Bhutan to be Testbed for ITU’s E-Post Venture with Universal Postal Union

Istanbul, 26 March 2002 — A three-year joint project between International Telecommunication Union and Universal Postal Union agreed during WTDC-02, will bring e-mail and e-post through post offices in the developing world. The Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan will be the first country to benefit.

"The need to harness the power of ICT for socio-economic development with the aim of making the benefits of ICT accessible to the widest number possible and particularly the world’s most deprived, is clearly a clear message of the World Telecommunication Development Conference currently meeting in Istanbul" said Yoshio Utsumi, ITU Secretary-General. "The deployment of community telecentres in developing countries constitutes a promising way to narrow the Digital Divide and to improve the quality of life of men and women in particular in low-income rural and underserved areas", Utsumi added.

Bhutan Post and Bhutan Telecom will act as joint national executing agencies in the novel initiative, which envisages the establishment of simple kiosks in 38 postal facilities. About 20 of these offices are agency and community mail offices scattered in remote and isolated areas across the country. These post offices represent about one third of all the post offices in the country and are capable of being connected to local telephone exchanges. One of these sites will be a rural Multipurpose Community Telecentre established by ITU in Jakar. Community mail offices cater to the postal needs of a village, and are often run by a local teacher, a government employee or simply, a literate person in the village (see note).

Once the basic infrastructure is in place for e-post, other digital services can be integrated in a regional or localized manner, depending on context and need. The project will serve as a testbed for e-post software to be transported to other countries.

"Innovative solutions such as shared access facilities represent a unique opportunity to bridge the Digital Divide by bringing Information and Communication technologies (ICTs) to communities in an affordable and effective way" said Hamadoun Touré, Director of the ITU Telecommunication Development Bureau." "The shared-access model that we are proposing, relies on community capital. By drawing on this capital and creating the right mix of resources, the goal of bridging the Digital Divide can become a reality" he added.

"The post office, more than any other institution, has a communicative presence in people’s lives," said Thomas E. Leavey, Director-General of Universal Postal Union. "If every letter in Bhutan can be guaranteed to be sent from post office to post office electronically and then home-delivered by the local post office within two days, it would constitute a revolution in letter-writing or message exchange."

"Bhutan has limited transport infrastructure, which makes postal delivery very difficult: letters can take up to 8 days to be delivered between distant mountainous districts," said Dasho Meghraj Gurung, Managing Director of Bhutan Post. "E-Post can usher a faster, more reliable and cheaper mode of communication as compared to the physical transportation of a letter. It can also bring down Bhutan Post’s operational costs and open up the possibility of revenues from electronic messaging."

"Rural coverage is negligible in our country," said Sangay Tenzing, the Managing Director of Bhutan Telecom. "Collaboration with Bhutan Post will provide a basis for aggregation of demand and expand rural coverage."

"ITU’s initiative will promote close cooperation between Bhutan Telecom and Bhutan Post in the nation’s effort at bridging the Digital Divide and in its own small way, promote the Gross National Happiness," added regulator Thinley Dorji of the Bhutan Telecommunication Authority.

Bhutan Post would issue for free, a unique e-post address for every household or even person with proper verification. The e-post address will be an email address that also includes in a coded form, the postal address, similar to a pin or zip code that uniquely identifies every household. Once an e-post address has been obtained, a person should be able to walk into any post office and send an email anywhere. He or she would also be able to send e-post, which would be printed at the receiving end by a local post office and delivered to the postal address coded in the e-post address. Since the printing is at the local post office near the point of delivery, all e-posts can be delivered within the time taken for local delivery.

Bhutan Telecom will provide the communication access from the local exchanges for the venture. It is envisaged that at least six remote post offices would draw on VSAT connectivity operating on Bhutan’s lease on half an Intelsat transponder, expanding the existing demand-assigned multiple access (DAMA)-based coverage.

The project also seeks to introduce technologies such as hand-held multimedia devices and software that enables translation into local languages that could overcome barriers of illiteracy, computer literacy, language and costs. Thereby, the facilities would become a community access centre and a resource for local schools, hospitals and local administration.

Not only will this project provide access to information and communication technologies in rural and under-served areas at a low cost, but also the incentive to generate local content, explained Vishnu-Mohan Calindi, Coordinator for the rural development and universal access programme.

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ITU conducted a feasibility study to establish telecentres in post offices. A survey of visitors to the post offices revealed that one of the primary reasons for which people visit the post office is to check for and collect their mail, as delivery services tend to be concentrated in urban areas.

In the event of email services, they may well extend their visit to collecting email. The survey also showed that the purposes for which people have to travel long distances at considerable cost include banking, medical assistance, market prices of agricultural produce and obtaining government forms. Therefore, banking services through post offices is clearly an area worth exploring further, as is providing government forms, information on market prices and health.

The average distance of the post office from home was found to be 11.2 kms, requiring a little over an hour’s travel. About 59% of the postal clients use English as the language of correspondence and about 29% mentioned English and Dzongkha. Only Dzongkha was mentioned by just 7% of the sample. Any software that serves postal clients must be at least in these two languages. It was found that 78% of the survey respondents say they have access to a telephone. There was scope for marketing the post office as a place to make phone calls. It was also worthwhile exploring the possibility of having post offices serve as one-stop utility bill payment centers. Only 8% of the computer-using postal clients enjoy the benefits of email.

Currently, DrukNet, a subsidiary of Bhutan Telecom, is the sole ISP in Bhutan and has about 1236 connections in the country. Private access to internet/email technology among the population is estimated to be lower than 1/1000, most of it concentrated in the hands of institutions and expatriates. Ten Internet cafés operate in the country, but the connection charges ($1.25 for 20 minutes) put public access beyond the reach of even above average income Bhutanese. Low access to telephony and unstable power supply also militate against the spread of ICTs in rural areas.

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