Session Transcript
Note: The following is the output of the real-time captioning taken during the
The 2nd Meeting of the IGF. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it
may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.
It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the session, but should
not be treated as an authoritative record.
(Gavel.)
>>NITIN DESAI: Good morning. I am Nitin Desai. This to my right is my
co-chair, ambassador Hadil da Rocha Vianna. And the purpose of this morning's
session is to provide an opportunity to the people who have organized workshops
to report in on what came out of the workshops. Today we have two people who
are reporting in. And -- but before that, I need to hand the floor to the
secretary, who has some announcements to make.
>>MARKUS KUMMER: But just, basically, again, I would like to draw the
attention of people to what the chairman just said. The sessions here are
designed to allow people to report on the events they have organized. And we
have tried to design the program in a way that related workshops take place
before the main session. That is, yesterday, we had three workshops related to
access. This morning, there was one workshop related to access. So they will
be allowed to report. And that would be an input into the panel session we
have right afterwards. And maybe it's a good thing if the workshops on access
actually come last so that they are -- the hall fills up a little bit more. The
fact that not many people are here yet should not deter anybody. The merit of
this session is, we have it on record and it will be on our Web site, thanks to
our real-time transcription. So there will be a record for that. And at the
same time, I would also draw the attention of event organizers that they are
encouraged, they should report on their event, and they can do so directly. We
have organized our Web site in a way that allows them to upload their report on
the Web site. We have a template for that. We asked -- of course, they have
to say who they are and what the event was all about, and also about possible
follow-up to the workshop or best-practice forum. So please, organizers, fill
in your report forms. It would be nice if we had them already complete by the
end of this IGF meeting. Last, but not least, we also made provisions for
remote participation. We have live webcast, video cast from the main session,
audio cast from the workshops. And we have a chat function on both the host
country and on the IGF Web site. We have e-mail lists. Yesterday, we didn't
have many responses, so I would also like to promote that. And if anybody has
another functioning system, please signal it to us so that we can also put it
up on our Web site. So with this, I hand back to the chairman. These were a
few logistical remarks. Thank you.
>>NITIN DESAI: Thank you very much, Markus. May I now first turn to Mr. Louis
Pouzin.
>> LOUIS POUZIN: Yesterday, there was a workshop. And the title was a little
bit complicated. Multilingual directories and solutions provided by the
semantic Web. We were supposed to have four panelists. Things didn't work
quite that way. First, we were supposed to start at 1:30. But due to the fact
that the room was behind in this room, it took some time to install the walls
and so on, and the various equipment for the translator. So we started at 2:00
instead of 1:30. And second, one panelist was missing, it was an Indian
scientist, but, finally, we were not able to collect the money for him to
travel to Rio. So a week ago, I had started a request for having a phone link
with India. But we never got it. So, finally, we had to go with three
panelists instead of four. So, briefly, those three panelists were Dr. Robert
Kahn, well-known person who was an Internet pioneer. The second one was Mr.
Guanghao Li from CNNIC, Chinese institution for domain names. And the third one
was Dr. Francis Muguet, from French research place called ENSTA, in Paris. So
each one had a separate approach to multilingual directories. First, Bob Kahn
explained a number of features of the Handle System. Perhaps not every one of
you is familiar with handle, H-A-N-D-L-E, has been around for more than ten
years already. And it's used in a number of applications, specifically, for
indexing documents. And there is a foundation called the Document Object
Institute, or institution, I'm not sure. Or foundation or something. And that
uses the Handle System for all the libraries around the world. The system
allows for indexing about anything, indexing, for example, part of a book or a
phrase of the book, a chapter, a link or a reference in a book. It's got
security features. It provides a virtual naming space which comes on top of
the Internet. In other words, instead of having to rely on I.P. numbers or URL,
which are not necessarily very convenient to use when you have mobility, it
relies on an independent name space which is completely independent of Internet
topology and which allows to develop the various elements of the database
independently of the geographical location and of the organizational locations.
