Agenda
Internet Governance Forum 1 November 2006 Access Panel
Note: The following is the output of the real-time captioning taken during the
The Inaugural Meeting of the IGF, in Athens. 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.
>>CHAIRMAN MAGLARIS: Okay, ladies and gentlemen, please be seated. I know the
weather, for a change, was very nice today. But still, we have some work to do.
So let's start this session on access. This is obviously a very important
issue. And as you -- was several times mentioned at this conference, there are
at this point about one billion worldwide users of the Internet out of six
billion worldwide population. That makes it one out of six citizens and people
in the world being connected to the Internet. I come from a country, Greece,
that has an Internet penetration which is close to this average, a bit higher
than this average, which could be very comforting. However, I don't want to get
into the trap of a statistician that says that my head is in an oven, me feet
are on ice, therefore, on the average, I'm okay. [ Laughter ]
>>CHAIRMAN MAGLARIS: My name is Vassilios Maglaris. I'm a professor at the
national technical university of Athens. I welcome you here today. And let's
please start on this very interesting session. Our moderator will try to
orchestrate this panel on very, very tough and difficult questions.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Hello, everybody, ladies and
gentlemen. My name is Ulysse Gosset. I'm from France. And I belong to the team
of television station called France 24, which is not on the air yet, but it's a
new international channel from Paris which is going to be an alternative to
CNN, BBC, and Al Jazeera. Glad to be here to discuss the important issue of
access. The bad news is we have five and a half billion people who can't reach
the Internet. The good news is that the digital divide is reducing. I'm going
to speak French today. It's important that we should protect linguistic
diversity. So good afternoon to all of you. The good news is that the digital
divide is being somewhat reduced now. But the bad news is, it's still pretty
wide. And that when you look into the details, you see that when we're talking
about broadband, in particular, the divide is enormous, it's an abyss. 60% of
Americans and Europeans can have access to broadband. Only 40% of people in
Asia. And 0.1% of Africans have access. So there is genuine lack of equality in
access. Nevertheless, from 1994 to 2004, in one decade, the digital divide has
been reduced by seven. It's dropped from 27 to 7, the divide between the
developed and developing countries. So things are moving. And they're moving
thanks to new technology, the development of networks, thanks also to the
political will to act. So what we're here to discuss today is what
possibilities exist, what are the issues, the major questions we have to ask
today, so that we can envisage a future where there will be easier access for
more people around the globe. We've got a very high-level panel of
international representatives with us today. And so that the panelists and you,
the audience, both those here in the room and those on the Internet, can
communicate together and draw out this list of important questions, I would
suggest that we start with a presentation, an introduction, from our panelists.
I will start with our first panelist, Gabriel Adonaylo. He's going to introduce
himself, he'll tell us who he is. And as all panelists, he will tell us if
there is one single question, what is the priority point for him on this
question of access today.
>>GABRIEL ADONAYLO: Good afternoon. Well, the moderator has just said, my name
is Gabriel Adonaylo. I'm from Argentina. And I'm product manager for I.P.
products in Comsat International. And I'm also chairperson of Internet exchange
for the Camara Argentina de Internet. I -- I'm wondering today about how
improving connectivity in Argentina, and abroad as well, to solve problems of
access.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Thank you. If I can move now to our second panelist, Vincent
Waiswa Bagiire.
>>VINCENT WAISWA BAGIIRE: Thank you, Mr. Moderator. My name is Vincent Waiswa
Bagiire, from Uganda in east Africa. And I work for an institution called the
Collaboration on International ICT Policy for East and Southern Africa, charged
with increasing the effective participation of African policy-makers in
international processes such as this one. And my interest here is, how do we
get independent and transparent regulation that can unbundle monopolies and
duopolies to create competition and to achieve access in Africa on open access
basis. Thank you.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Thank you. Jim Dempsey now, please.
>>JIM DEMPSEY: Thank you, Mr. Moderator, ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon.
My name is Jim Dempsey. I'm policy director for the NGO Center for Democracy
and Technology in Washington, D.C. And I'm also policy director for our Global
Internet Policy Initiative, GIPI, which is a joint project with the NGO
internews. And for us, working in developing countries, the major issue is the
reform of national, legal, and regulatory frameworks to remove barriers to
Internet development by reducing licensing requirements, by reforming
telecommunications law mandating interconnection, and otherwise addressing
barriers to expansion of the networks and access at the national level.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Thank you. We now have a panelist from Senegal, Mouhamet
Diop. Thank you.
>>MOUHAMET DIOP: Well, let me respect tradition as well. We've got
interpreters with us, so I'm going to speak French. I'm called Mouhamet Diop,
and I'm from Senegal. And I am the Director-General of a group called Next, but
I'm also Secretary-General of ISOC Senegal in civil society, and at
governmental action level, I'm head of GRAPP, which is head of new technology
under an accelerated growth strategy. What I am particularly interested in
today is the question of interconnectivity, but from the point of view of
differentiating between the historic model we've seen thus far, where all
countries in Africa, everyone is seen as clients, whereas in other countries,
we've got these peering approaches, where it's a different approach completely.
Africa is committed to this diversification between the bodies, which means
that in each country, a fee is paid for access to Internet, whereas if there
was concerted access, it would trigger an economic system. So we should be seen
as a continent as such, not as millions of different users. So we have one
institution now which is on an equal setting with all of us around the world.
And we think it's high time things started to move. I'm also interested in the
question of adaptability of interfaces. When you talk about access, we forget
the fact that most people are -- a lot of people in Africa are illiterate. And
we tend to lose sight of the fact that the tools we have now are going to have
to be adapted if our people are going to be in a position to use this
technology.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Thank you. The next panelist is George Greve.
>>GEORGE GREVE: Thank you very much, I thank all of you for being here. My
name is George Greve. I am president of the Free Software Foundation Europe. We
are a pan-European NGO, a nongovernmental organization, dedicated to all
aspects of free software. And our central issue, really, is, and the central
question that brought me here is how access to the digital age is determined by
software freedom, ultimately. And I hope that we will be able to discuss that.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Thank you. Hugo Lueders, please.
>>HUGO LUEDERS: Ladies and gentlemen, it's great to see here all of you,
despite the sunshine outside. My name is Hugo Lueders, and I'm the
Secretary-General of the European e-Skills Certification Consortium for eSkills
improvability and competence development. I will discuss by priority the
eSkills gap. And as everybody knows, the world doesn't stop at technology, but
beyond access to technologies, there's access to content, access to knowledge,
access to training, access to certification. And at the end of the whole access
value chain, there is placement to employment. And I will hopefully have some
time to address all these different issues. Thank you.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Thank you. Professor Milton Mueller, please.
>>MILTON MUELLER: I'm Milton Mueller, I'm a professor at the Syracuse
University School of Information Studies and a partner in the Internet
Governance Project. I believe very strongly that the key to closing the
infrastructure gap is the mobilization of local capital and the organization of
capital investment in the national policy framework. And I hope we have an
opportunity to talk about that.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Thank you. Michuki Mwangi, please.
>>MICHUKI MWANGI: Thank you. My name's Michuki Mwangi. I come from Kenya. I
run the Kenyan ccTLD, K NIC. And also president of AFTLD. In my opinion, the
solution to the access issue lies at a national level, whether developed or
developing countries. And I believe that we need to have -- come up with
creative, innovative, and inexpensive ways at the national level to improve on
access. And this lies within stable infrastructure and also distributing cost
services for there to be improved access to these services. Thank you.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Thank you. Mr. Park from Korea.
>>KISHIK PARK: Thank you, Mr. Moderator. I am from Korea, and I am in charge
of IPv6 forum, Korea, and currently I am serving as the chairman of ITU-T study
group 3. And my question is, how can we make or how can you harmonize and
standardize a various way of using, providing, sometimes charging Internet
usage to make this very important tool of Internet as globally available a
means. That is my key question. Thank you.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Thank you. Sam Paltridge.
>>SAM PALTRIDGE: I'm Sam Paltridge from the OECD. I work in the area of the
OECD that deals with policy and regulation, particularly as it concerns
infrastructure and infrastructure development. I guess my key question is how
we can further develop a very successful model that already works with the
Internet and expand that and take down to the -- the barriers to that
expansion. Thank you.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Thank you. Craig Silliman, please.
>>CRAIG SILLIMAN: Thank you very much. Good afternoon. It's nice to be here
with you today. My name is Craig Silliman. I'm the deputy general counsel at
Verizon business, which is one of the largest global carriers. In that
capacity, I have responsibility for all legal and regulatory issues outside of
the United States, which includes not just dealing with regulatory issues, but
negotiation of all of our interconnection agreements, peering, and otherwise,
internationally, and network expansion agreements. The number one factor in
improving quality and price of access to networks is competition. So the top
issue here for us today, I believe, is, why is there not more competition for
access in many countries around the world? How do we identify the barriers to
competition and how do we resolve those barriers? Thank you.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Thank you. Parminder Jeet Singh.
>>PARMINDER JEET SINGH: Thank you, Mr. Moderator, and thank you all for being
here. I'm Parminder Jeet Singh. I'm from a nongovernmental organization based
in Bangalore. We do work on projects and policy engagements in areas of ICT for
development and information society issues. And one issue which I would like to
see addressed centrally here today is that when we talk about Internet access,
we cannot look at only telecom access in isolation. And I think it comes back
along with issues of software, hardware, content, services, applications. And
this superstructure and infrastructure growth has to go together as a chicken
and egg story. And it's -- and we often try to, you know, just extrapolate the
telephone model, where the issue is probably just weighing a telephone line or
making wireless available and it's very simple and low-cost treatment at the
end of the wire which can be used. And the voice services, everybody knows how
to use it. And we tried to extend that model into Internet access. But Internet
access is about services development, about health services, education
services, banking. And under those -- until those services develop, we cannot
lead the development of Internet telecom access. And when we look at Internet
access in this way, there is a very strong implication, a policy implication,
of it, where the public expenditure becomes a much bigger part than when you
are looking at it only as a telecom access issue. Thank you.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Thank you. A lady now from Europe, Maria Simon.
>>MARIA SIMON: I'm the chairperson of ANTEL, which is a state
telecommunications company, one of the few in the world, I would imagine. And
deals with questions of competence. This question of access needs to be
approached from various angles: Technology, the physical access on one hand,
including national and international and also fees and how they swing in with
the level of income in the country. Also terminal access. You've also got the
question of education, training people to use access. And, finally, national
content creation. I hope we can discuss these issues.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Thank you. Bill Woodcock, please. Excuse me, Jonne Soininen.
