4.1 Accelerated Development
KUALA LUMPUR, Fri. - Malaysia needs to adopt sophisticated telecommunication systems similar to the “information superhighway” available in developed countries to progress and be on par with them, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Dr Mahathir Mohamad said today.
The New Straits Times, Saturday, April
1, 1995
In developed countries like the USA, information grids already exist.
But these grids evolved over long periods due to the initiatives of their
private sectors in offering profit-making services, and their growth is
dictated solely by economic and market forces. This is a time-consuming
process, beginning with individual information service companies offering
delivery of information within each company’s area of specialty through
dictated delivery mechanisms, and then slowly expanding the range and reach
of information types. As the individual companies continue with their
expansion, overlapping areas of information delivery occurs, creating sub-grids,
that will overlap more and more over until some form of nationwide information
grid is created (see Figure 4-1).
Figure 4-1. Time-consuming, unplanned and overlapping evolution of the information grids in other countries
Malaysia must catch up with its information grid development. Left alone, the private sector will develop an information grid in this country, but at the same organic growth rate as in the other countries, constrained by market forces and through trial-and-error. In that case, the growth of our country’s grid would not be at the desired catch-up pace.
The proposed NIG will accelerate this process through comprehensively planned and properly coordinated efforts by both the government and the NIG operator company.