that we propose to our government was for our tourism office.

We try to show the government that you can use the website to promote our countries and so on and that was kind of very impressive for the policymakers in the old days.

Ministry of Health: a lot of doctors are very keen on using ICT, so we didn't have to try to introduce anything to them. They came to us and want to use the network. And we also try to convince the government through trying to develop a system for parliaments and also in terms of education.

So after we try to talk to governments in the late '90s/early 2000, the government started to be very excited, so they became involved and they started to discuss about ICT policies, regulations and so on, with the help by ITU and Asian Development Bank and UNESCAP and also Asia Pacific Telecommunication Office in Bangkok. Governments started to do promotion, for example, many governments started to have campaign to build broadband network and so on.

They also try to work on registration, try to pass laws that would support e-commerce activity and how to handle cyber crimes. Some of the laws that they passed may be too early and need a lot of amendment later on, because of the misunderstanding of the technology.

Then government tend to set up new agency that handle ICT sector, you know, on its own, which was not the case before 2000. Most of the governments in GMS region set up what we call software park, except for Laos and Cambodia. Myanmar also have software park. So everybody think that to motivate ICT, you need to have software park.

In terms of help that we got from various organizations, Internet organizations that, you know, help us to develop the Internet in this region, I think I can classify them into three categories. For capacity building, IDRC, with APAN project, is very useful for us to get started in the early days.

The Internet Society had workshop for engineers to be trained. Many of the pioneers were trained at the Internet Society workshop.

APRICOT Conference which I like to talk about in 1995 Conference which was held in Singapore, I think.

It was the first time that all the pioneers from different countries in GMS countries met and I think that APRICOT was really a melting pot for all of us to start collaborating.

APAN is Asian Pacific Advance Network community also have a lot of training and tutorials. APNIC, of course, like what you are having now.

At my own institute, interlab/AIT, we also run a lot of training from Internet engineers and we receive a lot of support from the Network Start-up Resource Centre from the US, University of Oregon.

In terms of human networking, we had Asia Pacific Networking Group as an organization that tries to bring people together. Without human network, the network would not have happened.

Apart from APNG, we now have AP*, which is a place where all representatives from different AP organizations come and meet to update and exchange information.

In terms of connectivity, again, we appreciate IDRC for helping Cambodia, Laos and Viet Nam. And AARNet Australia that help us, Viet Nam and Thailand receive help from AARNet. APAN, which allow us to use their link to the US. And the wide project, in Japan, which set up the satellite link, satellite network for the region called AIII project.

With all those, I could not get any more recent graph on the ICT penetration in GMS. This is the kind of most up-to-date one that I could find.

You may categorise the GMS region into two groups.

You have Thailand and Viet Nam close together, and Laos, Myanmar and Cambodia. Laos and Cambodia are close together and Myanmar is someone that really need a lot of help.

So far, each individual country started their own activity and try to build their own network. Now I would like to look at the region as a whole.

How can we work together as the subregion? As I mentioned earlier, that we live through very long war, so after the war, even though the war already ended, people were still not so friendly to one another.

So in particularly from Thailand, we were kind of different from our neighbours, so our neighbours did not receive us so well. So the Thai Government in 1988 had a policy of turning the battlefield to marketplace and kind of opening up the whole region to what it is today.

Apart from that, ADB started in 1992 to launch GMS subregional project in order to push for economic cooperation to enhance the relationship among the six countries.

From that kind of project, that kind of policy, there was one project under ADB called Greater Mekong Subregion Information Superhighway. Some of you may not have heard about it.

This project is supposed to build intrasubregion connectivity among the six countries. So this is the fibre optic network that they build out of this project.

This project started in 2005 and the infrastructure was completed in 2010.

Now we are in phase 4, the last phase. Phase 4 is to develop all kinds of services and applications, based on the infrastructure that they have constructed.

This is the infrastructure they have constructed, which is quite amazing. So this is the map which I got from the Communication Authority of Thailand. They confirm that everything has been done. So the physical network has been completed. The ADB direct financial support already ended, so ADB asked each member country to contribute and set up GMS ICT office to operate this network.

That still has not happened yet and, right now, the network is hardly utilised. It's utilised by point-to-point connection, but not as the network. The pricing scheme has not been agreed, so that was one of the main reasons why it's not fully utilised.

To me, with cultural heritage that we all share in the GMS region, I think the killer apps -- this is my own guess -- killer apps for this GMS information superhighway, if it ever operate at all, would be VoIP, because the telephone charge is very expensive, so if we can use the network for VoIP call, and that would save a lot of money.

