IPS-English BOLIVIA: Faster Internet Connections - For the Few
 
Date: Fri, 18 May 2007 14:57:55 -0700

 

Bernarda Claure

LA PAZ, May 18 (IPS) - A varied crowd of academics, civil 
servants, and university and high school students gathered in the 
hall of the vice-presidential building to celebrate Internet Day. 
The main event was the launching of Internet II, a project to 
incorporate Bolivia into the cutting-edge Latin American 
Cooperation of Advanced Networks (CLARA).

World Telecommunications Day, May 17, was declared Internet Day 
in Bolivia, and the meeting looked back on the history of web 
connectivity in this country of over nine million people, which 
has fewer than 70,000 Internet connections. In addition, a new 
domain name was announced for all government websites.

”All this is based on the vision that the Internet is the latest 
tool for development,” the head of the state Agency for the 
Development of the Information Society in Bolivia (ADSIB), Sergio 
Vallejos, told IPS. 

The Internet II project will link Bolivia up with CLARA, a 
high-tech system of advanced telecommunications networks that 
foments research, innovation and education. In turn, CLARA 
connects academic networks in Latin America with similar 
university networks in Europe, via the European Géant system, and 
in the United States, via Internet2.

Géant is a collaboration between 26 academic and research 
networks and the European Commission that aims to develop a 
system to be used specifically in science and education.

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