>>JONNE SOININEN: Good afternoon, everyone. I'm not Bill Woodcock, who is
sitting next to me. I'm from Nokia, from Finland. Nokia is a manufacturer of
network infrastructure, wireless network infrastructure, and also a
manufacturer of mobile phones and terminals that are used to access even the
Internet over the wireless links or mobile wireless networks. My interest here
is to see what -- how we can use mobile wireless infrastructure and mobile
wireless technologies and discuss about that to get access to the people who
are not currently connected. And this includes technologies new and old. And
I'm also interested to see that the -- discuss about the issues of regulation
to see that there's a good environment where a sustainable model can be built
to provide access to everybody. Thank you.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Thank you. And now the last panelist, Bill Woodcock.
>>BILL WOODCOCK: Thank you, and good afternoon. To those of you who don't know
me, you may have gathered by now, I'm Bill Woodcock, the research director for
Packet Clearinghouse. We're an NGO that supports critical Internet
infrastructure around the world. I believe that the most important issue
confronting access to the Internet at this point is monopolization of the local
loop. I think we have a decreasing number of companies that are sitting on
antiquated copper at this point. And I would really like to see the local loop,
the right of way, opened up to access by those who would put in new fiber
networks. Thank you.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Well, thank you to everyone. We've got 15 panelists, and it
covers a very broad range, very high-level panel, to get the discussions going
and look into this question of access. As you know, this is an interactive
forum. There are four people in the team helping me to collect questions from
the room. Matthew Shears, who is here. George Sadowsky, Raul Echeberria, and
Peter Hellmonds. We also have the possibility of interacting with the outside
world with people who are following the forum on the Internet. And Jeremy
Markham, our blogger, will be taking the questions from the Internet. It's all
ready, we are all set, we have two and a half hours ahead of us to focus on
what the genuine issues are. But we saw some pretty dramatic figures beforehand
about this divide. One million people connected, five billion not. And I
wanted to ask one of the members of the panel how many years you feel it will
take to reduce this Digital Divide in a clear way and get 2 billion connected,
for example, so that access can be easier. How long will it take to get to
that figure of 2 billion connected? Hugo, have you got any idea about this?
What do you think?
>>HUGO LUEDERS: Thank you, Mr. Moderator. We are very careful with precise
figures but I can share some data with you. Industry has heard the Tunis call
for capacity building as the most important, single most important
cross-cutting issue which was addressed at the Tunis event. And we have stepped
in, have moved forward. We cannot wait anymore that E.U. member state
governments finally bring their acts together on a European level. So we have
moved forward to have a substantial inroad on the 20 million unemployed people
we have in Europe. We are building E.U. chapter members, working together with
a multitude of nongovernmental organizations, nonprofit organization, public
agencies, community colleges of all kind. And we are quite sure that over this
period, we have defined for five years in Europe, that we will have a
substantial inroad, and we will reduce the skills gap in Europe. We have
presented -- Just one more sentence to that. We have presented this project to
other parts of the world. Myself, I have spoken about this issue in Jakarta.
They were most interested in this. They have simply asked, "When are you
coming here and doing the same thing here?" Because they have exactly the same
need. So we will try to roll this out, a real global program.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Jim Dempsey, what do you think about this? How long do you
think it will take to reduce the divide -- we saw this has been divided by
seven over a decade -- to get from one billion connected now to the two
billion, how many years is it going to take from the NGOs point of view?
>>JIM DEMPSEY: Well, I think that the next 500 million will be easy because
they will all come from China, which has certainly a dedicated effort to
develop the Internet. I think that the other 500 million of the second billion
will be spread around the world. I'm afraid to say that I worry particularly
about Africa being left behind here. I do think that the wireless technologies,
including wireless broadband offer perhaps the greatest promise in that regard,
both in terms of the last mile. So I think the second billion, we are certainly
going to see a sharp curve, and then probably a long tail to get closer to the
third billion. But I think that the -- the hard problem, in my view, is Africa.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Well, the floor is always open for the audience, as you know.
So I'm turning to you now. You can ask questions of the panel at any moment.
So are there any questions? Yes? If you could stand up, please, and introduce
yourself. Give us your name and tell us who you are asking the question to. If
you could stand up, please. So this is the first question from the floor.
>>MALCOLM HARBOUR: I am Malcolm Harbour, member of the European Parliament. I
just wanted to add to a question, and Jim Dempsey spoke as I was writing this
because he was the first person to mention wireless. So the first question I
would like to ask the panelists, in terms of the next -- I accept his view
about 500 million for China but let's say another billion beyond that. What
proportion of those are going to be enabled by wireless connections of
different wireless devices? Will that spread of wireless devices require
different approaches or similar approaches in terms of access rules and
regulations? And finally, I think in response to your neighbor, who is sitting
next to you, Mr. Diop, who said about the problems of access for people who
don't have literacy or people skills, again, do wireless devices or next
generation wireless devices free users from some of those constraints, so they
really will be one of the keys to delivering the connectivity that we want to
see in enabling those citizens in the future?
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Thank you. Professor Mueller, please, on this question.
Back to the panel.
>>MILTON MUELLER: Yes, I don't want to get into a game of predicting when
something is going to happen. I think what is more important is the point
raised by the last question which is how does the nature of the technology
affect the possibilities for expansion. So the point I made in my opening was
that it's all about the mobilization of local capital and open entry into
markets so that people can respond to these needs without having to get
approval from governments in a top-down fashion. And in that respect wireless
dramatically changes the nature of the complexion. And if certain things
happen right at the standardization level and the spectrum allocation level, we
can see very dramatic progress because wireless allows the much smaller
investments to be made, while retaining certain kinds of connectivity,
intercompatibility be. For example, unlicensed spectrum allows people to enter
the market with new kinds of equipment without having to get licenses. That's
very important. It allows people to create local kinds of connectivity. One
point I want to -- a question I raised to the other panelists is I heard a lot
of talk about regulating the local loop or requiring interconnection. Clearly,
you can't regulate a loop if there is no loop. And for many parts of the
world, the question is not how do we regulate the local loop. It's how do we
build a local loop. And frequently you can build obstacles to the creation of
infrastructure if you focus on exporting western models which presume a
monopoly, universally covered infrastructure and you are trying to regulate
access to it to allow competitors to enter, you have a completely different
problem when there is no local loop and you have to build one.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Thank you, and on this issue of the local loops, maybe I
could turn to our friend in Senegal, Mouhamet Diop. What do you think about
this?
>>MOUHAMET DIOP: Thank you. What we've seen over recent years in terms of
Internet development is that there has been a whole change in paradigm, people
who worked in developing Internet in Africa were the ISPs, Internet service
providers. That is now changing and the new players we have seen pushing for
Internet development are telephony operators who have a lot of cash, who have a
lot of money. And this brings me back to what Vincent was saying. He was
saying that we needed investment capital. But mobile phones have proven that
viability of telecom investment is at stake. And they are now mobilizing funds
to push for Internet development through the mobile, from the mobile side. But
we have it take an overall view of this. We're not only talking about an issue
within a given country. Look at Africa as a continent, a whole continent.
Access for operators doesn't apply only to one single country. Let me give you
an example to illustrate what I am saying. Somitel is a subsidiary of France
Telecom, and it now provides internet access to more than four other countries
using sat 3. But all these countries pay for the telecom connection -- the
land transit in other words, to access the loop -- but they also pay for access
to Internet through local transit in France. So all this is going out of Africa
for a service which remains in Africa. And that's something which should give
us food for thought. We are in a worse situation as introductors for all the
other continents. We shouldn't have to pay any more to connect to the global
network, because, you know, it's a question, a line of logic of peering.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: On this point specifically, we are talking about cell
telephony and two and a half billion cell telephones very quickly, very soon.
And to be able to connect to Internet with mobile telephony. So I now turn on
this to somebody who specializes in this field. Jonne, Jonne Soininen, can you
come in on this and talk about some of the role played by this particular type
of link up. Thank you.
>>JONNE SOININEN: Yes, thank you very much. And I would like to address this.
So like you said, we have now about 2.5 billion users, mobile phone users, and
we are coming close to 3 billion soon in just a couple of years. This means
that half of the people have access to telephony already. But this doesn't do
much for Internet yet. However, I think that this can be used as a basis of
providing, also, Internet access. The same technology that is used to provide
the mobile access can be also used to provide Internet access. However, this is
not at broadband speed. But I would think that it is better to start with
lower band if broadband is not available in that area yet just to get access to
the Internet. In addition, there is, in the future, and also already what is
available in developed countries as technologies on mobile wireless networks,
broadband technologies that can give same kind of data rates as the DSL
networks. And those can be also used to provide, then, better access in
developing countries. And I think they will also play a major role to connect
the people to the Internet.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Thank you very much. I turn to the room. Willie Currie has a
question. Are you there?
>>WILLIE CURRIE: My name is Willie Currie from the Association for Progressive
Communications. I wonder, just to pick up on one point, whether it is a
problem of the local loop. Rather that it may well be that it's a backbone
infrastructure that is missing, and that if the backbone were there, then
creative solutions could be found through wireless broadband put in the local
loop. And then the issue that I raise is, well, infrastructure is one thing.
Then there's also the matter of the costs of international Internet
connectivity. And we have heard that there might be solutions possible by
completing the communication policy reform in developing countries, that there
should be Internet exchange points. But what I would like to ask is, is there a
probability for an international agreement on reducing the cost of Internet --
international Internet connectivity through a body such as the WTO?
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Thank you. Well, I think that Bill Woodcock might attempt an
initial approach on this.
>>BILL WOODCOCK: There were several points there, and I think the two main
ones were about the local loop and whether it's really the local loop that's
the problem or the international backbone. And number two, whether there's a
role for, say, intergovernmental or international agreements with regard to
connectivity to the international backbone. So the important thing to realize
here is that there is no international backbone. The Internet is made up of
many, many, many Internet service providers in different parts of the world.
Some of those happen to be located in the United States, or Europe. Some of
them happen to be located in Africa. They all connect to each other on a
peer-to-peer basis. And those connections tend to be very large. There are
many, many, many terabits of connectivity at that level. The real problem, I
think, is in the local loop. We have, in some of the most developed countries
in the world, we have local loop connectivity that is less than a megabit. You
know, in the United States, for instance, we're falling, every year, further
and further behind other countries. This is because the local loop is typically
controlled by an individual company. And they have -- as long as that's true,
they have very little incentive to upgrade it. I think that the question of
whether there's room for intergovernmental action in mandating how Internet
service providers connect with each other internationally, I think you have to
ask yourself what form will that take? Are you going to tell one private
company that it needs to bear the cost of international transport on behalf of
another private company simply because of the country of incorporation? These
are not intergovernmental matters if these are not governmentally owned
incumbent phone companies. Thank you.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Craig Silliman, do you think that you could speak to this
issue on regulation? Do you have a view on this? Might there be international
agreements and how would that be formed? Is it realistic? What's your view?
