AIT's Prof. Kanchana Kanchanasut, who is the Interim Vice President for
Research and Director of Internet Education and Research
Laboratory (intERLab) was featured in the English daily, The Nation,
following her inducted to the Internet Hall of Fame.
The entire article can be read at this link:
Asina Pornwasin
The Nation July 7, 2013 1:00 am
Thai Internet pioneer Kanchana Kanchanasut is inducted to the
Internet Society's Hall of Fame
Twenty-five years ago, long before Thais discovered the power of the
Internet, Kanchana Kanchanasut, a professor at the Asian Institute of
Technology (AIT), was working quietly to connect university researchers
online.
Today of course, few Thais can imagine life without the Internet.
Current data show that more than 26 million Thai residents have an
Internet connection and almost 20 million of us spend varying degrees
of time on the social networks.
Now Kanchana has been recognised for her pioneering skills by the
Internet Society (ISOC), which has inducted her to the Internet Hall of
Fame for bringing the Web to life. She is the only Thai and just the
second Asian - the other is Japanese - to receive this honour.
ISOC, the only trusted independent source for Internet information and
thought leadership, is holding the second edition of its award
ceremonies on August 3 in Berlin, Germany where Kanchana will join 31
other innovators and global connectors for her induction to the
"pioneers circle".
According to the Internet Society's chief executive Lynn St Amour,
this year's inductees represent a group of people as diverse and
dynamic as the Internet itself. As some of the world's leading
thinkers, she says, these individuals have pushed the boundaries of
technological and social innovation to connect the world and make it a
better place.
"Whether they were instrumental in the Internet's early design,
expanding its global reach, or creating new innovations, we all benefit
today from their dedication and foresight," St Amour notes.
Kanchana's fascination with the cyber world started in 1988, when
Thailand got its first connection and domain name - ait.th - via a
dial-up network linked to the US and Australia before switching to the
Internet connection model from "dial-up" to a leased line
network.
"From 1988 to 1992, the Internet here was used at three universities -
Chulalongkorn Prince of Songkhla and AIT - and only by researchers and
academics," she recalls.
One of Kanchana's major contributions to the cyber world as we know it
today was inchoosing to rely on ISOC's TCP/IP (Transmission Control
Protocol/Internet Protocol) technology rather than the International
Telecommunication Union (ITU)'s X25, an ITU-T standard protocol suite
for packet-switched wide area network (WAN) communication. The TCP/IP
is now the norm.
She also set up the Thailand Network Information Centre (THNIC) and
from 1988 onwards encouragedthe computer savvy to use the Internet both
for website development and domain name registration. THINIC was
awarded foundation status in 2007 and continues to promote information
about domain names in Thailand.
The efforts of Kanchana and her team of Internet pioneers in Thailand
led to the launch of the first commercial Internet in Thailand in 1995,
opening the cyber doors to the Worldwide Web to users outside
universities.
CAT Telecom was also quick to recognise the importance of the Internet
and licensed the commercial service, joining up with private Internet
Service Providers (ISP) to provide access to all.
Four years later, in 1999, Kanchana was appointed to the first
advisory committee of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and
Numbers (ICANN), a private, non-profit corporation created in 1998 to
assume responsibility for Internet Protocol (IP). Not only did she play
a major role in IP development but she also designed the criteria for
the members of the ICANN.
Internet access remained spotty in Thailand until the early 2000s when
the Information and Communication Technology Ministry brought down the
price of a broadband connection to an affordable level, thus opening
the possibilities for everyone with a computer to be connected at
home.
Today, the Internet is everywhere, allowing Thais to access it at
anytime from anywhere, especially from their smart phones. While
Kanchana is happy that such a wide section of society has access, she
is concerned about the lack of Internet literacy. "So many people use
the Internet without understanding how the Internet can be dangerous to
them," she says,
"They are so innocent that they believe everything and everybody on
the Net with all the inherent problems that brings. The lack of
Internet literacy in Thai society needs to be addressed and requires
the contributions of all stakeholders in the Internet ecosystem. It's
vital that our society learns how to use Internet safely," she
says.
Kanchana would also like to see government set up an agency dedicated
to overseeing the development of Internet technology. No such
organisation currently exists to take care of this task, which involves
participation, discussion and meetings with other global Internet
organizations.
"This organisation's mandate would not be to dictate policies on the
use of Internet, but to remain in touch with the dynamic development of
Internet technologies and assume a role as the country's representative
on the global stage," she says.
Kanchana would also like to see more technical collaboration between
ISPs, pointing out that the Internet, by its very nature, is
collaborative and thus the ISPs should work together to develop
innovative business models to attract users. "Collaboration on the
technical side would serve to reduce duplicated investment in Internet
infrastructure and technologies.
"That in turn would help reduce costs, making the Internet cheaper and
faster too," she says.