You can see that people in this region now move around, so you have a lot of people, you know, from Viet Nam now living in Thailand and so on, so telephone would be very attractive.

Another thing is the mass media, like alternative media. This is very popular now, because people don't follow the mainstream media. They wanted to read what their peers are writing.

Entertainment and on-line games, because somehow people in this region, they like to play games.

Another project that I like to mention is the research and education network among GMS countries.

Actually, it's part of the big project by the European Union called Trans-Eurasia Information Network, which is connecting all the national research and education networks around the world, so the TEIN project is only for Asia Pacific and Europe. So members in the GMS countries are enjoying the benefit of this project. So each country is now setting up their own research and education network within their own country. So it's a very good push from the outside to get each country to organize their research and education network, apart from the commercial network.

So that is what I think is happening now and I think needs a lot of support from government as well as the business sector.

Thank you very much.

APPLAUSE

Sonak Kuoy: (Khmer/Cambodia spoken) Thank you, Dr Kanchana, from AIT Thailand for your presentation and the sharing of the keynote on Greater Mekong Subregion and the Internet.

Next I would like to invite Mr Kuo Wei Wu for the keynote speech on the Internet Evolution and Regulation Governance.

(Khmer/Cambodian spoken)

Kuo Wei Wu: I don't know if you want tea break or you want my presentation? Okay, I do my best. I skip video. Actually, I thought about I can play the video for 20 minutes and then I start to talk, but I think 20 minutes might be too long for you, though. So I skip the video, I just go to my presentation slide.

My slide basically is just a number and name regulation and governance and I think most of you here, you know what number is and I think some of you know name and you don't like the name, but somehow it is easiest.

First of all, I think everybody know if you want to get access to the Internet contents, you need to go to the Internet, the cloud. What is the importance of the cloud in the basic structures? We know we need a DNS.

What is the information in the DNS? I think most of you know, in the DNS, basically actually is the number and names. Of course, I know some of you and at least one of my friend, he still using the IP address, so he don't need a name, he don't need to go through that, but I doubt how many people still can use the number to access the Internet contents.

I think that is current structure and that is how DNS is so important. But the problem is I think most of you -- well, not you, I think the people outside of this community -- a lot of people are not really familiar about the DNS operation or what about the DNS security and the DNS, the routing issue and some kind like that.

I think for the number of you know that all RIRs, we all running like a membership structure. This number is what I took from the website of ARIN, RIPE NCC, APNIC, LACNIC and AfriNIC. We know if you want to be got the allocation of address, you need to be the member to get the address from.

That is how the structure basically, you know, IETF delegate the block to the IANA; the IANA of course go to the RIRs; and the RIRs go to the NIR; and LIR and go to the users.

That is what I check from 1981 to 2011. I think you know that the last few blocks actually is given to all RIR on January 2011. So this 256 actually is already depleted. If you like to see which year how many blocks were assigned, I have a slide.

Basically, it's kind of interesting in 1999, if I remember in 1999, also in 1998, is a so-called Internet booming. We only allocate one or two block /8 and it's -- well, there's interesting, maybe you can find why, but somehow that happens.

That is how I check the IPv6. What I did is actually I go to the 1 million most popular websites and see how many of those 1 million popular websites provide v6 access. That doesn't count the traffic. It just counts how many of those 1 million most popular websites provide v6 access.

You can see I start to track this from 2010 November until now and it's kind of interesting, last year, the Internet v6day, we have a jump, but then we drop immediately just two days after. Then from June 6, we call the World IPv6 launch and now we jump again, very rapidly to almost 30,000 and actually, I keep tracking until August, very nice, the number didn't drop.

There's really great. The number didn't drop.

Then I use this IPv6 to go to check where those IPv6 sites turn on the v6 for the access and originally it's Chinese, but I had the English name in there and I basically track by the RIR.

In the past, we saw the RIPE NCC is number 1.

Unfortunately, after the World IPv6 Day, Asia jumped to the number 1. And if you want to know why, I can tell you very easy. It's Google. Google turned on all its website with IPv6 and surprising that Google IPv6 turned on, it's all the address actually is allocated from APNIC, not from ARIN. So that's a number you can look and you can track. Even from June 6 till now, the number is still growing, I think that might be is a good sign for IPv6 launch.

This is a name and this is domain name market structure. This slide actually I took from Kenny Huang and basically you know the ICANN Domain Name Authority we give the registry to the gTLD and then of course ccTLD we working with, but that is solving the issue related.

Registry actually goes through the registrars, if you want gTLD, if you are the ccTLD, well, ICANN cannot control, ICANN fully respects what ccTLD is going to run.

