With or Without Wires

Moving from wired technologies to wireless is happening all around the world. Wired and wireless technologies have their own pros can cones. Why people are moving towards wireless, what are the benifit of wireless technologies to third world countries or so called developing countries like Sri Lanka.

The recent examples are introducation of CDMA phones, WiMAX, etc. in Sri Lanka. People realised the difference. Those are less costly, why? The maintenance of a wireless network is comparatively less costly for the ISPs, so that benifit come to end user, they can pay less. But quality? the quality of a wireless connection may not match the quality of a wired connection all the time., but we pay less, so get less. In the future hope wireless may match the wired.

So let's use appropriate technology.

Man Behind The Success

Information and Communication Technology is penetrating all the civil societies today. People have got benefited through it, so they have realized the value of it. This is the reality from the bottom to the top of the society, that is why we see new concepts like Information and Communication Technology for Development (ICT4D) even at the policy level.

This is not something came-up in a day; it a result of continues efforts put together by so many people who wanted to see the Sri Lankan ICT industry where we are today. One key character who put tireless efforts during last few decades and made a tremendous service to the ICT industry and to the whole nation is Vidya Jyothi Professor V.K. Samaranayake.

According to a recent survey, the IT workforce grew by nearly 10,000 in the two years from 2004 and the projected demand shows an increasing trend with a total of 7,672 IT vacancies expected in 2007 alone. Maestro V.K. Samaranayake had realized this potential well advance and took measures to cater the future demand by forming institutes like University of Colombo School of Computing (UCSC) and initiating programmes like Bachelor of Information Technology (BIT).

The Government of Sri Lanka has honoured Prof. Samaranayake for his contribution towards ICT by the award of “Vidya Prasadini” in 1997 and the national honour “Vidya Jothi” in 1998.

Sameera Wijerathna

ICT4D in Sri Lanka

Hi friends

Let's make this, another platform to discuss how we can best use the Information and Communication Technology for the Development of Sri Lanka. Specially, how we can use ICT as a catalyst in the process of development.

May be we can discuss the pros and cons of existing ICT initiatives, Technologies, Tools in Sri Lanka or even new ways of using it.

Sameera.