>>CRAIG SILLIMAN: Absolutely. First, I agree strongly with almost everything
that Bill just said. I take exception with one thing. As someone who
currently lives in the UK but used to live in the U.S. where I had a 15 megabit
Internet connection into my house, I actually think that there's been a great
model in the U.S. for competition and upgrading the local loop, largely because
of competition between the cable industry and the telecom industry. I only wish
I had that sort of connectivity currently in the UK, and I think most of us
would anywhere in the world. I think on the international cost issue, I think a
couple things to keep in mind. First, we should not lose sight of the fact
that the Internet, as Bill rightly pointed out, is a network of networks. And
in many ways, I would argue that it is far and away the most successful
interconnection model in the history of any networked industry. In a little
over ten years, purely through private commercial negotiations, you have over
20,000 autonomous systems, individual networks around the world, that are
directly and indirectly connected to one another. Which means that I can start
an ISP in any country in the world, connect it up to a network and be able to
reach any site, any e-mail address anywhere in the world. When you think about
it, that is an extraordinary accomplishment, something that probably could not
have been architected or engineered by any single group or body, no matter how
well meaning or foresighted. The cost of the international interconnection
links I think bring a couple things to bear. First of all, I think we need to
look at the model there, and again I echo Bill's comment that the Internet is a
network of networks, which means when you are buying interconnectivity on a
global basis, you have a choice of literally dozens of providers in a market
that is intensely competitive. We have seen prices drop in this market by over
90% over the last couple of years which is almost unheard of in any industry
for any service or product. So I would argue this is a market that is
characterized by intense competition and prices that are moving very close to
cost. The comments that you hear, for instance my colleague commented on
traffic from one African country to another that transits through Paris, I do
agree that when you look at that it seems illogical and you identify a problem.
But I would suggest to you that the problem is not the cost of the
international bandwidth, but, rather, the cost of the domestic access. What you
are seeing there is an economic incentive to route traffic internationally
because the international links are actually cheaper than domestic. If you go
back five or six years in Europe, traffic use -- the majority of Internet
traffic between Paris and London used to transit through New York. And that
was because the circuits between London and New York and Paris and New York
were cheaper than those between London and Paris. When Europe liberalized in
1998, lease line prices immediately dropped, the traffic flows immediately
shifted removing those international transit costs from the European network
providers. Thank you.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Thank you very much. In the room there is a very specific
question from Africa, from Alex Corenthin. Are you there, Alex? Could you
speak to the microphone and give us the African view.
>>ALEX CORENTHIN: Alex Corenthin is my name, and I am from ISOC Senegal.
Referring to access, the issue of access and what happens in the rural world,
don't forget that a high proportion of the population in Africa is actually
rural population without any sort of network linkup. They only have a minimum
service which they have. And that comes under the national regulation of each
country. But we do have this target population which is not being served and
doesn't have access to technology because of the economy aspects which have to
be taken into account in terms of providing this technology to that population.
So my question is, how can we ultimately arrive at a situation where you solve
the issue, thinking, perhaps, a little of the model which was taken for mobile
telephony. There are certain limits there, because an African cannot, in fact,
pay for a mobile telephone. And we now have this technology growing. We need
to give technology a chance as well.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Thank you very much. Perhaps I can turn to Gabriel on this.
Perhaps you can come in on that.
>>GABRIEL ADONAYLO: Well, basically, taking up this question, perhaps I can
give you a specific example of what has happened in Latin America. Because we
do have zones and areas of Latin America which are rural areas, where there's
no real network infrastructure. So what is happening in the area where you
have, between Brazil and Colombia, a network which has been financed by the
state, so you have a universal service, it is called. And that is a way of
establishing some sort of infrastructure in areas which are not financially
viable. So it's an infrastructure which would be made up of users who don't
really have the resources, and they are areas which are really economically
disadvantaged. SHSAC {sp?} one of them in Brazil and this is a service to the
citizen with thousand of access points where citizens can actually have access
to educational material and other sorts of technical information. e-learning
possibilities and other implications. Brazil we also have another program,
Compartele is its name, and it does have also several thousand access points
where you can have access to the service. And a lot has been said about
wireless technology, but we do have broadband access possibilities here where
you have this infrastructure in place.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Thank you very much. Perhaps we could move to our Korean
friend on this, on the same question, please.
>>KISHIK PARK: Thank you very much, Mr. Moderator. Let me explain a very short
story of Korea. In Korea, already more than 71% of Korean people, they are
using the Internet daily, and also more than 70% of household, they are
connected to the broadband Internet. But some of the panelists already
indicated competition is the best way to solve that kind of access problem.
But I don't think in that way, because I believe this Internet tool should be
treated as food or housing. Because Internet there is not just a means to
communicate our ideas or something like that. This is kind of daily
infrastructure for every citizen. And it will be in many countries in the
future years. So we think about some collaboration before competition. If we
emphasize competition only, in that case, some of African colleague indicated,
many world citizens, they cannot pay for this very, very convenient and useful
tool. So it does mean, actually, inaccessibility. So we should think about the
practical affordability or accessibility for Internet usage. That is very
important point. We cannot discuss any kind of new technologies to give us some
very convenient access without thinking of price or cost. That's my very short
remark. Thank you [ Applause ]
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Thank you very much. On this same subject, Maria Simon, head
of the Uruguayan telephone service.
>>MARIA SIMON: Thank you. I would like to refer specifically to several
points here. First of all, technology, whereby you can have access as a user.
And then when it's talked about the various loops here and the local loops.
But in Uruguay for example, the majority of broadband technology is through
loops. And given that this infrastructure is on the basis of very good
technology, you can, in fact, have good access to this broadband possibility.
Now, in those few areas where you cannot have access, you have Wi-Fi technology
available, and also linked up to cellular possibilities. And that's all well
and good, but we must bear in mind here the concept of how mobile telephony can
really actually reach each and every citizen at whatever level. That's
important, because we really need to get to people who are economically
speaking in a backward situation as well. The user really does not care whether
it's Wi-Fi, local loops or wi-max. So what the user is interested in is the
actual cost, the cost to access this technology. So in this sense, we do have
very clearly different cases between the different countries, and the
interconnectivity is important for those who pay. And perhaps we ought to say
here that telephony does that a convention where, in fact, each country pays
for half the access but, otherwise, in smaller countries where you don't really
have that access possibility, it does have implications for them.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Thank you very much. I turn to the room, because Pierre
Dandjinou has a question. I think he's with us. I think -- yes, if he's here,
please do come forward. The role of the private sector, you were asking, in
terms of access possibilities. Can you perhaps submit your question to us and
please introduce yourself. Thank you very much.
>>PIERRE DANDJINOU: Pierre Dandjinou is my name. I'm from Africa as well. I'd
like to thank you very much. But my question is to the panelist as to the role
that some of the local private enterprises might undertake. One does see that
the private sector is referred to often on the international level. But we also
have local private enterprises. How can we perhaps move ahead in order not to
reduce them simply to becoming sellers of equipment and perhaps you can give us
some sort of example of success stories here in terms of distribution of such
facilities at a local level.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Sam Paltridge, perhaps I can hand over to you, OECD.
>>SAM PALTRIDGE: Thank you, Mr. Moderator. It's a very good question. I'm glad
you raised the role of the private sector. I think I very much agree with those
panelists that have emphasized competition and the role it can play in building
access. And the question asked for a positive example in that area. And I think
you might remember who won the Nobel Peace Prize this year, the founder of the
Grameen Bank, which provided a microcredit scheme in rural areas in Bangladesh.
Now those of you who know Bangladesh know that it has one of the lowest GDP per
capitas in the world. And where they went to serve were the areas where the
incumbent telecommunication carrier did not want to serve, said was uneconomic
to serve. And Grameen Bank went in there, Grameen Telephone went in there and
provided telephone service and provided a local entrepreneurial model where
village telephone ladies provided service, where the incumbent monopolist would
not provide. And they did that in a country that has, I would say, one of the
worst interconnection regimes in the world, because there was no settlement
payments that went to that telephone company, Grameen, to provide that service.
So the point I would make is, if you would open up the market, if you give
people a chance, you will find new ideas, new ways to provide service, ways to
take advantage of the type of innovation that some of the panelists, like Nokia
and so forth, would provide the tools. And the first thing you need to do is
get a commercial core network built out, with competitive principles, and then
the government can, in an economical way, provide connectivity to schools and
libraries and health centers and so forth. But if you try and put the horse --
the cart before the horse, if you try and do a universal service type buildout
from day one without that commercial support already being there, it will be
too expensive.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Very quickly, please. Craig Silliman.
>>CRAIG SILLIMAN: Very quickly, just to add to Sam's perspective, from the
private sector perspective, there are business people, entrepreneurs in every
country in the world that are constantly looking for every day constantly
looking for business opportunities. What we hear from this panel and the
audience is that there are opportunities and needs that are not being met.
Those are business opportunities. If those business opportunities are not being
filled, we have to ask ourselves, what are the barriers that are getting in the
way, how do we remove those barriers.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Thank you. Maria Simon, very quickly.
>>MARIA SIMON: Well, I just wanted to give you a few examples as concerns what
has been done in terms of public association in Paraguay.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: We'll come back to the examples later on in the second
section, if we may.
>>MARIA SIMON: Yes. I do agree with that local industry certainly can help on
this. Thank you.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: I think it's important that we ought to perhaps have from our
Indian panelist here some information as to what happens with local loops and
local capital. Can you perhaps, from your point of view from Bangladesh, could
you tell us what happens in terms of local access by local communities which
don't necessarily have the I.P. technologies available.
>>PARMINDER JEET SINGH: I will have to pull together a couple of points which
all go together and impact this issue. I made a point earlier that we tried to
take the telephone model and extrapolate it to the Internet. I like to hear
examples. And would just like to say that I think the local entrepreneurship
model is very important. We know Grameen Bank example. Telephone is different
from Internet. This is the point I have been trying to make. Telephone has been
around in Europe for decades now. You didn't call it "information society"
then. You called it "information society" when Internet came in, when
Internet-based services came in. It's a completely different ball game. We
tried to extend the telecom paradigm, and tried to say that all the
Internet-based services, the way we access services, the way we do banking, the
way we collaborate, social networking, everything will change. And the same
when the telephone was brought to everyone by a private-sector paradigm. And I
have a problem with it. I will give you an example from my own village. I often
go to a villages have from a relatively well off or average well off part of
the country. And one day, I accidentally found out that there was Internet in
the dialup access. There was dialup access to the Internet. I never knew about
it because nobody talked about it. I took my laptop and tried it. And it was
very good. I could do video conferencing over it. But no one in the village
knew about it. When I tried to tell people about it, they heard, and they found
it's novel, and then that's where it stopped. People don't use Internet. I
would like to hear an example where people have actually used Internet in that
manner. And I think in this aspect, we need a lot of public investment. And I
support my Korean friend's point that we have to take it as the same kind of
infrastructure the way we invested into education. All the developed countries
invested into public education many decades ago because they knew it was
central for economic and social growth. I say this is also key to growth. It
can lead the village. But wherever there is a gap, we can't keep waiting for
the markets to go in and public investment should go in. That's the point.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Fine. That's very interesting. Before we give the floor back
to the panelists, let us have something from Jeremy Malcolm from the floor.
