From Matangi Tonga Magazine, Vol. 16, no. 1, June 2001.

Interview: HRH Crown Prince Tupouto‘a. By Pesi Fonua

Pesi - You are just about to change our way of life with the new wireless telephone service for Tongatapu, and a fibre optic connection for central Nuku’alofa, that Shoreline Communication will introduce in July. Can you give us a glimpse of the kind of town that Nuku’alofa is going to be within the next, say five years as a result of this technological advance?

HRH Crown Prince Tupouto‘a - It would be interesting to see how people would use the service, and I feel that this is very much up to them. The impact it has shall depend entirely on people’s talent.

Comments have been made that the high speed Wireless and the Fibre Optic service you are introducing are too advanced for a developing country like Tonga. Is there any truth in such comments and why do you think it is important for these very advanced means of communication to be introduced now?

I have never understood what too advanced means. Three Jews who had survived the Holocaust were discussing where they should live so one says he is going to Israel and the second volunteers that he wanted to live in England. The third thought for a while and said, “I think I shall go to Australia”. The other two marvelled at this and asked, “But is that not too far away?” The Third Jew replied, “Far from where?

How long will it take for a newly wired-up society in Nuku’alofa, and Tonga, for example, to fully exploit the potential of such a service?

There are two examples I have seen which are relevant. One is Glasgow, Kentucky, a cattle-farming community, and the other is Oulu in Finland, which was a lumber town.  They both have a population of around 100,000 and both decided to wire themselves up to provide very fast connections to households. Today, Oulu has the second biggest IT industrial park in Europe while Glasgow KY manages to control its traffic lights on TCP/IP but still produces cows. The difference was that Oulu had gone further than providing just the fast connection. They were smart enough to bring together a university, the Government, and the Commercial Community to push a very extensive public education programme to show people just how they could take advantage of the new services. The Finns got it right and we must do the same. There is no time to lose. We already have the nucleus of such a programme in the Royal School of Science. It should be expanded to $2 million a year, which is still a lot less yet has greater potential than the $3 million Tonga pays the University of the South Pacific every 12 months.

What are the political implications of such a system on the society?

Only beneficial.

I think an advanced means of communication will open up a number of economic possibilities. Do you think that this cutting edge form of communication will bring a new form of economy for Tonga?

Yes. It will provide liberation for the common man greater than that originally given him by the automobile. Governments all over the world will have to downsize and become much smarter at collecting their revenue  because their traditional reporting and taxing systems which have hitherto relied on direct taxation have gigantic holes in them created by Internet commerce. They shall have to abolish direct taxes and collect revenue from indirect taxes. In very simple terms, tax people when they spend and not when they earn.

A big bandwidth, and a faster and a cheaper on-line service will enable to Tonga to have access to all sorts of information in the Internet. Do you think there should be some control on what is accessible on-line?

Definitely. Spamming, malicious hacking, child pornography, drug dealing should all be subject to swift retribution with the active co-operation of the telecommunications industry. The old and outdated privacy laws which were written to protect written documents in a person’s private home are impotent against someone who is out there in cyberspace to do mischief.  Different societies shall tolerate different levels of punishment.