"The disparity of available telephone service is enormous in Asia," said Leong Keng Thai, director general of the Telecommunication Authority of Singapore. "There are still countries where half the country is without phones. Inadequate infrastructure will keep growth down."

While Japan is wired for ISDN service and has seen digital use of telephone lines surpass voice use, China is laying optic fiber at a fast clip to bring telephone services to much of its population, panelists said.

Deng Shoupeng, director of the Bureau of Techno-economics at the Development Research Center of the State Council of PRC, said that excessive government interference, high costs and a weak infrastructure were some of the main obstacles holding back the growth of information technology in his country.

On the other side of the spectrum, Shigeru Ikeda, executive vice president of Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Corp., told the audience in the Keidanren Hall, "Call us today and you can get ISDN and enter the digital age tomorrow."

The theme of the three and a half hour panel discussion was "Desperate Need for Infrastructure in the Asia Pacific Region."

Panelists split when discussing the role of government in supporting infrastructure development. Leong of Singapore argued that government should take an active role in promoting information technology. Some echoed his sentiments.

"Most of Asia cannot accept (Ira) Magaziner's proposal that we leave development to the private sector," said Tengku Mohd. Azzman Shariffadeen, president and CEO of MIMOS Berhard in Malaysia in reference to the U.S. policy-maker's earlier keynote speech where he called for the information revolution to be driven by market forces.

Western executives called for more liberalization. "The world is simply going to get smaller in a lot of ways," said Ellen Manzo-Ill, regional director for WorldSource Distribution at the AT&T Asia/Pacific Group. She said that multinational corporations are able to push their agendas in different cultures and are not bound by the cultural background of their home country anymore. AT&T has linked with 18 companies throughout Asia to penetrate different markets.

"There are many approaches and systems being used in the Asia Pacific region as countries adopt different approaches and different paces of change," said John Steele, group personnel director for BT. "I welcome the fact that Japan and other nations are putting focus on exchanging views in multilateral and bilateral forums."

Panel moderator Izumi Aizu, a principal at Asia Network Research Sdn. Bhd. in Malaysia, said that online discussions preceeding the panel talks showed that despite disagreements, similar concerns and thoughts penetrate the private and public sectors when it comes to the information revolution.

One area of agreement that the panelists discussed was the need to educate workers and users. "We believe that infrastructure improvements will have little benefit if we don't develop the people," said Azzman. Currently, various private and public efforts to train people in information technology are underway throughout the region on a piecemeal basis.