This software is open, free for use, and it's been used by China to build its
own domain name systems. In other words, the Chinese names use Handle for
accessing the sites in China. So then Mr. Guangao Li explained the various
services offered by China. They have, as you know, Chinese names, they have a
-- browsers which use Chinese names for accessing sites. They have Chinese
engine searches, Baidu, the major one. And most users in China use Chinese
systems. And, therefore, they have a strong demand for local names in China.
They have two scripts, two major scripts, traditional Chinese and. Two kinds.
But they say it's not really a problem. It's like upper case and lower case.
In that context, they have developed IDN. They think IDN fits a number of
needs, has been a serious increase in registering IDN names, because it allows
people to type Chinese names without -- for example, without the dot. We might
think that the dot is a universal glyph, a universal symbol. It's not the
case. It doesn't exist in China or in Korean names, for example. So by just
typing dots is a has until a Chinese name. So IDN prevents that kind of
inconvenience. But they also have developed key word systems. Key word systems
are in a way a very simple way of accessing the Net. It's a little bit like
Google. You just type a name, type a word, a series of words, and you get an
answer. They have introduced a translation of Chinese names into URLs, into
Internet names, so that users can just type a Chinese name, and they go search
the (saying name) systems and offer the user the appropriate URL addresses
which they can choose. So in a way, it's sort of a simplified Google system
which works in Chinese and which allows a user to either type URLs, if they
prefer, or just type Chinese names. And then there also was a wireless key word
access. They can use their mobile phones, and they can type a Chinese name.
This is translated into a number, and it sends an SMS message to an appropriate
database which just sent back the results to the mobile user, like if they were
accessing a Web site. The protocol they use for that is WAP. WAP is a
standardized protocol that's been standardized by the ITU. They're developing
constantly new services. They're very keen on accessing the market so that
they respond quickly to users' demands. For example, the wireless key words
have seen an increase of about 40% of users in a single year, which means that
accessing in Chinese short names on the radio is very much in demand. The
mobile phone is probably the PC of the future. Now, we also had Francis Muguet,
who had another proposal for developing independent name space on the Internet
using a feature which is part of DNS presently. It's called the class feature,
which I personally wouldn't be able to give you details on that. It's a little
bit subtle. And by using that feature, partly we can have a completely
independent name space using the present DNS, which is a way of developing
access to services which can be -- which can have rules of access, which may
be, for example, designed for accessing semantic Web, in other words, request
which accesses database with metadata, so that you have a much stronger
protection for using -- in using the Internet, protections against, for
example, pornography, protection against various kind of contents and so on. It
can also be specialized in some very well-defined type of contents so that by
using these different name space, you can restrict the view of the whole world
into a much more significant kind of contents. Okay. Thank you very much.
>>NITIN DESAI: You can complete.
>> That's all. That's all.
>>NITIN DESAI: Thank you very much, Mr. POISSON. Can I now turn to Mr.
Masanobu Katoh. He's a member of our advisory group and also the corporate
vice president of Fujitsu.
>>MASANOBU KATOH: Thank you very much, Chairman Desai. This morning, I served
as a moderator for workshop on access entitled "Qualifying, Quantifying, and
Meeting the Challenge of Internet Access Costs." I would like to provide a
short summary of our session and its conclusions. The session was organized by
five organizations, one, Global Information Infrastructure Commission, GIIC, an
initiative by ICT industry leaders to promote the infrastructure for the
advanced Information Society. Two, igrowthglobal, an organization providing
independent policy research on the major ICT policy issues domestically and
internationally, including in the developing world. Three, the world
information technology and service alliance, WITSA, an alliance of over 70
national I.T. associations facilitating the use of ICT. Four, packet
clearinghouse, or PCH, a nonprofit research institute formed in 1994. It
supports operations and analysis in the area of Internet traffic exchange,
routing economics, and global network development. And, five, the Nippon
Keidanren, the influential Japanese business federation, with the mission to
accelerate growth of Japan's and the world economy. Our speakers included Mr.