What are the questions that we have from the Internet, Jeremy.
>> JEREMY MALCOLM: We have six people in a chat room talking -- listening into
this discussion by the webcast. One of them is Michael Nelson. And he has a
question for the panel. I'll just read it out. Craig Silliman is exactly right.
The genius of the Internet is that it is a network of networks, built using
open standards. Universities, government agencies, companies, and NGOs can all
build a network and plug it into the global Internet. Unfortunately, new
government regulations for data retention and filtering, for instance, could
make this much more difficult and expensive. Furthermore, some proposals for
next-generation network standards would also hinder this end-to-end nature of
the Net. In five years, do you think it will be as easy as it is today to plug
private networks into the global Internet?
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Quickly, answer.
>>CRAIG SILLIMAN: I think Mike identified it perfectly right. I think he's
identified the dangers. I will take the optimistic stance and say in five
years, it will not be harder, but I'm counting on the fact that the problems
he's identified will be resolved and the governments will do the right thing
and not hindering the Internet with unneeded regulation.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Thank you. Hugo.
>>HUGO LUEDERS: Just quick point. If you speak about access improvement on a
local level, I think you have to be more precise. What you're talking about
here is about technology access improvement on local level. And, hopefully,
we're coming back later on to the real issues beyond technology access. There
are the real challenges for the Internet, society we are facing. There will be
tremendous changes in the whole domain of education, training, work force
development, et cetera. And hopefully I'm coming back to that later on.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Mouhamet Diop.
>>MOUHAMET DIOP: Thank you, very much, moderator. The question in terms of the
private sector, if I may just go back to that, it's a very, very short answer
to that. But I do differ on one point with the person who spoke to this issue,
saying that the (inaudible) can only come from the private sector, which is
going to regulate the rural problem in terms of regionalization in Africa. We
have to understand that in African, this is a very special case, and we have
been able to observe that the private sector cannot take on board directly the
needs for establishing regional needs. Same thing for the rural level. Because
these are not financially viable ventures. So the governments would have to be
involved in some way. And as concerns regional infrastructure, no
telecommunications operator will be interested, basically, in what's happening
in terms of interconnectivity within the country. This is important, because
there's very high potential there, and you yourselves said that you have, in
fact, a very high percentage of the population involved. So there is this
tremendous potential there. So why should you go into a very remote area,
whereas you could act within the smaller areas? So the companies have called
for, say out only at the city level, where they can have a maximum cost-benefit
result. So the government would have to take on board implementing and
establishing the infrastructure, and also have perhaps PPRs established there,
too.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Thank you very much. Jim, perhaps on the same subject, very
quickly.
>>JIM DEMPSEY: Yes. I think I would propose what I think is a very simple test
for the questions that we're considering now. That is, what is the role of
regulation? And what is the role of government? And I think the simple test
that I would propose is, does the regulation or the intervention of government
expand access and innovation? Or does it constrain access and innovation? And
in some respects, the removal of regulation, the removal of licensing
requirements can open up, expand access by permitting more innovation at the
edges of the network. We're seeing globally, in both developing and developed
countries, somewhat of a recent trend towards government intervention or
regulation that is actually intended to limit innovation and to limit the
expansion of access.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Thank you very much. A question from Juan Fernandez from Cuba
in the room. Are you there, Juan, in the room? I can see you. Yes, there you
are. Thank you very much on this issue. Introduce yourself, please.
>>JUAN FERNANDEZ: Thank you very much, moderator. Juan Fernandez is my name.
And I am, in fact -- I work in the informatics and communication industry in
Cuba. And I was a member of the working group on Internet governance of the
United Nations. And I am a member of the Study Group 3 of ITU as to the
connection costs issue and member of the Strategic Council of Global Alliance
for Development in the United Nations. Now, before I actually submit my
question, I'd like to remind you here that the main obstacles to access to
Internet is hunger, lack of education, discrimination, and exclusion. So those
who are ill, those who are hungry, those who are illiterate, and those who are
excluded from everything also would be excluded from new technologies and from
the Internet. Also, poverty and underdevelopment, to which a large part of
humanity is, in fact, condemned, has an effect on the basic infrastructures in
place, such as drinkable water, utilities, such as electricity, and also the
social conditions within which people live. So I do think that the necessary
first step in order to improve and democratize Internet is to try to eliminate
those obstacles I mentioned. But once the underdeveloped countries have
undertaken this tremendous effort and sacrifice to create the minimum
conditions for them to be able to connect up to the Internet, then they find
themselves confronted with a situation whereby they have to pay for the
connection up to the Internet at the same level as the developed countries,
even though this might also be a channel used by users in the developed
countries, which means that, as has already been mentioned before, you can have
technical means whereby you can do away with this paradox. And these poor
countries seem to be financing Internet by this system. So my question is to
this specifically, what can we do to change the situation in favor of those who
are less advantaged so far? Because it must be said that to one of the replies
here that was given in terms of reducing cost, because costs are, in fact,
dropping, but we have to see how we can in fact try to not only reduce costs,
but to make sure that we can share the costs. And I don't know whether the WTO
can be called in on this as somebody said or whether we could call on the ITU
or what we could do.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Well, before we go any further, the question on Cuba -- for
Cuba. What is the number of people who are connected the on Internet in Cuba
today?
>>JUAN FERNANDEZ: What?
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Today, how many people in Cuba, what percentage of the
citizens are connected to the Internet in terms of the overall population it
might be interesting to get some figures.
>>JUAN FERNANDEZ: Well, I really didn't want to talk about Cuba, because I
didn't want to politicize this forum too much. But you asked me, so I'll tell
you. As an awful a lot of you will be aware, Cuba is a small country. Fifty
years ago, it underwent an economic war waged on the by the most economically
powerful country in the world. Now, look at Google, for example,. If we try and
get onto Google, we're told that we can't have access, we can't buy software
from Microsoft. We don't have access to fiberoptics. All of our Internet over
the last few years has had to go through satellite channels. And they're very
expensive. And what we are doing about this, because the cost of connection is
very high, we have social appropriation of the Internet.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: I was asking about the percentage of Cubans who were
connected.
>>JUAN FERNANDEZ: We don't count this in terms of individuals who, depending
on the money in their pocket, cannot have access. People have connection to
Internet, wherever they are, in the mountains, in the schools. More than a
thousand schools have only maybe one pupil, because when we say 100% in Cuba,
we talk about 100%. So a lot of these schools have to put up solar panels so
they can have connection. 100% of our universities have Internet. All of our
research centers and companies that need it can have Internet access. We don't
prioritize individual use of Internet, not because we don't want that; it's
because we can't, because we don't have the access, the network, because of the
embargo imposed on us by the United States. But thank you for the question. I
hope I've answered it. If you need further explanations, I'm sure I can give
you them.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Well, we've gone beyond the first hour of our discussions. I
think this has been very interesting. And it's always interesting to have
specific examples about Internet access. So in daily reality, what's going on.
Before I give the floor to a couple of members of the panel, let me put the
question first. In their countries, in their daily activities, what examples
can they give of what they've been able to do to encourage Internet access, or
examples of what they're trying to do but didn't work, what were they not able
to do. Bill Woodcock asked for the floor. And then we're going to deal -- hear
from the panelists and see what they have to say.
>>BILL WOODCOCK: Actually, I was hoping to respond to the question about Cuba.
Shall I do that?
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Please go ahead. But I just wanted to let you know that I
wanted to ask this question. And I would like -- in fact, if each panelist
could say in his own country what is the access today to Internet. I could tell
you, in France, for example, in Paris, you have 125% access in Paris. But if
you go down to the countryside, you go down to 50% access. Even in the
developed countries, we have our own difficulties. So it's very interesting to
have a view. Please, your answer to Cuba.
>>BILL WOODCOCK: Let me preface this with, first of all, an apology for my
government's longstanding policies. I'm from Berkeley, California, and as many
of you who are familiar with the politics in the United States know, this means
that I am pretty much 100% for Cuba with regards to the embargo and so forth.
Now, with that preface, let me answer the question about what percentage of
Cubans are connected to the Internet. Remember that the Internet is an
end-to-end model. Zero percent of Cubans are connected to the Internet. The
Cuban government operates an incumbent phone company which maintains a Web
cache. Cubans who wish to use the Internet browse the government Web cache.
They do not have unrestricted access to the Internet. And the question about
whether there is an inequality in Cuban access to the global Internet, ask
yourself whether a Cuban Internet service provider would face any challenges in
connecting to a network in the United States or in Europe. And the answer is
that, no, these are unregulated markets. They would face exactly the same costs
as anyone anywhere else in the world. Whereas an American or British or French
Internet service provider wishing to sell Internet access in Cuba would find
themselves precluded from doing so by government regulation. So at that level,
there's a basic incompatibility between heavy government regulation and the
free market model upon which the Internet is built. And I understand that this
is a choice of each country, and I don't make a value judgment about that,
simply stating that the Internet has come into being in one environment, and it
doesn't necessarily make itself --
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: What is the percentage of connection connecting people in
California?
>>BILL WOODCOCK: I'm not positive now. I would guess somewhere between 80 and
90%.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Okay. Let's go to Korea. Mr. Park, what is the connection
percentage in Korea, South Korea, today?
>>KISHIK PARK: Mr. Moderator, let me use a few seconds just I will be very
short.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Okay.
>>KISHIK PARK: Firstly, I fully agree with the interventions made by Cuban
delegation. And I don't think we can discuss about this kind of accessibility
without thinking of some charity. Because if anybody can provide some amount of
money to Korea, with current technologies, we don't have any problem to provide
all the facilities for every Koreans and any other countries for them to access
the Internet very easily. That's financial and some affordability. So we should
be very clear. And in Korea, the penetration rate is 71.9% as of 2005 July. And
households, 70.8% of households are connected to the broadband Internet. And my
government is doing some special considerations for some aid to people or some
young infants, and also including some education to use Internet. So I don't
object to use some kind of competition to establish some infrastructure or
something like that. But also, we should think about some kind of collaborative
spirit to share with some disadvantaged or disabled or weak people. That is
very important to increase the Internet accessibility, I believe.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Okay. Thank you very much. Mr. Mwangi from Kenya, could I
have your reaction, please.