The registrar basically goes through director, sell the domain name to the consumer or go through the re-seller. I think this is basically market structures.

By April 2011, the total is, well, you call 307 of the TLDs, but actually 11 is testing and one is .arpa and the really commercialised of the gTLDs is 21 and ccTLD total is about 274, and you might be question why it is 274, is not as a UN system is only 197 or something like that. Well, because that is some kind of historical reason.

Under the slide of the left-hand side, you can see that is number given by the sign. They do the quarterly report. Right now, the domain name registrations basically is across almost 230 million. You can see that actually the dot-com dominates, almost roughly about 40 per cent of the whole domain name registrations.

On the right-hand side, you can see that because ICANN open the new gTLD applications, how much application form will you receive, we receive 1,930.

It's kind of interesting, 1,930. But actually, the unique new gTLD application is about 1,409, because many of them actually applied for the same name; eventually they need to go through the bidding process.

I don't know how many are going to pass, but somehow if you add with 21, that means eventually, by some time next year, or 2014, we have more registry than registrar. That is really historic times.

This is now a given, I think here is example of WGIG working member here. And they set out the so-called Internet governance issues. Somehow, the number and name and server will be categorised and so-called critical Internet resources and so most of the time we will be invited to talking about the issue regarding for critical Internet resources.

But what about the others? Are those other issues not related to us? To be honest, it's not really true, because some of the issues it look like doesn't impact to the critical resources, such as the number, name and DNS or the server But somehow, the political people or the congress, the government or some industry people, they think in a different way and they going to touch the DNS, they try to touch the number and name and try to manipulate it and they actually doing kind of dangers to the whole Internet infrastructure operation and that is basically I'm going to talk about regulation and governance.

I think all of you know, early this year, the US Congress tried to bring the SOPA bill, and you maybe heard it. You can see that on the right-hand side, that is on June 18. Most of the congress members appreciate the SOPA bill, but, as you also know, by June 18, a lot of Internet industry, also the Internet users, kind of get mad and million of the emails sending to the congress to complain.

Just one day after January 19, you can see that a lot of congressmen actually switch, swapping from the support to the deny.

Eventually, turn off the SOPA bill. Will it be killed? I don't know, but at least moment the SOPA not going to talk and might be going to bring a new bill.

It's kind of interesting, you look at January, what the US Congress did and compare with last month. You know, actually this month, August 3, the US House of Representatives tell the world, say -- well, the political or government should hands off the Internet.

I think those House of Representatives maybe forgot what they did in January.

Anyway, nominate 414 of the congress members say hands off the Internet. Don't put your hands into the Internet operation, infrastructure operations. This is kind of interesting.

When they are talking about interest body and they have a different face. When they talk to the foreigner, they have another face.

This is another interesting article. This is also interesting in all the government action is called ACTA.

I think most of you know that ACTA actually is more than 20 some countries, the government, signed agreement without -- well, not secretly, but at least not transparent, not open the door, you know, and they pass an agreement.

But then when they go to the EC, European Commission, the people say no, this is a bad regulation and the European Commission say, the parliament, they say this is not a good bill, so they basically turn it off.

So this is the very controversial and very serious contradictions. You know, if you look, no matter from SOPA or ACTA point of view, if you vow that IPR is not good behaviour, but why is it being turned off? The ACTA is the same thing. It kind of violates the counterfeit goods. And why happen? Because it also touch several of the very basic thing, one of that is like human rights, Internet freedom.

Another thing is very important is it could be very dangerous for the future Internet developments or the Internet basically infrastructure operations.

This is the one of the articles is Vint Cerf was being interviewed by the Wall Street Journal regarding the Google operation in China. Vint Cerf say we have to figure out what works and so does the Chinese Government. It has to figure out what works and what is the best for its population.

I change the sentence a little bit. I say it should be we have to figure out what works. So does the government and industries -- it has to figure out what works and what's best for its population and consumers and particularly the Internet future.

So I think we all in the very interesting challenge, at these moments; how to make really the future of Internet in the right direction is the fit to general public interest, the good to the public interest.

I think this is challenge to government, to industry and to us. The people in this community in the community for number and the community for name too.

We know the next IGF meeting will be in Baku and we all in here we knew the IGF actually is just a follow up of the UN WSIS. We thought about IGF is going to be the platform talking about Internet governance and we thought about somehow we can resolve the Internet governance issue in this platform, perfectly. But it seems like some people don't like it. Some people want to create a new channel or new platform. They thought about IGF, it is just talking. The IGF don't make solutions.