Kiyoshi Mori, Japan's vice Minister for policy coordination, and Dr. Olfat Abd
El Monsef, vice president, national telecommunications regulatory authority of
Egypt, Mr. Bill Woodcock, founder and research director for PCT, and Mr. Nishal
Goburdhan from Internet solutions in South Africa. The speakers and the
workshop participants discussed, among many other things, one, the role of
international, regional, and domestic peering and transit agreements as a
component of overall connectivity cost. Two, the identification of various best
practice initiatives, such as construction of Internet exchange points,
capacity building in skills and expertise; that Internet service providers,
government officials, and other stakeholders have used in local, national, and
regional communities to boost Internet penetration rates, particularly in
Africa and Latin America. And, three, the proper role of regulation and
competition in lowering end-to-end connectivity costs. We learned that, one,
there is a need to promote local exchange traffic providers as a way to provide
great Internet access and lower connectivity costs. Two, the existing
regulatory approach in certain countries does not help or adequately address
the need for local exchange traffic providers. Additional liberalization is
required. Three, an initiative by private ISPs in South Africa calling
attention to the need for deregulation and working with the government for
reforms produced a healthy environment for ISPs to grow and provide more
Internet services. Four, a program in Egypt to provide affordable Internet
access and computers to those in need of assistance proved successfully with
the added benefits of building up ISPs and facilitating e-government goals.
Five, regulatory agencies should avoid creating, quote-unquote, "Islands of
local access," unquote, by ensuring interconnection of various networks that
begin to emerge. Six, lessons learned by Japan's deregulatory efforts to reduce
Internet cost to consumers may be helpful to many other regulators. Finally, I
think it is fair to say that our discussion highlighted the fact that access to
the information infrastructure and Internet capabilities is one of the most
fundamental measure of a society's ability to grow its economy, enhance its
social well-being, and integrate itself with the global economy. All
stakeholders must work together in countries so that the right policies are in
place to ensure access. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
>>NITIN DESAI: Thank you very much, Mr. Katoh. And our last reporting is by Ms.
Abi Jagun from the association of progressive communications, is reporting back
on regulatory frameworks for improving access.
>>ABI JAGUN: Thank you. Yelled, the national development research center,
the learning initiatives on reforms for network economies, and the association
for progressive communication had a workshop on regulatory frameworks for
improving access. Discussions, comments, suggestions on this topic can be
grouped into four broad areas: Issues on enhancing the development of an
access to infrastructure, issues on enabling policies and financing frameworks,
issues on offering technology choice, responding to demand, and addressing the
challenges and opportunities of convergence. And finally, issues around
advancing the development dimension of ICT regulation. We were interested,
really, in coming up with suggestions that we could put forward for discussion.
So under the issues around enhancing the development of an access to
infrastructure, we suggested the need to address the reinforced monopolies that
exist around access to international infrastructure by local operators, calling
for including access to physical infrastructure and removing prohibitive
licensing regimes. We also recognized the need to open up international and
terrestrial backbone infrastructure, through stronger regulation of backbone
infrastructure and also shared access in investment. We also recognize the need
for the realization that competition works, and that principles of open access
should be applied evenly to all areas of the telecom sector. Under our
discussions on the issues around enabling policies and financing frameworks, we
called for the recognition that the approach that is taken to regulation may
need to be different for rural areas. There is a need to challenge the
application of traditional (inaudible) centric, legal and regulatory frameworks
that are normally focused on competitive markets where consumers have choice.
In looking at rural areas, the business models there, the economic context, the
communication needs and appropriate technologies are different. We also called
for recognizing the opportunities and constraints of underserved areas, and
recognized the importance of working with diversity in network operators and
providers. Looking at including community operators, economic producers and
organizations who might also serve as providers of ICT services. In our
discussions around offering technology choice and responding to demand and
addressing the challenges and opportunities of convergence, we recognize that
the promotion of mobiles as viable technology for providing voice, access to
the Internet, and a variety of financial and e-governance services, at least at
present, should be taken into consideration. And therefore, the provision of
enabling environments for the use of this technology for these purposes. In
exploring potential of new generation community-driven networks, we're calling
for them to be looked at as a platform for a variety of ICTs. Cheap telephony,
community radio, and Internet-based content. We feel that this offers a
potentially more economically sustainable basis for helping to aggregate and
grow demand, for a range of ICTs and services, and can be provided on that --
that can be provided and are probably more responsive to current and changing
community needs. We also call for the need to build up capacities of
regulators, particularly in light of converging technologies that hold great
opportunities for the delivery of these services, but that they also need to
build up the capacities to deal with the great challenges and complexities that
convergence introduces. Finally, in our discussions on advancing the
development dimensions of ICT regulation, we suggest that there is a need to
create incentives that promote ICTs as a development tool, particularly at the
level of rural and local access. Incentives that do not take only a
market-driven or address a market-failure situation, but locate ICT regulatory
policy in the context of development and local development strategies. We feel
that this would increase the need to enhance the priorities the ICT is given in
development and investment decision-making spaces and the adoption of
public/private partnership models. Thank you.