>>MICHUKI MWANGI: I'll start off by saying that Kenya has an Internet
penetration of 3.1. And this has gone to.1% over the last five years -- 3.1%
over the last five years. This is because of liberalization. I would like to
look at it as a marketplace. If I go to market, I buy the cheapest product. If
your market is produced, you have no subsidies to produce your market, that
means it's expensive for you to bring your products to the market, then your
products will definitely cost more, so no one will buy from you, you will
always buy from the one who is able to produce products cheaply.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Professor Mueller.
>>MILTON MUELLER: We may be getting lost in the detail and overlooking a
bigger issue. We're basically talking about universal service, about the
classic division between the dynamism of the market and the distributional
effects of government. And it seems to me the obvious answer to this is that
you have to rely on the dynamism of the market to get you about 80% of the
construction of the infrastructure, and that there is always a role for
governments and subsidies and redistribution and filling out anywhere from the
final 2% to the final 20%, depending on what kind of a country you're dealing
with and what kind of an economy you're dealing with. Just to give you an
example in the United States, which invented the term "universal service," we
got to about 90% coverage of the country because of competitive market
conditions in the 19th century and early 1900s, and the Scandinavian countries
also had competition during that period. Surprisingly, or not surprisingly, to
this day, it is the United States and the Scandinavian countries that still
lead in infrastructure penetration. Furthermore, as an academic, I can say that
you can do statistical correlations. Many, many statistical correlations,
about what factors, affect Internet penetration in a given country. And you'll
find again and again that the degree of telecom liberalization is a
significantly positively correlated factor. So you have to rely on the
commercially self-sustaining business to mobilize the massive amounts of
capital needed to construct an infrastructure, and you have to rely on
competition to drive the costs down and to develop new service contents. But,
of course, there's room at the end for redistribution, which extends it to
high-cost areas, to poor people, and to people who couldn't get it otherwise.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: And if you are speaking about infrastructure, there is a
question from our blogger, if you can give him the microphone, we are going to
be -- from -- Alice (saying name).
>> Yes, Alice has sent in a question by e-mail. She's the national coordinator
of catalyzing access to ICTs in Africa. And she's also involved with the
Association for Progressive Communications, and she says, access to the
Internet requires reliable backbone infrastructure at both national and
regional level, accompanied by affordable, cheap connections to the
international network. Could the panel discuss how Africa can develop fast,
affordable Internet backbone. We have many ISPs that would find creative
solutions into the loop if they had affordable access to broadband backbone.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: The same field, there is a question from the room. We can mix
it with this question from Jean-Jacques Subrenat up at the front. He is giving
us a question.
>>JEAN-JACQUES SUBRENAT: Thank you. My name is Jean-Jacques Subrenat. I'm a
former ambassador and now a consultant. Well, two bottlenecks. I've picked out
two. There are an awful lot more. Mohammed Yunus won the Nobel Peace Prize, as
we heard. And I would like to know whether there is the use of micro-credit in
Africa in terms of Internet use. Are there any specific examples of this? And
if so, I would like to hear about them. The second bottleneck now is a link
between the electrical network and access to the Internet. Electrical,
centralized electrical provision does not always work. And that's a genuine
bottleneck. In Africa in particular, have there been specific examples for
local Internet access to use photovoltaic energy as a solution.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Do we have a panel member who can give a technical answer as
to the electricity grids? Vincent?
>>VINCENT WAISWA BAGIIRE: I thought I was going to answer Alice's question.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Go ahead.
>>VINCENT WAISWA BAGIIRE: Alice has asked a very important question, but all I
can say is there is an initiative and there are several other initiatives
within the region of improving the infrastructure in the region. And the one
that is most known is the East African submarine cable system. However, that
particular initiative I think will need perhaps divine intervention, because as
it is right now, there are lots of controversies surrounding the project and
there is a high possibility it may not come to fruition as fast as the industry
needs it. So that's one of the projects that might assist the region in terms
of getting cheap and affordable infrastructure.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Okay. Who can answer the question about using the electrical
distribution network to promote Internet access? On the panel. Is there
somebody? You could, Bill? Or -- yeah, please.
>>BILL WOODCOCK: So there are several ways that that can be done. One way that
many people are familiar with is sort of in the home, transmitting electrical
-- transmitting data signals over electrical wiring. And this sort of works in
the scope of the home. The high voltage electrical, long-distance transmission
systems are not very well adapted to that. However, they already have right of
way staked out with big towers and high voltage wires. Russia, particularly,
has been innovative in getting fiber wrapped around those high voltage
long-haul distribution lines. That's really the best way to use them, is to
just use the existing right of way and power cable to wrap fiber.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Thank you. Jim Dempsey.
>>JIM DEMPSEY: I will just say that I think we misunderstood the question.
The question was what do you do when there is no power system. So far, I
haven't heard an answer to that. I don't have one. That's a question we are
thinking about.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Can you answer the question?
>>JIM DEMPSEY: No, I can't.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Okay. Please.
>>MICHUKI MWANGI: I think to the best of my knowledge there are projects that
are actually going to try to develop computers that actually use low voltage
power. And one is currently in test at the University of Oregon that is
through NSRC. And it is basically something to use low voltage power that can
be set up in a box and shipped out to these kind of remote places.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Okay. Well, we're going to ask the panelists, maybe not all
of them, but those who have a real good answer to provide to the audience, we
are interested to know in your field, what concrete example -- some have been
given already about the (inaudible), but those who have not spoken yet on that
field. And we can start maybe with Gabriel, if you have a concrete example of
what has been done in your field to promote the access to make accessibility
better. Is there one concrete example you can give very quickly? And then we
will go all the table.
>>GABRIEL ADONAYLO: Well, the example I am going to give you doesn't really
add an awful lot to what we have just been saying about the cost and
international connectivity. Mouhamet was talking about that and the previous
speaker as well. In Argentina and the rest of Latin America, as in Africa,
we've got long-haul, back haul, and transit through the United States as well.
Now, we don't know when this is going to change, when we will be able to share
out the cost of the infrastructure. But what we are doing to try and buffer
the high costs, and I will try to give you an example in Latin America, the
average cost of access through the cable system, the submarine cable system,
will be about 15- to $20,000, which would be 155 megabits. Now, comparing that
with the developed world, if I can put it that way, the same capacity between
-- or the same cost, put it this way, $15,000, between London and New York
would give you a capacity of ten gigabits. So we are talking about 60 times
greater capacity for the same price. So in order to get around this issue, what
we're doing at a domestic level, since '98 we have been working on setting up
the exchange points between Argentina, Brazil, and other countries in the
region so that the local content and local traffic can stay within the region
and doesn't need to go through the international loops or pay the transit cost
through the United States, when we are talking about communication within the
region. The -- What the (inaudible) have done, basically, has been to retain
the local traffic, reducing the costs and improving service efficiency.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Thank you. Well, that's very specific. Yes, we know what
this means for you in daily terms. Could we have a quick example from Vincent,
please.
>>VINCENT WAISWA BAGIIRE: Yes, what we try to do as CIPESA, which is a
regional organization, is as a means of increasing access, and I mean
meaningful access, in the region, we try to encourage governments to be users
of the technology because if you look at the way Africa is structured,
government, like anywhere else in the world, government is all over the --
governments are all over the countries. But you find that they don't use the
technology. So as a result, you find it hard for the service providers, the
private sector to deploy technology when actually the governments who are
biggest recipients, especially in Africa, (inaudible) funding budget supports
do not consume technology and rely on old methods of communicating and dealing
with other communities. The other issue then is advocating for -- informing and
advocating the masses in East and Southern Africa of the importance of rallying
behind the East African submarine cable system to ensure they understand what
it is all about and how much money it can save the continent in terms of money
used for international traffic, and also around the area of meaningful
participation in activities such as these ones to the effect that as Africa, we
should not look at the governance, the actual aspect of governance of the
Internet and look at, perhaps, the development of the Internet and how it can
consume the Internet in light of the various problems that face the continent;
i.e., lack of electricity, content that is all over the place but not mobilized
and organized in a coordinated way, among other things.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Thank you. Jim Dempsey, still on GIPI.
>>JIM DEMPSEY: Our GIPI project has had several successes. One actually was
in redelegation of country code top-level domain names. And I think three of
the countries we worked in, those names were held by outside companies, foreign
companies who were not responsive to the local Internet community. We
successfully petitioned ICANN under the guidelines they set out and succeeded
in having those domain -- Country Code Top Level Domains redelegated to the
management of a local -- locally constituted non-profit entity and that
immediately resulted in price reductions. I could have others, but only one.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: No, no, just one. Mouhamet Diop, Senegal, if we could have an
example, please.
>>MOUHAMET DIOP: If the chairman can allow me, it will be my last
intervention, maybe, but if you can give me two minutes and I will be happy. My
first intervention will be to give you an example about network that have been
set up in order to allow a better penetration of the Internet services is the
example of the national IP-based network in Senegal that was a very successful
example where the target was not to give IP connection only to get access to
the Internet but to provide high-speed bandwidth network in order to allow
local services. So it was the basis for any company to get access. The second
one is the postal office, who is one of the most important office in the
country in terms of numbers of office. So they are trying also to develop new
services to the local community based on the fact that they are able to get
supplied connection and very high-speed network to the country. The last point,
and I really just want to elaborate one minute and after that I give the floor,
is that at the early stage of the Internet, the private agreement was the
initial basis for anyone who wants to get access to the Internet. So in my
country, the telecom operator have a settlement agreement with another
operator. That can be MCI ten years ago. So they pay for the connection. And
any single ISP is doing the same. In Europe it was the same at the beginning.
But what happened? The European countries talked together and built a network
in which all of the telecom operator have access to that high-speed network and
it become part of the global network and they stopped paying a fee to anybody
else. This happened because all the system of the Internet is based on private
agreement between the one who want to get connected and the other one who going
to help you to get access on that. But this paradigm has not changed for the
African countries. It remained the same over 11 years, since the first
Internet interaction. What I am saying is if we did not do anything in order to
help build regional infrastructure, help build also exchange point that is
going to make the African networks seen as part of the global network, that
will be part of the global network but they still have their individual
agreement where they pay a fee to get access to the cable and they pay a fee to
get access to the Internet. This model has to change. And I truly wanted to
share with people, if they want to get deep explanation about how we can do it,
this is the challenge that Africa have to face for the coming years.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: What is the access today in Senegal is what?
>>MOUHAMET DIOP: The access in Senegal is 1.2 gig. And in the 1.2 gig they
offer connection to other countries behind us, like Burkina-Faso gets access
through there. We've got Burkina people here. And they pay for the cable,
they pay for the (inaudible) and they pay also to get access to open transit.
