THE establishment of a backbone network that would allow Hong Kong Internet users to connect to each other without first having to 'bounce' off the United States should be a priority of the local Net community, a conference was told.
A panel discussion at the first Hong Kong Symposium on the World-Wide Web - held at the University of Hong Kong at the weekend - also highlighted the need for educational policies to be implemented that would encourage young people to use Internet communications.
The symposium was told that currently subscribers to different Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in Hong Kong could only connect to each other via a connection to the US - a situation seen as wasteful of both time and network resources.
One solution might be that each of the ISPs in Hong Kong be connected to each other through the HARNET (the Hong Kong Academic and Research Network), which connects various Internet nodes at the territory's tertiary institutions.
University and Polytechnics Grants Committee president Antony Leung Kam-chung said traditionally there had been reluctance among the academic community to allow its Internet resources to be used for anything that smacked of commercialism, though these attitudes were being relaxed, which could make it easier to create an Internet backbone in Hong Kong.
The reluctance to use the Internet for commercial purposes, Mr Leung said, stemmed from its origins, as it had been intended for use only by military and academic users.