>>NITIN DESAI: I didn't realize there were quite many more than I thought, so
I request everybody to stick to a very tight time. I didn't realize there were
many more than -- I was only looking on my left and there were three, but there
are two here, others, I believe. Can I request all the reporting in to be
compact as the previous speakers have been, the previous two speakers have
been. I now turn to Mr. Izumi Aizu who is reporting on a workshop from IPv4 to
IPv6.
>>IZUMI AIZU: Thank you. Chairman, on the IPv4 to IPv6, we title it as
challenges and opportunities. The workshop was held yesterday afternoon, and
well attended by more than a hundred people. And wide ranging people, as you
can imagine. We first shared the state of play, what's happening there about
the IPv4 address spaces and the transition to v6 and we also discussed about
the challenges ahead. The workshop was organized by nine organizations from
JPNIC, NRO, the Number Resource Organizations of the global registries,
Internet society, Internet association Japan, Japan Internet service providers
association, and my institute, Institute for Infosocionomics, GLOCOM, and
Internet global policy initiative. There were ten speakers and it was a real
challenge, within 90 minutes, but we managed very well. Paul Wilson of NRO gave
the first overall view of what's going on, why do you need IPv6, more
addresses, more benefits, how much IPv4 left, it may expire around 2010 or
2011, perhaps. So not many years left. We also need the co-existence of both
IPv4 and v6, so we are not simply changing from v4 to v6. v4 will remain to be
widely used for another 20 or 30 years before it will gradually be retiring. So
the challenges is that we are not really making the transition net. The
challenge of the cost is still higher to deploy the v6 than the v4, so why do
you need that? And also there is not explicit demand yet there. So far no one
has failed, but the conclusion and overview is that we all need to work
together. And then we shared each stakeholders' view by nine speakers. Mr.
Yamada from Japanese government made the best practice on what they are working
on, starting the study group, analyzing the situation. They are going to make
a plan and perhaps reporting next March, and then take action. So this is
received as a sort of offering some good practices by the government, for other
governments if they want. Jonne Soininen from Nokia Siemens network showed
their business community's views that the bad news is there is not clear
business case yet. The good news is that there is good interest already within
the business community to prepare. And ISP's view was shared by Mr. Maruyama
of the JPNIC who conducted an ISP survey of their awareness and readiness. More
than 70% of the ISPs in Japan is aware of the depletion will happen in 2010 or
around that. But they are concerned about the take-up. The concerns are more
on the business development cases, if there are no more addresses, then many
new businesses or existing business may suffer. But although they are aware,
only about 30% are starting to prepare, so there's still a gap between the 70%
of interest and 30% interaction. I myself made some view from the users in the
public interest. And we made -- We have to make a distinction between the
individual users on the street and the corporate users actually providing
services of the Internet such as Amazon, Google or other players. We also
called for the government that they should provide their dual capacity on their
government Web site to reach the entire public, if there will be new users of
v6. On behalf of ICANN At-Large Advisory Committee we made some call in Los
Angeles we shared which called for the open and inclusive policy development
for both v4 and v6, and we are willing to participate in. Adiel shared the
African situation from AfriNIC that there's very high interest in Africa but
there's need for the support, training, awareness campaign which resembles the
global situation, not a special situation, African only. Patrik Fälström from
Cisco Systems also followed that situation by explaining why do you need IPv4
and IPv6 technical capacity in technical term, but also it is very important to
ensure the new users in Africa, say in three or five years from now, should be
accessible to all Internet, not only the IPv6 islands. That requires many
technical business and policy support. Leslie Daigle shared the IETF's work and
views that they are ready to technically support the (inaudible) capacity and
willing to listen and involve into the game more. Bill Manning explained the
DNS and IPv4 v6 situation, that all the name servers from the root server,
gTLD, ccTLD servers should eventually be capable of the dual stack. The v6 and
not backward compatible with v4 so you need to put extra measures to make this
happen, and he emphasized that there's no flat day, no single day is determined
to migrate to move from v4 to dual stack or v6, so it's the responsibility of
all the server managers to prepare. And the last but not least was the business
opportunities. Let me see. The Jordi mentioned about a lot of opportunities
that you can expect from deploying the IPv6. So there's not only the negative
side but a very positive side of the game. The final conclusion after the very
interesting live discussion is that we better start sooner, don't wait too
long, and we better work together by all stakeholders. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
>>NITIN DESAI: I must complement, Mr. Izumi Aizu in accommodating ten
speakers in 90 minutes. Maybe we will introduce a prize for the workshop which
is most successful in accommodating speakers. I will now call on Karen Rose
with the Internet society who will tell us about the workshop on Access: The
local challenge.
>>KAREN ROSE: Thank you, chairman, the Internet society, Global Internet
Policy Initiative, Association for Progressive Communications and LACNIC
organized a session yesterday called Access: The Local Challenge. And I have
to say it was quite a privilege to be able to moderate this session. We had
wonderful panelists, seven individuals with diverse and very interesting
backgrounds, including representation from the Pacific, Asia, Africa, Latin
America, North America, and Europe. The diversity of their backgrounds, as I
mentioned, was quite impressive. Individuals with experience in academia,
business, development agencies and with specific development projects,
technologists and network operators was included on the C.V.s of some of these
very impressive individuals. I will give you a brief overview of what was
covered in this is session. However, it will hardly give justice to the
breadth and thoughtfulness of the discussion that was had, including, I might
add, some very good comment that were received from our audience. One of the
issues that came up during the session was the importance, again, to reaffirm
the need to institute regulatory and policy-enabling environments that can help
facilitate and enable local actors to grow, develop, and maintain Internet
infrastructure. There are still problems in many areas of the world with
monopoly providers, prohibitive licensing regimes, and regulatory uncertainty,
which makes it difficult or prohibitive for local actors to deploy and to
sustain networks. And this is not just focused, of course, on fixed networks.
Wireless, of course, is a technology that promises to be able to solve a number
of issues regarding the last mile and access to rural and remote communities.
We also have to consider wireless in this area, spectrum licensing, for
example, and even rights of way. These are important issues not just for large
providers and large for-profit providers, but also for small, nonprofit, and
community groups, who can hardly afford to make the investment to put in
wireless networks or small public networks if there's going to be a problem
that they're going to have to take them down because of regulatory uncertainty
issues. There also needs to be certainty for local actors to invest in
connectivity businesses. And, again, this is also important for local
communities setting up their own networks to make investments in the
infrastructure needed and for businesses, in particular, they need a certain
environment with respect to the business environment and ensuring their
investments will be protected. Of course, national ICT strategies that have
been developed by many countries, it's important to note that they just can't
remain on paper or filed in a filing cabinet. We need momentum to actually
implement national ICT strategies. And, of course, all of these issues require
a certain amount of political will. Education and training was an issue that
came up. We need to build capacity with regulators on what's needed for local
operators to thrive in the development of their networks. Of course, we need
training for network operators as well as community groups to develop the
networks that will be able to provide access, especially in rural and remote
areas. And also there needs to be training for network operators on sustainable
business models and education for network operators to be able to configure
their networks in ways that are going to provide lower-cost access. For
example, keeping local traffic local rather than using international links to
serve local traffic. We also had a discussion about local content, the demand
side, so to speak, of the equation. Of course, we spoke about the creation of
creating new content in terms of Web content in local languages. But we also
need to consider other issues and other forms of content, not just Web sites.
For example, e-mail, VOIP, and other person-to-person technologies may be the
real content applications, the killer applications that drive Internet access
and takeup, rather than more ambitious projects and programs that sometimes we
consider. We also covered the importance of keeping local traffic local.
Again, the importance of hosting content in-country, including things like mail
services, to reduce the need to use expensive international links when the
traffic is merely going to the next town. One of the issues that we underscored
was the need to understand more about the demand side of this equation, to
understand more about what people in local communities want, what their
communications context is, rather than just speculating on what people want. In
conclusion, Chairman, it was noted that the challenges may be hard, but some of
the solutions may be much more simple than we think. And, for the most part,
they are local.
>>NITIN DESAI: Before I -- we conclude, just a couple of things. The
co-chair, I would now hand over to the co-chair before I just turn over to the
floor for very, very brief comments, really brief comments.
>>HADIL DA ROCHA VIANNA: Thank you, Mr. Desai, I have to rush to another
meeting, but I would like to take this opportunity to express on behalf of the
host country a most sincere thanks and congratulations to the organizers of the
workshops that were held yesterday. I've been listening in the corridors to
many expressions of appreciation for the opportunity to debate very relevant
issues regarding Internet governance. In this sense, I would like to reiterate
what the secretariat has just said with regard to the filling in of the
templates that are available in the IGF Web page. I'm very sure that if the
organizers feel like doing that, they will be helping very much those that have
to report back on what has been happening here in Rio. With regard to the main
session that was held yesterday, it was chaired by Mr. Plínio de Aguiar of the
Brazilian national agency for telecommunications. He had the opportunity to
express his personal views on this very important and sensitive issue related
to critical Internet resources. The main session was efficiently moderated by
Mr. Ulysse Gosset, and the balanced participation was a very good opportunity
to allow for a thorough and important debate on this very important issue. It
happened at an excellent atmosphere. I hope this has set the tone of our
debate that will happen until next Thursday. I thank you very much, Mr. Desai
for allowing me to leave. I have to rush to another meeting. And I just again
would like to thank very much the organizers of the workshops for their
efforts. Thank you very much.
>>NITIN DESAI: And may I, on behalf of the organizers of the workshops, thank
our host, Brazil, for the excellent arrangements they have made in terms of the
facilities available for holding all of these workshops. Thank you very much.
>>HADIL DA ROCHA VIANNA: See you later, then.
>>NITIN DESAI: We have a few minutes left, and I really cannot take too many
comments. But I -- there is one who had asked me earlier, Mr. Konstantin
Novoderejhkin had asked for the floor. Where will you speak from? Is there
someone with a mike somewhere around? Why don't you just come up -- oh, there
is a mike. Quick comments, because we have to --
>> KONSTANTIN NOVODEREJHKIN: I have a few comments, because we have to leave
the room. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for giving me the floor. I would like to
make one short comment. (Two languages on audio channel). The discussion
demonstrated that the critical resources -- it was an important issue. And,
actually, there are many different points of view, and many times, these are in
opposition to the Russian Federation. And, actually, if we consider the
updating of the critical resources of the Internet, we propose to create a
special working group for the forum to draw up practical manifestations to use
the Internet resources under the control of the international community. The
mandate of this group would be, they have to be forced to prepare
recommendations to be studied at the next session. And in this working group,
the principle of equal participation will be respected, that is, governments,
civil society, and business, with geographic equality and between men and
women, we have to propose a forum, and propose it to the Secretary-General of
the United Nations. And that this should be part of the final document of this
forum.
>>NITIN DESAI: -- I was asking for comments from the workshops. These
comments (inaudible) in the discussion, not here. And I would therefore now
request that we have to stop the meeting now. But from subsequent reporting
sessions will have to be by -- only on the workshops. We really do not have
time to reopen issues which are more appropriately discussed in the plenary
sessions. Are there any -- anybody, any workshop organizers who have failed to
send me a piece of paper saying they wish to comment? Wish to report in? None?
So thank you very much. And I would request all workshop organizers reporting
in for the next reporting-in sessions to really stick to the time. Today we
had five. My suspicion is that from now onwards, we'll probably have ten to 12
on each session. So we really have to compress it. And I'm not sure there
will be any time left for comments afterwards. Thank you. The session is
adjourned. The other -- new panel will start in a few minutes. (10:54 a.m.)