The Free Wifi initiative by the Barbados Entrepreneurship Foundation is already on-track to ensuring that internet is accessible by all Barbadians. While only 60% was achieved in Nov 2011, the course has been charted towards 100%. That said, a Government subsidy would ensure that the Free Wifi is sustainable.

However, access to the internet is not a means to the end desired. There must be productive use of that internet access which must go beyond simple entertainment and communications.

I firmly believe we need to create our own software. There are some signs that this will happen ie the programming competitions currently happening and coming on-stream. I’m trying to contribute via the facebook group I started for local App Developers seen here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/appdevbarbados/

@ David
I cannot resist saying that the one man credited with inventing the computer is Alan Turing, a former Intelligence Officer at Bletchley Park in the UK during the war. Sadly, like Wilde he found rent boys of interest after he ‘came out’, was hounded in the courts and committed suicide. There is an Alan Turing website.

I have to say that having been in education in different countries all my life (God forbid my being called an ‘educator’), I have always been rather sceptical about IT. It is an age thing, I suppose. Research papers are so often simply culled from the internet and there is very little ‘curiosity’ now in the sense used by Mr Boyce. And if as teachers we say anything which is new or startling we are apt to get into all sorts of trouble not least from colleagues. There is a sense in which IT stifles that curiosity of which he speaks. Fact is children do not read any more, or not much despite the best efforts (whatever they are) in the schools. The result is declining literacy levels and not only here. At the tertiary level the semester system doesn’t help. But how wonderful to read of the entrepreneurial efforts in the places he mentions to get round the microsoft problem.

@Shannon | March 13, 2012 at 6:50 AM |
The Free Wifi initiative by the Barbados Entrepreneurship Foundation is already on-track to ensuring that internet is accessible by all Barbadians. While only 60% was achieved in Nov 2011, the course has been charted towards 100%. That said, a Government subsidy would ensure that the Free Wifi is sustainable.”

Why a subsidy from government? Where does the money come from in the first place? Not consumers who have been very good to C&W over the years. Profits, commissions and management fees remitted to Head Office were nothing to scoff at.
I agree that too many young Bajans see the internet as a tool to gossip, and a source of entertainment and as an electronic stimulant to titillate their imagination suppressed sexual desires. But its educational, business and economic values are woefully underutilized.
Island wide free internet access as Mia regurgitated is the way forward. The same point was highlighted on BU way back when it was argued that modern-day access to IT is equivalent to the 1940’s & 50’s drive towards free basic education (culmination with access to free secondary education in the 1960’s) is not going to cost the government or the country any major foreign exchange commitment, except to ensure every child has access to a computer. Bim is small enough and flat with the basic infrastructure already in place for such a developmental project needed to meet the challenges of a new economic paradigm.
Maybe if the DLP had gone ahead with its 2009 budgetary proposal to impose a tax on mobile phones this revenue could have been earmarked for funding such a wise proposal with island wide application. There is nothing wrong in principle with the tax since it is based on use and discretionary spending (not a tax on an absolute necessity or income). What is required is a rethink of the mechanism to ensure its effective imposition and collection. Instead of making the tax “specific”-say $4.00 per month per phone- make the tax “ad valorem”. In other words, impose a special consumption tax of 2.5% or increase the VAT on phone bills to 20%. This “special WiFi/Internet surcharge would apply to domestic phones only. Not businesses! It would also apply to both post paid and prepaid mobile phones. With regard to prepaid (pay as you talk) it would be imposed at the point of topping up as it is presently done with the VAT. It must be clearly legislated that this special tax must be ring-fenced and can only be used towards the expansion of a freely accessible WiFi/Internet Island-wide framework and the continuing development of the ICT sector in Bim.

Whoever came up with such a“dull” idea and unworkable proposal of imposing a fixed monthly tax of $4.00 per pre-paid mobile phones does not know his elbow from his arse and deserves to be jettison from the cabinet and sent floating in the Pierhead marina basin to catch sh*te mullets.

@DAvid
“How do we trigger entrepreneurial thought is another challenge”

Herein lies the rub. Our education system has always been and still is catered towards a model and the production of a citizen who consumes rather than produces. Creativity, innovativeness, ingenuity, divergence of thought and thinking out the box are actually stifled rather than embraced and encouraged. Our companies use ICT as token tools for tasked needed now, our people use ICT for leisure, communication and enjoyment and our policy makers don’t even have a clue about the power and potential technology for a small developing state such as ours. Oh yea, the ISPs (LIME etc.) just want profits so they can’t be included in the discourse. real change will be needed in

a) the education system (both academic and technical)
b) in the public sector (where ICT use and leveraging becomes a
requirement)
c) the private sector (for financial,infrastructural and knowledge support)
d) in homes and communities (where the computer isn’t bought to do a “couple school assignment” but becomes a tool of empowerment and education for the ENTIRE family).
e) the minds of our policy makers, to see what’s possible, have the courage to go after it, and the balls to defend their decision and the investment needed.

Properly planed ICT use can reap untold dividends and cost saving (money and time), but alas “properly planned” is not a feature of Barbadian decision making and implementation. .

Thanks for the good comments so far. A benefit of homegrown programming which Hants alluded to is very important to save foreign exchange. Can anyone put a number on the foreign exchange outflow associated with software license fees and the like?

Trained Economist | March 13, 2012 at 11:37 AM |
“I think government policy has been quite weak in this area. the current administration has hardly spoken to the issue of ICT.”

Very good! Fair comment that reflects the actual state of affairs. Maybe they can co-opt MIA to speak on their behalf. But is our PM wired in that direction, ICT that is? He looks and sounds like a pen and paper man with loads of file heaped high on his desk. But one should not only judge a man by his looks and words but also by his actions.