It's too much. And this cost comes back to the user and that's why the cost of
the Internet is still high.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: And how many users do you have today in Senegal?
>>MOUHAMET DIOP: 500,000. It's not accurate but we have 30,000 DSL
connection, so it's not much. So we have, I mean, a good infrastructure to
expand. But as I told you, we don't need to expand if we have enough money
with the customer we already have. That's the reality of the market.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: One question from the room before we take up the specific
examples. Sylvia Caras wants to speak to the issue of diversity for people
with special needs.
>>SYLVIA CARAS: My name is Sylvia Caras, I live in California. I am the ICT
link for the International Disability Alliance which is eight global
organizations. What I found is that the access issues for most left-out groups
are similar. Most resources for participation on an equal basis. For instance,
despite the leadership of the web accessibility initiative, W3C, for those with
reading related disabilities, screen reading software is apt to be legacy.
Most of us are low-income. Rendering only text and doc files, and browsers not
even installed. Inclusion of people with disabilities cross-cuts the foreign
themes, yet there are few of us here, I have only seen two, with visible
disabilities. How can we better reach out to welcome people with disabilities
to the Information Society? Thank you.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Moderator, yes, a very important question. Over to you,
Georg.
>>GEORG GREVE: Thank you very much for that question because it kind of brings
me into the game. Ultimately, access is not a binary issue. We have talked a
lot now about how to get the basic TCP/IP access, if you will, the cable from
which the Internet comes. But there is much, much more behind that. Access
doesn't stop there. It's a multi-step procedure. And what you are asking is a
little higher up the chain, and it's a little more where I am actually working.
And we have even heard from our colleague in India that you can have 100
percent cable and zero percent access if people don't know how to use it. The
disability question is a very big one. And in fact, I think it goes even
further, and we even see a deterioration, right now, in various ways, in
particular in how the Internet works. One example that comes to mind
immediately for me is the proprietary flash standard which is, you know, a very
nifty graphical something that many Web pages these days are made in, but often
unaware that it is not possible to see this in another way, in another format,
in whatever form people with disabilities would need it. There is no way for
them to actually access the Web page. There's also no way for people who, for
instance, prefer to use other browsers or prefer to use some other software to
access these Web pages. So people with disabilities are actually not the only
ones excluded but they have even less choice in finding different solutions.
The only good answer that I know to that question ultimately are open
standards. We must have open standards that allow people with disabilities to
reformat whatever they are provided with in the way that they can access it.
They must be allowed to reformat. They must have that ability, that
possibility. And, in fact, I would like to point everybody to a workshop that's
going to happen tomorrow morning, 9:30, of the dynamic coalition on open
standards, that we started here at the IGF. It's a group with industry
support, with governmental support, NGO support. And if you are interested in
that topic, I think that would be a good place to go, because everybody is
welcome. This is an open group. So tomorrow morning, DSOC. That, I think, is a
very important starting point because we want to bring together people who see
that problem, who see that issue. The second problem that I see for you, and it
is for me as well, and that is of technical protection measures, TPMs, because
they are, by nature, very often the opposite of an open standard because they
seek to prevent certain things. They seek to prevent, you know, further
processing of the data in ways that whoever provides this did not foresee. That
is a major issue. If we are not careful here, we will create yet another
access barrier instead of creating access. These are two issues that I think
are very focused, very fundamental on that issue. So I think this is really
where we have to go, and this is quite central, at least in my view.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Thank you very much. At this juncture of discussion, I'll
hand over to our chairman, Mr. Maglaris, who I remind you is president of the
European national European research and education networks policy committee.
Can you at this point give us your thoughts on what we have heard this
afternoon by way of summing up?
>>CHAIRMAN MAGLARIS: Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Let me say first of all, let
me answer your question about penetration and the state of the Internet in
Greece. As I mentioned in the beginning, it's on the global average of 25%.
That's global average and we are not very proud of it. So what are the reasons
for that? In my view, and to speak personally not as a chairman, not as a
professor, not as the Greek government, nothing, personally I believe one big
problem is there is that there is a vertical quasi monopoly that does not allow
for competition and vital services to be developed. This vertical monopoly,
that's the incumbent, of course, had some input, and there you can see we do
have the monopoly bottleneck for the access loop. We do have also backbone
structures also owned by them, but backbone structures now have been
duplicated, duplicated and so forth by others. So the main bottleneck that
still exists is the local access, the local loop. It might be like they did in
the UK and like the commission now proposes a solution, not necessary -- not a
sufficient condition but the necessary condition might be to have a structure
split sort of between something which is quasi common and that's the
infrastructure, the access part of the infrastructure, and service, by nature,
is competitive and should not be struggled by monopoly bottlenecks. My
personal view. Let me say a few things about how things evolved. One of the
major, I think, boosts that pushed the Internet up in Greece was the
development by the academic community, and I am speaking now as a professor who
has also been involved in that, in building exchange points between providers.
It is not true what was mentioned that the Internet is distributed kind of
interconnected networks. There are tier one providers, with tier two
providers, tier three providers, and in many cases, interconnection is done
through tier one providers and that is expensive. So what we did is we
implemented, as academic community, neutral points, third trusted parties
exchange points that allowed tier two, even tier three providers to
interconnect without going through tier one expensive upstream provisions.
Another thing that we are trying to do, and we might be successful in doing so,
is trying to see if we can implement within the universal service obligation
the user basket. Like in telephony. The user basket as it is right now
defined at least in Greece includes only telephony, fax and so forth. We are
probing into putting into that also Internet. And I am wondering whether this
body could come up with a conclusion to include in use around the world, also,
Internet access for the world. Just an idea. And finally, since we're talking
about multistakeholders, we're here. Indeed, multistakeholders, I represent
the academic and research community of Europe at this point, and I can give
many examples of inequalities and how the Digital Divide exists within
countries, between countries. Even between families. You know very well what
I speak. A colleague of mine from the University of Scopio {sp?} once said the
Digital Divide is a fractal phenomenon. And it is fractal, self-similar. It
propagate itself from family to city to school to campus to country to
continent, to the whole world. So it is a fractal phenomenon, and I can give
you examples. I heard the example before between costs in connecting Argentina
and connecting either United States or central European countries. I can give
you numbers if you wish. To have a ten gig connection between the UK
(inaudible), between the UK and New York, it's about 120,000 Euros. If you want
to interconnect Istanbul to Athens, it may cost you more than 2 million Euros
for just 620 megabits per second. So you can see the cost in the Digital Divide
even within Europe and within the periphery of Europe.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Thank you very much, chairman. I would like to continue with
specific examples, each of you in your specialized field. Perhaps we can start
with Michuki Mwangi.
>>MICHUKI MWANGI: Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Specifically in Kenya, what we
managed to do is we do have an exchange point. We do have a ccTLD in the last
five years operating in Kenya. But what we also did is brought one of the root
servers operated by F-root and I-root into Kenya. That mean the resolution
process is not dependent on the international connections. That means if any of
the international links does break down and you are browsing or trying to send
mail locally that, the process of finding -- resolving and finding the
destination address is not affected by the fact that the links are down. So
that, I think, was the most important things we did by bringing the root
servers in Kenya.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Fine. Mr. Park, do you have any specific examples to give us?
>>KISHIK PARK: I don't at this time because I already explained the Korean
experiences, so let me explain some about the charting and accounting for
international telecommunication services because I am currently serving as
chairman of (inaudible) 3, and my group is specially dealing with charting and
accounting principles or guidelines for international telecommunications
services. So let me just take one example for you. Usually, several years ago,
some international interconnection rate set, we remember about 5 billion U.S.
dollars every year developed countries that they paid to developing countries.
But at that time, mostly we were using some accounting rate system. And today,
about 20% of this kind of sediment system are using accounting system, and
instead of ALS, they are using some international interconnection rate system.
What happened these days? Now, about 3 billion U.S. dollars every year,
developing countries are paying to developed countries. Some of the gentlemen
from the floor in the beginning requested some international charting
arrangements. So this kind of example can show us some international charting
arrangement guidelines. It's very essential for the improvement of Internet
access globally. So this is a kind of international policy (inaudible), not
domestic policy related to Internet. Thank you.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Sam Paltridge, please.
>>SAM PALTRIDGE: As I have already given an example, I will be like my
colleague and take up the settlements issue that he raises. If you look at the
most recent data, and for those of you that don't follow this particular area,
there is actually only one country in the world that provides good public data,
and that is the United States of America through the FCC's data on
international payments. And if you look at the most recent data, it shows
payments outpayments increasing to a number of countries, and to Africa as a
whole. And I believe that is probably because of the growth of mobile
communications in Africa. And if you have a growing customer base, I think you
will start to see some surprising developments in some areas. You will start to
see more international infrastructure being connected to that continent. You
may even see outpayments continue to increase. I'm not sure about that. But
certainly the most recent evidence we have is that outpayments are increasing.
Having said that, there was never actually a strong relationship between
telecommunication development and the amount of settlements that were paid.
There is a much stronger relationship for development with reform to
telecommunication markets. If you get the policies right, there are commercial
solutions that would deal with many of the concerns that have been raised both
here today and in WSIS. I would add one footnote to that. For those commercial
solutions to work, you need capacity-building, you need the skills to make them
work. You need the sort of people who do work like packet clearinghouse and
Bill Woodcock going to developing countries, helping the capacity-building to
set up Internet exchange points to make this system work. But I will say, it is
a very successful system, and if we can build on that, then I think that is
going to get us to the second and third billion Internet users.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Before we go on on the panel, there's a question in the
audience from Iran, from Mr. Riazi. Is he -- yes, would you please introduce
yourself.
>>DR. RIAZI: In the name of God, the benificient, the merciful, I am Riazi,
Deputy Minister for I.T., Ministry of ICT, Islamic Republic of Iran. Thank you,
Mr. Moderator, for giving me an opportunity to give some comments. We have
taken note with great interest of this session on Internet connectivity policy
and cost and the related issues on interconnection policies and costs,
interoperability and open standards, availability, and affordability,
regulatory, and other barriers to access, as well as capacity-building to
improve access. Internet connectivity in terms of policy and cost, in
particular, at the international level is a central element to attain
sustainable connectivity in the information society, a society which is
contingent upon universal sustainable (inaudible) use and affordable access to
ICTs. According to paragraph 48 of the Geneva Declaration of Principles,
reaffirmed later in Tunis, access is an issue which is directly linked with the
question of the Internet as a global facility, and this medium is governed
according to the language of the paragraph, obtaining access for all depends
much on a multilateral, democratic, and transparent management of the Internet.
