At present, electronic mail, or "e-mail", is the most useful telematics application for companies. E-mail systems allow people to send and receive "messages" - in electronic form between computers separated by anything from the width of a desk to the breadth of a continent. Messages can be correspondence, business documents, lecture notes, plans, memoranda, drawings, or even sounds and video clips. They can be sent simultaneously to hundreds of people and, unlike facsimile transmission, the receivers can "import" them directly into other computer programs without retyping.
E-mail is offered as a commercial service by many organisations, which run one or more central computers to store messages and forward them to their addressees. Organisations and companies throughout the world can subscribe to e-mail services with names like Compuserve, Demon and Pipex. E-mail is a cost-effective and powerful means of communicating between work-places and offices in different areas and time-zones. It is already used to send facsimile and telex messages and, eventually, will be combined with video telephony to allow dispersed groups to confer and work together.
After e-mail, the next most popular use of telematics is to access specialist databases containing information on companies, markets, business news, finance, and more. You can find the contents of many popular magazines and daily newspapers in databases. The range of topics available continues to expand, and increasingly the information itself will include drawings, photographs and video clips. This is an important resource for companies in every area of their work.
In industry, "paperless trading" using e-mail related Electronic Data Interchange systems has greatly assisted the development of techniques like Just-In-Time manufacture and Total Quality Management. These have a profound impact on the way many companies relate to each other. The boundaries between customer and supplier can begin to blur as their computer systems become increasingly integrated in the attempt to impose tight delivery schedules and stock control. Some businesses now exist as "virtual" companies, employing very few staff directly and contracting out most of the production process - avoiding, among other things, the cost of long-term commitments to a workforce.
Within companies, telematics is used to integrate processes across enormous geographic distances - computers in a design office control production equipment thousands of miles away; teleworkers away from the office have instant access to a company's information sources; global "virtual teams" use computer conferencing to stay in touch and work on common problems; experts are consulted wherever they happen to be. Information can now be moved around within a company extremely easily making it an essential component of fashionable management techniques like "business process re-engineering". Governments around the world see telematics as vital to industrial competitiveness. The European Union, Japan and the United States all plan advanced information networks to stimulate the growth of new industries and support economic development. In Central and Eastern Europe, South East Asia and Latin America, huge sums of money are being invested in private and public schemes to improve telephone and telecommunications networks (in the cities, at least). Many African and South Asian countries are considering similar steps. However, privatisation and deregulation have encouraged a commercial attitude to the development of new networks, which is often at odds with the traditional government goal of universal service.
Poorer nations can only compete in a technologically advanced world by ensuring their own access to information and knowledge, but they cannot do this without the help of advanced technology. With the meagre resources available, prospects may seem bleak. Developing countries spend less than one twentieth of the global budget on research and development; they account for less than a tenth of the world's IT expenditure. Thanks largely to the linguistic dominance of English within the IT world, countries outside North America and Europe provide just over an eighth of all the database producers in the world. These things are not trivial; they are the raw materials of modern industry.
Solutions to these problems will benefit the world economy, and they require global action by international bodies, the IT industry, and governments in the developed and developing worlds. Appropriate levels of investment and training are critical. Failure to solve the IT deficit may mean that developing countries will find themselves on a spiral of decline, while technological progress in the developed countries gains momentum. The effect will be to deepen divisions that already threaten the stability of world trade and the possibility of sustainable development.
Current research work aims at providing very fast regional and global digital networks. They are the "data superhighways" of American and European Union economic development strategies, which will allow users to access video and multimedia libraries in real time. Cable TV companies, multimedia providers, broadcasters, and telecommunications operators in Europe, America and Japan are already planning systems to deliver video films to individual households. Large organisations will look for ways to rent out any spare capacity on such systems, and it is likely that very low cost, unregulated communications will be available to business customers. Companies may find themselves at a disadvantage where the public network does not offer such facilities.
In time, the modernisation of telephone systems will be vital for companies seeking to join the information superhighway, but developing countries are often seen as marginal to the concerns of telecommunications operators, and globalisation may by-pass less profitable markets. Universal service, in this context, may have to rely on international user pressure and the intervention of bodies such as the International Telecommunications Union (ITU).
Despite the obvious obstacles in South Asia (quality of telephony, access to technology, PTT monopolies etc), telematics presents enormous opportunities for creating and sustaining local, national or international trading partnerships of small and micro-enterprise. Telematics can assist the ability to establish flexible trading networks of specialist producers and services, able to react quickly and efficiently to market opportunities. It can lead to radical improvements in the economy and efficiency of international co-operation. It can provide direct access to world market information. It can provide an electronic "trading space" for the creation of new contacts and partners.
It has the potential of enabling a key, yet undervalued, sector of the world economy (that of small and micro- enterprise) to make a vital contribution to sustainable development. The sector is important to sustainable development strategies for two broad reasons. Firstly, because its participants are usually at or below poverty levels. An increase in income and employment will have immediate positive impacts on the environment. Secondly, because of the sheer volume of production, any improvement in the productive processes will have a significant and positive environmental impact.
Access to the tools and services of telematics will make a vital contribution to the sustainable development significance of this sector. Telematics has characteristics with far- reaching implications for the way we treat information and communications and, consequently, for our ability to harness them as motor forces for sustainable development. It diminishes the importance of geographic distance, allowing the development of new relationships. Using telematics, the provision of, and access to information becomes possible on a global scale. It allows communications between new partners that would not previously have been possible. If applied positively, telematics has the power to broaden access to resources of information and communication to include people and organisations where the potential for promoting sustainable development is greatest and who hitherto have been unable to participate in the global information economy.
Telematics creates opportunities for, but in no way guarantees, new forms of organisation, and new forms of co- operation between organisations by improving the speed and scope of information flow both internally and externally. Since it is widely argued that sustainable development requires the emergence of new and appropriate institutional forms, telematics - again when applied positively - can assist in this process.
There are practical and innovative applications of telematics starting to emerge in developing countries at the same time as parallel innovations in the North. Examples include:
With sound management, enlightened policy and modest investment, there are many opportunities for the development of practical initiatives in Bangladesh for the development of telematics services and skills for small and micro-enterprise. This could have profound benefits for developing the marketing of Bangladesh commodities and services in such a way as to make a major contribution towards sustainable development.
In practical terms, consideration should be given to the development of a comprehensive strategy towards improved trading links between Bangladesh and the UK. There is a range of practical options to be considered within this to encourage participation in fast and cost-effective information retrieval and exchange, collaboration and partnership-building. Some options to be considered may include: