Reportage – 2006

Exile government launches Web TV, IT policy in the offing

MCLEOD GANJ, India, 3 August 2006 Samdhong Rinpoche speaking on the occasion of launch of web TV. [ click here for print size   3.5M ]

MCLEOD GANJ, India, 3 August 2006 — Catching up with the super-info-highway, the Tibetan government-in-exile today launched a web TV: http://www.tibetonline.tv, inaugurated by the exile government’s Prime Minister Samdhong Rinpoche.

Expressing IT as perhaps the science’s best achievement ever, with the least damaging side effects, Rinpoche will adopt an IT policy when he returns to assume the post of Prime Minister for a second term in a couple of weeks.

"The Bandwidth of our server needs to be upgraded. We know the need of this. We will upgrade from the current capacity to threefold," Rinpoche said.

The head of the Web TV, Jigme Tsering, said the site will be uploaded with audio and videos on the same day soon after any event and will produce a monthly 30-minute video news magazine. As the project gets better established, the frequency of news videos will be increased from monthly to fortnightly, to weekly and then perhaps to daily.

The site will also maintain an archive of audio and the best documentary films on Tibet.

However, the web TV may not necessarily be useful and reach all the Tibetan settlements due to lack of internet access. There are still a few Tibetan settlements where internet access is non-existent and those that have access, though limited in size, are all running on 56 kbps, rendering the web TV almost meaningless for the settlement dwellers.

Although the government will provide VCDs of the monthly video news magazine, Rinpoche did not have comments when asked about providing internet access to the remote settlements and upgrading to faster connection where existing connections are slow.