The key to securing Ireland's future as an information age leader lies in implementing the recommendations of the newly-published report of the Telecoms Advisory Committee on e-commerce, according to the authors of a report on technology.
Speaking after the launch of the annual PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) technology forecast yesterday, Mr Tadgh O'Donoghue of the PwC technology group said: "The real game in town is to adhere to the committee's 10 commandments. They will, in my view, make Ireland the European hub for Internet commerce."
The committee's recommendations include cheaper Internet access and greatly enhanced infrastructure.
PcW's comprehensive forecast predicts accelerated growth in the telecommunications sector, with consolidation in the market leading to the emergence of four or five global supercarriers by 2002. Their services will feed into about 4,000 national and regional niche telecoms providers.
Mr O'Donoghue said that Telecom Eireann needed to respond now to imminent change, and, though he welcomed its decision to cut Internet access costs following the publication of the report, he called for cheaper delivery of its services.
As voice, fax, data and video technologies converge for digital transmissions, the trend will continue where telecoms carriers transfer their networks from circuit-switching, where a dedicated line transmits information, to packet-switching which breaks messages into packets of information and transmits them simultaneously over a number of routes. Such a shift helps accommodate the growing volume of communications traffic.
The mainframe computer is predicted to remain the "supersaver" cornerstone of business computing, as it continues to double processing power every 18 months while remaining at the same price. However, many companies are expected to undertake total system replacements using commercial packaged applications in the early years of the new millennium.
Mr O'Donoghue said Ireland's growing reputation in Silicon Valley as a base for technology investment was recently reflected when a European company looking to expand in the US was told by a US-based venture capitalist that unless it located its headquarters in Ireland, it would never gain credentials in the US.
Also speaking at the publication of the report, Mr Fran Rooney, president and chief executive of Baltimore Technologies, warned against businesses falling for the hype surrounding the Internet and electronic commerce. "That the Internet is the zenith of all communication media, that it is free and that it immediately opens a global market are myths which hide many truths. Nonetheless there are significant opportunities for organisations to obtain substantial benefits. These benefits are most likely to be achieved by organisations through intelligent and planned use of the Internet to re-engineer business," he said.
