PacINET 2006 Day 5

The morning started off with a bang on a contentious issue for most telecom carriers and governments in the Pacific - VoIP. Franck demonstrated Asterisk and the lessons they at SOPAC learnt from replacing their traditional PBX with a full IP based one. I followed with a brief on VoIP and explained VoIP and how they are applied in traditional environments. Naturally this included issues which freak telcos - toll bypass......

Vint and I left shortly after for more PR visits at a Special Education school and then lunch at Sinalei Resort on the other side of Upolu. Not a bad place at all, except it was blowing nigh a gale so we had fun holding down the table and the contents on it. On the way back we called in to SPREP where we were given a brief of their activities and Vint briefed them on Google.org and its sponsorship of various issues including the environment. Vint also wanted a new software tool he recently discovered that presented data in a timescale manner - quite interesting as it gives an overview of change through time. It was quite funny that SPREP thought Vint was there to sell them the software and were a bit taken aback I suppose when Vint said the software was free! We returned to the conference venue afterwards where I smuggled Vint into a private room so he could do some work undisturbed. I then returned to the main session room to catch up on a bit of work.

The evening saw the official farewell dinner and Vint was presented the usual round of gifts to take back. On behalf of PICISOC, I presented the PM of Samoa with a WiFi SIP VoIP Phone to a round of applause from the attendees - let's see if this leads to VoIP being legalised! Vint chipped in to say that the phone came with batteries but needed the regulatory framework to work.........we had an impressive display of fire-dancing by the Samoans which was fun. Earlier we had also toured the Robert Louis Stevenson Museum, the venue for the dinner, which was quite interesting in itself.

After a whole lot of dancing (and getting the band to sing happy birthday for Alisi from Forum Secretariat) Vint, Gunjan and I went back to the hotel to help Vint pack all his stuff as he was leaving later than night. We were quite impressed with ourselves as we managed to squeeze a whole lot of stuff into not a very big box. Afterwards we were off to the Airport (and Vint was back in his usual impeccable tailoring - rather than the island shirts he was in for the last couple of days). We spent a bit of time chatting in the VIP lounge before seeing him off on the tarmac to board his flight. After he got on the plane, there was an audible sigh of relief from the assembled members of the Samoan OrgCom and back to the hotel for a few hours sleep as it was around 3am by the time we got back.