This entails that access to Internet governance mechanism, in particular for
developing countries that are left out of the existing governance system, is an
important way of facilitating access for all. Moreover, the question of access
is linked in paragraph 48 to ensuring equitable distribution of resources. To
that end, access for all would be achieved if resources are distributed
equitably. On the subjects of the availability and affordability, regulatory,
and other barriers to access, paragraph 19 of the general declaration of
principles entails a commitment that all stakeholders should work together to,
among others, improve access to information and communication infrastructure
and technologies, as well as to information and knowledge. To fulfill that
commitment, policies governing access to the Internet at the international
level should follow the principles of universal sustainable, ubiquitous, and
affordable access to ICTs, as promised in the WSIS. On the barriers to access,
discrimination against access to infrastructure technology, technologies, and
to information and knowledge, with the aim of serving particular interest or
policies creates major impediments to achieving a truly universal and
nondiscriminatory information society. Users in my country are facing new
discriminatory practices over the provision of information and knowledge and
related software exercises by some private entities, mostly located in a
certain geographical jurisdiction. This practice is mostly followed by those
who are in control of the existing Internet governance mechanism. That clearly
violates the agreed principle of the universal, nondiscriminatory,
people-centered, and development-oriented information society as well as
responsibilities of such entities referred and agreed to in the WSIS
(inaudible) in the past WSIS era. We, on our part, would seek every single
opportunity to highlight this negative, unhealthy, and damaging trend with the
potential of being replicated somewhere else, subject to certain interests,
during the WSIS follow-up process.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Do you have a question for the panel?
>>DR. RIAZI: Just a moment. One minute. One minute. On the subtheme of
capacity-building to improve access, we have taken note with appreciation that
capacity-building to improve access appears at the bottom of the list of the
relevant issues to access. While we strongly believe that capacity-building is
an ongoing process which should be targeted when the choice made on subsequent
issues is indicative of the fact that capacity-building will be meaningful if
and when other requirements for universal access are met. In that case,
capacity-building to improve access to decision-making processes of the
Internet governance infrastructure, related technologies, as well as
information and knowledge would be of great assistance to developing countries.
Thank you.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Can I ask you, what is the number of users in Iran, as you
are here?
>>DR. RIAZI: Yes. The number of users in Iran, 1100 at the moment. And 16%. I
mean, 11 million. 11 million users, around 16%. And we are planning to increase
in the next two years to 13% -- 30%.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: 30%. Okay. Thank you.
>>CHAIRMAN MAGLARIS: Mr. Moderator, Professor Mueller wants to leave, so he
might give -- get his chance to give you one minute.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Go ahead.
>>CHAIRMAN MAGLARIS: His conclusions or whatever.
>>MILTON MUELLER: Yes. I'm sorry I have to leave. I have a workshop on the
root zone file to moderate at 5:30, and I have to go set it up now. I
appreciate the statement from the gentleman from Iran, and I would like to
encourage a dialogue rather than statements, so that maybe we could talk about
this point later on, after I'm off the platform. And just to sum up my
perspective on what we've heard so far, I think that we're still sort of stuck
on this dialectic between market efficiency and distributional equity, and that
I would hope that we can recognize the value of both of these principles and
draw upon the rich empirical experience we have with liberalization processes
and not try to recreate the old system of telephone monopolies that was based
on a settlement system of the ITU. Thank you.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Thank you. So perhaps we can continue with our roundtable.
Craig Silliman, perhaps you can take this up. Can you give us a specific
example, if you have one, as to how you were able to improve access.
>>CRAIG SILLIMAN: Sure. Well, at Verizon, we are a communication services
provider. So enabling access to communications is what we do. We're extremely
proud of the innovative services we are constantly rolling out in all the
countries in which we do business. We are providing access to communications
services in over 60 countries around the world today, and I believe that you
would find that if you looked at the countries in which we provide access,
those are the countries with some of the highest levels of access to the
Internet and the most innovative, high-quality, and best-priced services. I
wish we could claim credit for that. Unfortunately, I think the conclusion you
draw is that the countries that allow companies like ourselves to come in and
provide services on a license basis are those who is there, in general, laid
the foundations for proper communications policy. Thank you.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Mr. Singh, please.
>>PARMINDER JEET SINGH: Thank you, Mr. Moderator. And getting on the point
which we colleague was making, probably those are the countries which are the
richer countries, as such, have more capacity to pay. And also, among the other
countries, they do address sections of the population who have the capacity to
pay. Coming back to the question which was posed by the moderator, I would
speak about what we are doing to improve access in a different sense. What my
colleague from the Free Software Foundation said, the higher-value links
access, beyond the telecom access. And we believe that this infrastructure, the
cost-benefit ratio is so favorable that if you're working on the benefits, the
cost doesn't matter much. And I think if you compare it with other softwares,
like (inaudible), traditional infrastructure, the cost is very low. The issue
is, do people really benefit. And the other multiple layers people can benefit
from this infrastructure. And if that increases, the demand gets built, and
infrastructure follows. So what we do, really, is that we work with communities
and try to build systems of value, superstructures of value over this
infrastructure which makes connectivity valuable for them. So a couple of
things which we are doing. We work with very poor women who are organizing
(inaudible). And we put government information on the Internet. There's been
recent government reform that I.T. information in India which is very valuable
reform. A lot of people want access to government information which is one of
the primary demands. We put information on the computers. We put health
information, we build health-based databases on the computers, which are used
to interface with the public service providers both to help them and to extract
accountability about education-related stuff. We do advocacy with development
content providers to put their content on the Internet under open licenses so
that it's freely available for people to download, people who are illiterate
who could use it in the development processes. So we're trying to work on those
kinds of things which could improve the value of the Internet. And I must say
that all these things take a long time to build, because trying to create
institutional systems around it, and it takes a lot of public money to invest
in. And that's the next issue that the role of initial public investments and
building the systems to bring it to maturity where the markets can take over is
very important. That was at the local level. And at the international level, we
take the same philosophy and we think the default ICT policy globally has been
set to a private sector default. And that's something which concerns us. And we
want to bring back the balance between the public and the private in ICT
policy, because I think that's a very important issue for development and
proper role of the public investments and public regulation has to be
established. And the issue which is about the international -- interconnection
charges, I agree with the gentleman who raised the question, and my Korean
colleague, that if the -- the systems remain as discriminatory as they are
today, and I don't -- some kind of public policy infrastructure should look
into the charges.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Thank you. There is an important and interesting question in
terms of access vis-a-vis content. And the Tunis summit did indicate and
recommend that one should provide free access to scientific information. And
today, a number of researchers are wondering as to how one can actually give
more access to scientific information, especially for researchers in developing
countries, so that they are able to follow the whole course of research in
developing countries at the same pace as in the other countries. And that's
important in terms of sustainable development and scientific research. So it
should have real-time information on matters. So it's a question of access,
therefore, and contents. Maria Simon.
>>MARIA SIMON: As I can see, the majority of the public is not using
translation, I will speak in English. I will give up. I use English in order to
be understood. Having been the dean of the engineering school in my country,
this question is very sensitive for me. In fact, in this aspect, we are twice
in a difficult situation, because in addition to high cost of interconnection,
my Argentinian colleague has spoken about, we have also to pay to access
important sites in scientific aspects. Developing countries have really the
need of being included in scientific community. And every effort in this sense
will be very important and very sensitive for having the scientific community
well integrated around the world.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Quickly, if possible, Jonne Soininen, one example to follow
the panel of what you have done or what could be done.
>>JONNE SOININEN: Yeah. We have done many things. And we are going to do also
many things in the future to enable the next billion of users to come onto the
Internet. But I think one of the key things that we have done is that work
together with regulators, local operators, local companies, and tried to open
up the regulation -- telecom regulation in the countries to -- and to enable,
enabling regulatory environment in those countries so that there's a
competition and the cost of the services can come down in the countries and
that they would be more affordable for the users.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Thank you. And the last member of the panel with a good
example, Bill Woodcock, please, concrete actions to reduce the --
>>BILL WOODCOCK: Education is the investment which always produces the highest
return. So that's why we teach a lot of workshops. We do typically 30 to 50
workshops a year. That's -- they've been in more than a hundred countries over
the last 15 years, on Internet routing for network operators, regulatory policy
for communications ministries, Internet economics for treasury and taxation and
--
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: One example? Specific.
>>BILL WOODCOCK: Education workshops.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Do you have an example somewhere where it's working now
today?
>>BILL WOODCOCK: Well, to take one of the examples that was brought up before
is Bangladesh. In Bangladesh, we went through about a three-year program of
training up Internet service providers. There's an Internet exchange there with
more than 40 ISPs. The exchange itself is diversified into two locations, with
separate management, so there's redundancy there. The policies have allowed
those ISPs to run around installing fiber all over Dhaka and now other cities
in Bangladesh as well.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Okay. Well, thank you very much. Just one --
>>MARIA SIMON: Something is missing.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Yes, because you didn't take the occasion. Can you give us an
example, please. Go ahead.
>>MARIA SIMON: But I can give, I think, an interesting example. Because we are
a country which is in the middle, in between poorest and richest countries. In
our country, this is a very small country, we are only three million people,
from which 40% do use Internet, and 23% users individually, I mean, they have a
business in their home. We are developing two different plans, one for
community access, for social programs, and another for individual access. In
community plan, we have in this moment about half of schools connected to
Internet, and we plan to have at the end of the next year 100% of schools
connected to Internet. We have also collective centers of access to the
information society, which are only about 200 in this moment, but growing. And
regarding the individual access to Internet, we have some public-private plans
about the finances, purchases of PCs, and also we are making a big effort in
lowering the prices of the connection. Thank you.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Thank you. Before going back to the panel, there is a real
question here about access and new technologies. A lot of people are saying
that with new technologies coming and development of new technologies, it would
be possible to reduce very quickly the divide, the gaps. So in what way and
which technologies are you seeing for the future that will give this access
more possible? Do you have concrete example? Can you quote some examples of how
the development of the research will have an impact on the access? Would you
like to answer, anybody here? One, Mr. Park.
>>KISHIK PARK: Thank you, Mr. Moderator, because I'm working for the
electronics and telecommunications research institute as a vice president. And
we just developed Wi-Pro. It's a kind of mobile WiMAX. So in the future years,
I think some personalized or some mobile, very convenient mobile devices will
be adopted definitely. That's my opinion. Thank you.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Jonne Soininen.
>>JONNE SOININEN: Yeah, thank you. Trying to elaborate on that a little bit
further as well. I think that it's very important to see the emergence of
different wireless broadband networks and wireless narrow-band networks as well
in many countries. And also see that there's new development of technologies
coming along. I think the very important thing to remember when choosing
between these technologies is the total cost of these technologies. So seeing
what the costs of network, what it costs in deployment, what it costs on
operation, and what it costs for the user. And this is a combination of
multiple things. And what is the most important thing I think that I would like
to highlight here is the cost of scale. When you have a lot of equipment and
when you have -- and it's sold all over the world, you get the scaling factor
which enables you to bring the cost down. So it's very important in these cases
to use technologies that are based on open standards, that are proven in their
use, that have a large global users' base.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Emmanuel Ramos is in the audience. Would you like to make a
comment? Please, go ahead.
