Wednesday, September 15, 2004

Internet cities, IT parks and us

Last month, I received a letter from the CEO of National IT Park who said our coverage of the building on Shara-e-Faisal, Karachi was not justified. I was reviewing the actual outcome of setting up such spaces. I visited the 'Park'--five floors dedicated to IT shops in Ceasar's Tower, sponsored by PSEB. Although getting paperwork and KESC to follow through took years, its taken just over 5 months for these floors to be taken over by small offshore BPO/call center units and software houses. Up in Islamabad and Lahore, Software Parks have fared cosiderably better over the years. I suppose the assumption is: if you build it, they will come, as they did.

Sameer just pointed out another 'grand' project: the UAE governemnt will help GoP to build three internet cities [obviously in KHI, LHR and ISL]. According to our fairly new Sindh IT minister, an "arrangement of 200 acres of land in the outskirts of the metropolis for the setting up of internet media city, close to the proposed educational city" has been mapped. Good on us! We are set to follow two remarkable experiments by Dubai [Knowledge Village and Internet City]. Does anyone agree such facilities should not be launched, funded or built without research, or am I being skeptical what's good for UAE [superb infrastructure and delivery] isn't neccessarily good for us?

1 comment:

S. A. Rahman said...

If you disagree building such parks and if you advise a research before building them. Guess who is going to take care of that FUND? ;) I am afraid to say our politicians are so very poor they need funds for their living, if we stop them building they will swallow the money without burping :p though we have a few cool eye-soothing sites for IT business (as we speak) but did u ever purchase Windows(any version) with Microsoft seal and liscence? Being a bit more frank, in the country of warez-pirates we _need_ more than such parks, institutions. other wise India has already beated pakistan in every field of life (look at your cricket team :) *we are spiders, we weave sweet dreams of democracy and liberal IT-awared pakistan with faint hope if our dreams may come true*
For a better business we need more open-air all-night
restaurents with expensive menu and low quality, I suppose the assumption is: if you build it, they will come, as they did!