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Dr Ng, Mr Yuen, ladies and gentlemen,
I am delighted to be here today to help launch the new-look Hong Kong Academic and Research Network, just 12 years after HARNET was first established as an initiative of the then seven U(P)GC-funded institutions.
The Internet - the international network of networks to which HARNET is linked - has itself only been in existence for some 29 years, having begun in 1969, as ARPANet, developed for the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the US Department of Defence. But, particularly in the last ten years, the Internet has grown and developed at a truly staggering pace.
According to a recent survey of Internet hosts 1, the Internet is now growing at a rate of about 40 to 50 percent annually and there are some 30 million "advertised" connected computers in 240 countries and territories.
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Projecting forward on the basis of the current trend - normally a dangerous approach, but in this case probably justified - there could well be as many as 90 million hosts on the Net by the turn of the century.
Hong Kong as an established international business and financial centre and as an emerging regional centre for education and research needs to keep abreast of the revolution in information and communications being engendered by the Internet and the globalization of business and scholarship. As the Chief Executive said in his first Policy Address in October last year:
"To make Hong Kong a leader, not a follower in the information world of tomorrow, we need to bring together four things :
first, the hardware of high capacity communications systems; second, a common software interface mounted on established communications networks, through which individuals, business and Government can interact easily and securely using their own systems; third, people who know how to use the new technology; and fourth, a cultural environment that stimulates creativity and welcomes advances in the use of this technology."
With the inauguration today of the new Hong Kong Academic and Research Network, as Asia's largest ATM-based network among universities, we are making a significant further step in this direction.
Meanwhile, as pointed out by one commentator2 recently, "One of the more enduring phenomena (of the Internet) is that still roughly half, to 50 to 60 percent, of all the machines are in the United States." Being linked to these networks is vitally important for our higher education sector. The further upgrade of the HARNET/Internet connection to the United States, making it the fastest non-commercial Internet link in Hong Kong, will facilitate these links and greatly enhance the ability of our universities to assume the academic leadership in the neighbouring region.
The UGC has been pleased to support the upgrading of the HARNET/Internet infrastructure and will, I am sure, continue to do so. I should also like to thank Hongkong Telecom for their continued support for this endeavour. Finally I should like to congratulate the Joint Universities Computer Centre Ltd on the achievement today's ceremony celebrates and for continuing to make HARNET a model of inter-institutional collaboration.
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