Peter Orne Wireless Government Subscribe to Newsletter Tell a Friend Print this Page 06/29/2007 W2i Takes International Best-Practice Sharing to South Korea The 13th Digital Cities Convention in Seoul brought together broadband-wireless field practitioners from Asia-PAC and North America for a day and a half of deployment updates and best-practice sharing on the wireless infrastructure and applications opportunity for cities. The conference was co-organized by W2i and the Korean IT International Cooperation Agency, and was hosted by the Seoul Metropolitan Government. Korea is widely admired for its broadband penetration levels, and was a natural destination for the Convention. Korea has a stated policy of encouraging: decentralization migration from a manufacturing economy to a knowledge economy leveraging these processes to build exportable skills and competences the u-Korea policy drive which pervades the country and is in everyone's vocabulary u-City, which is the local community element of this policy This spring, working with a program committee of Korean and international stakeholders, W2i built a diverse program from around the world. Represented on the agenda were following communities: Boston, Massachusetts Corpus Christi, Texas Gangnam-gu District, Seou Ganwon Province, South Korea Incheon City, South Korea Mexico City (D.F.) Minneapolis, Minnesota Seoul Metropolitan Government Singapore IDA Keynote speeches and country updates were provided by representatives of: Cisco Systems Electronics and Telecommunication Research Institute (S Korea) Global Alliance for ICT and Development (United Nations) Howard University (United States) Information & Telecommunication Equipment Constructor's Association (Japan) Transportation Information Business Unit, LG CNS (S Korea) National League of Cities (United States) National Telecommunications Agency (Brazil) Sungkyunkwan University (S Korea) Seoul Metropolitan Government Korean Projects Sonja Reece, Mayor Pro Tem, Normal Illinois, who is the ICT Chair of the National League of Cities, said: "I was so impressed with all the ways the City of Seoul plans to use Broadband with the Han River Renaissance Project. The task of keeping this vital water source available and protecting the environment is daunting. The model for their Ubiquitous City is one the rest of the world will be watching. The real value of Wi-Fi and broadband lies in having good applications and Seoul seems to understand that." Incheon City is also one to watch. From 1996, the city has been going great guns with GIS, doing digital mapping, monitoring everything from water and draining to streetlights and parking lots. Incheon also monitors for citizen and worker feedback over the network with an electronic complaint filing. Road construction permitting will be coming online soon, as a tool to support project engineers. Han Gil-Ja, Director of Information and Communication Division, Incheon City, South Korea, said: "Now we’re living in a global era – and to perform in this, we are proceeding with a project to view the city with a geodetic coordinate system." In other words, the digital mapping of nearly 60 square kilometers will become three-dimensional. "Using this 3D land/spatial database, we can more efficientily retrieve information on land utilization," she said. The map will eventually cover 390 square kilometers. Gangnam District in Seoul has generated international attention for its e-Government activities, providing administrative services over the Internet so that residents can retrieve civil and tax documents at home and store e-receipts. It's also doing e-democracy with district residents. “At this point, we have 400,000 Web site members, and a 170,000 member e-mail list,” said Won-Seok Jang, the District’s Informatization Chief. “We get feedback from our district citizens, who participate in policy making.” Gangnam is also working to narrow the digital divide by establishing community information centers at 30 subdistrict unit offices. Kim Hwa-Jong, General Manager of Ubiquitous Ganwon Policy Office, in Korea's northeast, reflected on the applicability of Korea's U-City model to his rural province of 1.4 million. He said the more than 30 cities in Korea with a U-City plan fall into three groupings: new town (newborn town old city (upgrading or remodeling rural city (hard to deploy – applied to farm village, distributed households, limited invesment But the cities, Professor Kim said, are too "technique oriented rather than practial. We need to verify possibility, usability, easibility and compatibility." They become competitive with one another, "eager to find new technology and services even if they are unproved." The business models are not practical, and resources may be squandered. Professor Kim also said the U-City project may "deepen the digital divide between cities, within the city, and within the family." The goal of U-Gangwon is a wide area rural u-City program to cover the entire province, to upgrade the quality of life for all, and increase satisfaction among visitors as well as residents. The network will encourage new business infrastructures and be available as well to traditional low-income residents. But to realize the vision, Gangwon needs to put the digital divide squarely at the center of its planning with a business model that is adaptable to each community. Visit the Seoul proceedings page to learn who spoke and to download their presentations. back Related Items: • W2i Digital Cities Convention Next Stop: Seoul • Triad of Companies Launch WiMAX Compliance Center in Seoul • Sarbuland Khan • Seoul '07 Comments No records were found. Post new comment: Only registered users can add comments. Please Log-in

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