Pacific Islands leaders and regional information and technology officers meeting in Tonga this week looked at an important regional issue of how to provide affordable international connectivity for all people in the Pacific by 2015.

'Connecting the Unconnected' was the theme for two meetings held in Nuku'alofa, at the Fa'onelua Convention Centre from February 17 to 20.

An Information and Communication Technologies meeting for Pacific ICT Senior Officers was followed by a meeting of Pacific Islands Forum representatives, ministers and prime ministers

Mr Zengpei Xuan, the Division Chief, ICT and Disaster Risk Reduction Division, UN-ESCAP, said at the opening of the ICT senior officers' meeting on February 17 that the main purpose of their two days deliberation was to prepare a presentation for a Pacific ICT Ministerial Forum meeting to be held at the same venue from February 19-20.

He said that ICT Senior Officers would be looking at six main themes: Affordable Access - Domestic Connectivity in the Pacific; Affordable International Connectivity in the Pacific; Enabling Environment - Policy, Regulatory and Financial Frameworks; Cybersecurity; Emergency Communications and Disaster Relief and Climate Change; and Human Capacity Building.

This would be followed by the two-days Forum Ministerial meeting whose objective he said was to find ways to provide "reliable and affordable ITC connections for all people in the Pacific by 2015."

Ministerial Meeting

The Forum Ministerial Meeting was officially opened by Tonga's Prime Minister Hon. Dr Feleti Sevele on Thursday February 19. It was attended by representatives from 16 Pacific Island Forum countries, including 11 ministers responsible for ICT, and two Prime Ministers.

This morning a communique of their round-table discussion was released.

In the communique, the Forum recognised the challenges faced by the Pacific region in improving telecommunications access due to low population densities, isolated and scattered centres of population, lack of infrastructure and high costs of connectivity.

It recognised there were number of initiatives to make available low cost ICT end-user devices to Forum island countries and noted that with the range of emerging technologies such as cables, satellite, terrestrial wireless and mobile communications it offers new connectivity opportunities.

It then called for increased coordination amongst all stakeholders in the Pacific at regional, sub regional and national levels to improve efforts towards connectivity

The meeting also directed the South Pacific Commission and Pacific Island Forum Secretariat to work with relevant regional, international and funding agencies to rapidly progress the implementation of regional connectivity solutions to address the communication needs of the Pacific.

The meeting also directed officials to work towards establishing a shared regulatory resource centre for the Forum Island Countries with a proposal to be submitted for consideration at the 2009 Forum Leaders Meeting.

Early warning systems

With regards to Emergency communications it encouraged Forum countries to make use of emerging ICT technologies that may mitigate the impact of climate change including early warning and response systems.

Attending the meeting were the ICT Ministers for Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Palau, Samoa and the Prime Minister for Cook Island Hon. Jim Marurai.