So we have another interesting meeting called WCIT 12 that will be by end of the year in Dubai. That is from ITU and ITR.

I think a lot of people see the comment and a lot of people put a community into the WCIT in ITU regarding the dangerous of the WCIT, the ITR would be impact to the Internet futures and I think not only the general government or the telecommunication industry, I just took this opportunity to raise the issue for the community from the number and name. I think this is also a chance for us to bring the problem or the possible consequence or possible dangers to the whole Internet operation and the future of the Internet and even further to the whole economy, the whole society and most critical is for the future human civilisation.

Geoff Huston wrote a lot of articles, very good articles actually to be honest, the ICANN board will read his article seriously. Geoff, you wrote a really good article. You know, we quite enjoy it. Here I be honest to tell you, we read your article word by word.

So here I put something, a chart to map to the Geoff's articles. You can see that April start and compare with AT&T stock and AT&T stock right now is around $30 something per year. What about April? I think you know that yesterday, Apple reached record high, around $700-something per share. The same thing Verizon, the share price is around $40. What about Google? It's about $600 to $700.

So that would bring the industry in jealous. Well, the telecom is not going to be the hotspot any more for the investor. Also, as Geoff wrote articles, telecom try to get some money, some share from the Internet company. But somehow, what challenge to us, this is the last two slides I try to keep you have time, have a tea break.

What challenge to us? I think in general in the past, the number, for example, the NIR, NRO, IR, APNIC, RIPE NCC, we went to ITU quite often to communicate with them about the dangerous or something like that. Of course, ccTLD and CCNS, so we went to the IGF, try to convince the government what is importance of the DNS or something like that.

But is that enough? It seems not really. Because the government actually not -- well, they thought they talking about they are not going to touch the number and name, but they use the IPR, for example, so Pao is basically IPR issues and they try to do the filtering, censorship, they try to blocking all kind of things, you know, really dangerous of DNS operations.

What is our other issue raised by like cultural difference as you know and something about the issue raised by taxation, mail order regulations? What is related to the mail order regulations? Happened about July last year in Taiwan, when the market introduced into Taiwan and Taipei City government come out say based on the mail order regulations, any people download app, you have to allow them to try seven days for free. Then withdraw the market from Taiwan, because how can you do that? Can I download a movie and see it six days, 6.5 days, and I return for free? I think the consumer would love it, but problem is nobody want to do it.

Eventually, withdraw from Taiwan, but that mean you cannot end market any more? No, that's not really.

That's not true, because they go to outside of Taiwan to download it. One myth in Taiwan. Consumer, well, you don't have a government protection any more. The government do not have tax from Google any more. So you kind of lost.

So is the last thing, I think there is many things we can work together, particularly the number and ICANN, we can work together. I think that is couple of things, first of all, I think both of us we have to enhance or increase or, you know, better communication with the government in the ICANN GAC, in the ITU delegate, in the APAC tell, to allow the government or at least to present to the government to understand how the DNS operation and how the DNS is important to the whole Internet stability and security and how the Internet is so important for the future economy, particularly the human civilisations.

We also need to communicate with the Internet organization ITU, OECD, many of them. Of course, we still need to communicate with industry, Internet industry, telecom company, industry, well, is there any possible for the Internet industry and the telco industry we shut them in the door and ask them to negotiate by themselves? Don't bring the trouble issue to us. But I don't know.

I think we need more articles from Geoff Huston.

You know, I think this is good stuff. Because this gives more interpretation and consequence to allow the government people, the congressmen, the industry, the consumer, the Internet user, to understand the consequence.

Of course, explain the impact to the Internet user globally. If you really enjoy the Internet, you have to stand out. You have to stand up and to tell what you think, what you want.

The last thing I think NRO, the number people, you did a wonderful job to help the developing countries.

I think to be honest, in ICANN board, I encourage the ICANN we need to do it and not by ourselves. It's working with NRO, IRR peoples.

So I wish in the future we have more cooperation between ICANN and APNIC and these number communities.

Let us work together to help the developing countries, and I very enjoyable for the NRO decided to have NRO people meeting with ICANN board every ICANN meeting.

I really appreciate what you're doing and I think that is a very good start point and I think we can work much better.

Thank you very much for giving me your time. After I quit APNIC EC, by 2010, I still have chance to stand here on the platform. Thank you very much APPLAUSE

Sonak Kuoy: Thank you, Mr Kuo-Wei. Ladies and gentlemen, this is the end of the Opening Ceremony. I am thankful to all guests of honour and participants to this ceremony. We will have a coffee break, about 10 minutes, and we will come back to the APOPS session.

Thank you.

APPLAUSE