IP: Trip Report Part 1 of 3 -- The Singapore Diary

[Dave Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>]

I have just returned from a two week trip to Asia and Hawaii. This note will
cover the Singapore segment of the trip and the next two Tokyo and Hawaii.


I left the US on 1 June and arrived after a long flight via Tokyo in
Singapore. As usual the arrival at the Singapore Airport was efficient and
fast. The only notable arrival event was noticing the notification in big
red letters on the immigration form that the importation of drugs to
Singapore is a mandatory capital offense.


I was driven to the Pan Pacific Hotel near the new Convention Center, After
a long jet lag induced sleep, I took the MRT (the subway) down to Orchard
Street -- one of the main shopping centers. Stores, stores and more stores.
During my stay some wag commented that Singapore is a Shopping Mall that
became a country.


It being time to get to work, I spent a day at the National University of
Singapore at it's Computer Science Dept and at the Institute of Systems
Science where I gave a talk titled -- "Internet Commerce and  Security
Considerations in the GII" (I have a real audio of it).


While at ISS I met with their Network Security people and the Director and
others. I was impressed with the Institute (third time I have been there)
and  had a good talk re the state of Singapore's Singapore 1 (S1) National
Network. During my stay I often heard about Singapore 1 in bits and pieces
and was left with one concern. There seemed to be a conflict between those
who want to use S1 as a networking test bed and those who view it as a real
NII to service the needs of the Singapore economy and culture. The test bed
oriented people are willing to try experimental hardware etc. My belief is
it is damn hard to mix these two views into a realistic S1. I believe that
it is time for the real S1 with commercially hardened underpinnings and to
leave the research to those very important issues such as applications,
security, reliability etc. 


The next two days I attended the Network/CommunicationsASIA 96 conference
where I gave a well received keynote on the Global Corporate Infrastructure
(again available via Real Audio). The technical conferences was well
attended with most of the people actually sitting in on the proceedings. The
exhibit was large and crowded. Highlights were piles of  network and comm
security hardware, lots of ATM stuff and endless interesting small products.
Good representation from Israel and EC countries.


I was invited by NTT to an evening dinner/presentation where they talked to
the Singapore people about the Handiphone and it's future. I assume NTT is
attempting to sell the technology into Singapore. Talk and dinner and
company were excellent.


I spent some time the next few days visiting the Singapore Broadcasting
Authority and Singapore Telecom and some Comp Board people. 


My recollections are:


        1. the Singapore Government is about to publish network content
regulations which ban provider in Singapore from offering material which is
considered offensive to the culture. ISPs (which are only 3 in number at
this time) will be also required to block international URLs which lead to
sites which contain such offensive information. The list of such sites will
be published by the SBA on a periodic basis and will be created by a request
to the citizens to submit such objectionable items they come upon and also
by government "watchdogs". While they concede that it is unlikely to
actually stop anyone from access foreign material it will signal to the
nation that attitude of the government in this matter. My reaction is each
nation to their own morals as long as they don't impose it on others. I kept
reminding them that "Photons have neither morals or visas". 


        2. we talked a lot about S1 and what it could do for Singapore.
Actually I was surprised by the lack of the ability to gain net access
easily while in Singapore. For example, the airport, hotel had no net access
capabilities and the conference had four public terminals. There were few if
any computer kiosks that were informative on Singapore. I suspect the tight
regulations of who can be an ISP has slowed down dramatically the spreading
of the network culture in Singapore. 


        3. I heard little about mobility as a requirement for S1. That
surprised me.


Overall impressions. It is a clean orderly city/state with excellent food
and with the desire to be the information hub of the pacific. The citizens
are well educated and bright (but may not have that sharp "hungry" feeling
of the silicon valley entrepreneurs). (I had the impression that the
Malaysians may have it). Singapore 1 is a fine concept and is just starting
to be really planned. The success of Singapore in achieving it's goal of
becoming the hub may depend on the success of S1 and I am not sure there is
an adequate numbers of senior people to pull that off properly. (note that
again photons don't care where they end up and any receptive society can
rapidly compete in this area.) Side note: at NUS well over 50% of the
graduate students are foreigners -- chinese. Singapore undergrads tend to
get jobs prior to grad school)


I enjoyed the visit and will be back there again in April when I will try to
spend more time at the NCB.


Dave