Report to shape Information Age role

For Ireland Inc, the decision on whether it will be business as usual - or business as we can only begin to imagine - very likely rests with a report which could be released as early as next week.

Next week sees the final meeting of the Government's Telecoms Advisory Committee, the high-profile group composed of a number of senior telecommunications and Internet figures from the United States, with a smattering of Irish brainpower as well.

At that meeting the group will put any remaining touches to the report, which is much-anticipated in Government and business circles. Then, at some point in the next few weeks, it will formally submit the report to Government. The Department of Public Enterprise, which established the committee, says it intends to make the report public and solicit comment from all.

The contents of the report are intended to spur both thought and action on Ireland's role in what has come to be known as the Information Age - the technology-saturated era in which we are all, pundits, business people, parents and children - trying to find our footing. Formed early last summer, the committee's brief was deliberately kept open: Tell us how we might best prepare for a technology-intensive future, one which will attract and hold Information Age businesses, create jobs and provide a firm economy. Help us see what outsiders usually see best - our strengths and our weaknesses.

The committee responded by thinking, at its first meeting, about questions most people in Ireland had not thought to ask, even those most central to pondering the links between technology, society and Government.

Given the preponderance of telecommunications vice-presidents, chairmen and consultants on the committee, most people guessed they would discuss telephone lines. Instead, they considered venture capital - how might a different tax system or a special international support network encourage investment in Irish technology companies?

If you help encourage the growth of the companies that will need the high speed phone and data networks of tomorrow, a seductive business environment is created for the telecommunications industry to build the networks that those companies will use and vice versa.

While we will not know the details of the report until its released, it is possible to make some informed guesses as to what it will contain.

Certainly there will be a consideration of how to restructure the venture capital environment, both to spawn new funds in the Republic and to pull in foreign investment.

Then, there will be suggestions on how to attract companies if the State wants to become an electronic commerce hub, as it has clearly stated it wants to be - even the US President got that message loud and clear when he was here (peace first, Web shopping second, please).

High on that list of suggestions will be, we can surmise, a demand for flat-rate Internet access of the sort US companies enjoy at home. Someone in Europe will offer that option eventually. Companies will go to where Net access is most affordable because it will be one of their largest expenses.

Cost of Net access is still one of the strongest reasons why Net-based companies are in the US and not elsewhere in any significant numbers.

But the major focus undoubtedly will be what this particular gathering knows best: building telecommunications infrastructure. This is the State's most daunting task because it is hideously expensive but absolutely necessary. No single telecoms company can go it alone. The industry in general should not be allowed to - this is a project which, because the size of the State and the costs involved, must engage the Government to some extent. It is a delicate task, needing the incentives of a competitive, free market, but also the structure and restraints of a national project.

How the committee imagines such a project might be achieved and what the shape of such an undertaking might be lies in the report. How the State decides to discuss and implement those recommendations will be a task for all of us to consider over the coming weeks. Because your response to the report's suggestions will be just as important as that of any Minister or the Taoiseach. You need to think in new ways, and rethink your business - very likely in some deeply challenging ways - to grasp what remains a possible, and by no means certain, e-commerce future.

Karlin Lillington is at klillington@irish- times.ie