A new era of connectivity has dawned in Nepal with its partnership with China to improve the nation’s ICT connectivity network. It was announced that Nepal Telecom and China Telecom Global worked together to lay optical fiber cables between Kerung in China and Rasuwagadi in Nepal connected through the hub at Sudhara in Kathmandu. The new fiber optic cable also provides an alternative in case of natural disasters such as the devastating earthquake in 2015. This project also considers the possibilities for increased bandwidth in the future.

AI-led transformations constrained by the digital divide in Asia and the Pacific

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is not only a force behind the fourth Industrial Revolution but also a potential enabler of sustainable development in a wide variety of socioeconomic sectors. There has been explosive growth in research and applications in AI, particularly in the fields of machine learning, the Internet of Things (IoT), cloud and cognitive computing which are increasingly transforming the way we live and work in the region and beyond.