>> EMMANUEL RAMOS: Thank you. Emmanuel Ramos from the European Space
Technology. Modern satellite technology combined with Wi-Fi wireless, for
example, can provide competitive access to groups of users. Now, providing an
immediate, let's say, fast solution to covering large areas. Of course, this
needs to have a large market as a target. So one might consider that some of
the regional development funds, for example, in Africa might be devoted to
develop such a satellite system to provide a startup solution to a digital
divide problem. So would you like to comment on that, please.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Any comment on the panel on this specific point? Okay,
Mouhamet Diop, please.
>>MOUHAMET DIOP: Thank you. This time it's a one-minute comment. So I think
that to answer specifically to that question, we need to answer the question
related to two points. The first one is to bring the signal, the Internet
access, to a point. This can be done using a variety of technology. And we have
seen the CDMA become more and more technology used, because we want to cover a
more sparse area and you don't have a very dense area and you need people to
get connected through something like 30 kilometers from one point. So the
investment is not high enough. And when they want to use the Internet access
around these things, they do a mix of CDMA and Wi-Fi, or WiMAX and Wi-Fi, or
satellite and Wi-Fi. All these mixtures are used, depending on the nature of
how the population are distributed in the area. But the second point is
regarding the interface. When you bring a computer in a place where people
don't have -- are not literate in -- I mean, in an environment that the
computer you bring to them, the ultimate -- the problem you're facing is you
bring tools, people do not have the interface, the adequate interface to
interact with that tool, and there are a lot of problems. Why the mobile and
the related technologies to mobile are so easy to deploy, even for the
Internet, is just because the user interface is friendly enough, even if the
person is not literate in English or French, even if he's literate in Arabic,
it will be very easy for him to use that interface, because it did not ask him
to change his knowledge or to educate himself in another way in order to use
that technology. One point that I just want to conclude on is to make a linkage
between all what we were talking about relating to access to MDG, the
Millennium Development Goals, because we're talking about services for health,
for education, for poverty reduction. Why do we take the example of Professor
Yunus, it's because we have seen that these technologies can be used in order
to tackle some real problem of development that we are facing. And we cannot
talk about access without tackling the problem of the funding. We can talk
about access for days and days, but who's going to fund the access in we can
initiate it from the private sector. We have initiated from donors, bilateral
and unilateral corporation. We get funding from some international fund like
the Digital Solidarity Fund that has been set up, or any other resources that
people need to put in place in order to help this access become a reality.
Woodbank can answer that they have $440 million they just put on the table to
help African countries to get their -- I mean, any regional project they want
to set up. But until now, they've got no project on the table in order to help
them doing that way. Thanks.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Thank you very much. Michuki Mwangi, please.
>>MICHUKI MWANGI: Thank you, I wanted to add on to what Mr. Diop has said.
Basically, when you're looking at new technologies, the question is, we need
what we call client premised equipment. How cost-effective is it for it to be
deployed in a region like Africa, where we know what the income household is
per month. If we were to get mobile phones from Nokia and the others for less
than $50, can we get cheap client premise equipment as opposed to where we have
to use satellite equipment which needs 5- to $7,000 for initial investment.
That's the only way we can spark the growth. Because we'll take the mobile
approach where the devices that need to interconnect the end users are equally
as cheap. Thank you.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: There was another question in the audience from Richard
Kweskin. Could you give the gentleman the microphone and introduce yourself.
>>RICHARD KWESKIN: Yes. Speaking about costs, I was interested in hearing from
the member of the panel from the foundation -- software -- Free Software
Foundation, Mr. George Greve, insofar as he is aware, as I am, of software
which has certain freedoms attached to it which help a great deal in cost. And
I thought that he might be able to mention that. That was all.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Please, Georg, could you answer.
>>GEORGE GREVE: This all fits pretty well together. I've been trying to catch
the microphone to give my concrete example. But this can all be combined into
one. Because as we've just spoken, it's incredibly important that you have the
freedom, for instance, to adapt your software to your local cultural context,
through your language, that you can change it so the users in your country can
actually use it. And that is one of the fundamental freedoms that free software
offers you. I mean, free software is defined by the four freedoms: Unlimited
use for any purpose, the freedom to study, to modify, and to distribute. And
while I was thinking about the concrete examples, you know, I was wondering
what I should bring up, should I talk about our DRM, that info platform where
we explain to people why digital restrictions management can be difficult, you
know, should we talk about other issues, about one of our activists who's
currently in Malawi helping local people set up their network, training them,
because education, ultimately, I think, is the key? But then I decided I'm
going to give you one project very specifically which we have with partners
throughout Europe, in India, and Latin America. It's the scientific education,
learning, and freedom project, self. It is supported by the European
Commission. And it is about creating a free software platform, a platform based
on free software and open standards, that is going to contain free educational
material, so anybody anywhere in the world can take it, can use it, can modify
it, can build university courses on it, can teach from this material, and we're
going to start filling it up with educational material about free software and
open standards, because that is what we know best. But we're going to put this
software out there, then, so other people can put their courses on there, other
people can put their knowledge in there, so we can actually have a network of
servers worldwide at some point where people can access that knowledge. Because
I believe education is the key. Education is one of the biggest barriers to
access. So that was the one concrete example that I really, really, really
wanted to make. That was why I was anxious to get the microphone. Thank you.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Well, you did it. Thank you. There is a question in the room
from Miriam Sapiro. Is she here?
>> MIRIAM SAPIRO: I'm Miriam Sapiro from Summit Strategies International in
Washington, D.C., and I also teach part-time at New York University. I'm very
pleased that the panel is getting into some of the critical development issues
that the forum is supposed to focus on. It's very hard to speak of development
without also thinking of empowerment, empowerment of individuals. So my
question, really, a two-part question for the panel is, first of all, are there
societal or gender impediments to access? And if so, what do you think that we
can do about them? And then a little more specifically, are there incentives
that local governments can offer to make sure that groups that might otherwise
be marginalized, such as women, will be able to have access to the hardware and
the software that is necessary for us to even speak of Internet access? Thank
you.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Maybe an answer from Maria Simon, please.
>>MARIA SIMON: It is a very, a very nice question. In -- I think also as a
panelist said, that education is a critical problem. Even if you put a computer
connected to Internet on the table of each one, without education, he will not
be able to use it for the -- for really perfect uses. This is mainly important
for minority groups. In Uruguay, even though the literacy is very high, it's
more than 98%, education remains a critical issue, because people know how to
read but not how to use a computer or not how to use Internet. So in those
collective centers, in those community centers, we put some helpers, some
facilitators in order to approach the community to the Internet. Also in the
schools, we will begin the effort with very young people. But we think we must
face formal and unformal education. And regarding women in particular, there is
a project which is undergone with the university for installing a wi-max
network, a little wi-max network arranges experimental one in hand crafter,
women who make handicraft. And will be very benefited by this project. Thank
you.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: We will go first to Hugo Lueders, and then Bill and
Parminder. Mr. Lueders.
>>HUGO LUEDERS: I don't know where to start because I would need two or three
hours to give a little bit more detail on this very important last question.
There are enormous details to explain here A lot of experiences, tested
experiences. There are all kinds of incentives. We, by ourselves, we have
developed a European model of law, developing a whole series of incentives of
all kinds. Tax breaks, public funding, whatever. And I am happy later on if
you want to give you many, many more details. I simply don't have the time
here. I am very happy at this late stage now we are coming to the real issues,
what I perceive as the real issues beyond the cable. There is a world beyond
the cable. And there, I think, are the real issues. There are the real issues
to bridge the different universes we are having. What was just mentioned,
formal, informal education. How to do that. Formal education in many countries
of this world is a holy cow and it's very difficult to approach new solutions
for these challenges ahead of us. Again, not the time to do this here. I would
be more than happy to do that. That's exactly the core of our activities and
our engagement as far as the e-Skills certification consortium is concerned,
not only acting in Europe but in other parts of the world. And again, Mr.
Moderator, if you give me a little bit more time, I am happy to do that but I
don't know how many more minutes you give to me here. We have, by the way, nice
coincidence, we had here in this room, in this room in 2002, we had a big event
developing all these issues. We have tried to identify the incentives that
already exist. In many cases, they are not known because local -- local
governments, they don't like to share necessarily the best experience with
other local governments, because they will lose their competitive advantage.
There is one aspect of that. This is only the European Union, and you have in
other parts of the world very, very similar patterns. So in 2002, we agreed
here in this room, the Athens e-skills declaration. It is still available.
You will find many, many concrete examples. We had at that time discussed here,
again in this room, a big comprehensive document of some hundred pages, just
developing the incentives which exist already out there. So again, this is
another issue. I would be more than happy to delve into these challenges. And
again, moderator, I would say if we have anything to take away from this
meeting here, it's we have to get organized. We need platforms, workshops.
Perhaps in Rio or in Cairo, finally we have the opportunity to bring the
experts in the room, to share the tested experience with those people who want
to know about. When we talked about these issues here this morning and this
afternoon, there are a lot of references to these things, but I don't see here
the experts. The experts to these challenges are not present here. I think we
have to bring them and to educate us on these challenges which we cannot run
away from, which we have to address, and for which are, at least, a number of
good solutions available at the moment. And again, moderator, if you give me
more time, I will be more than happy to share more details with you. Thank you.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Thank you very much. Let me remind everybody that the goal
of this session is not to solve the questions but to put them on the table. To
identify the questions, to give some concrete questions to be studied from now
on, starting today, to the next meeting. You mentioned that two years ago you
had the same question on the table, that you have 200 pages report, and that is
not enough to change the situation. So you see where we are. We have a lot to
do. And thank you for saying it so clearly. Unfortunately, there are 15
panelists and there are hundreds of people there and you cannot talk too much.
And I am even taking too much time now, but that's the rule of the game. I
want this panel to be animated and interactive. And in fact, there is one
question from the audience that seems to be interesting from Malcolm Harbour.
Are you around? Yes. About how to assist developing countries to develop their
science and research capacities.
>>MALCOLM HARBOUR: Malcolm Harbour, member of the European Parliament. Thank
you for allowing me the floor a second time, but on a different topic. I was
very interested particularly in the point Mr. Greve was making about adapting
devices and software to local conditions. And my question to the panel is
this. Are we giving enough priority to developing computer science and
research capabilities in developing countries to enable them to do this work?
Because that seems, to me, a set of foundation skills, building on the work
that Hugo Lueders and others have been doing. But high-level foundation skills
that are needed to be able to deliver these sort of local solutions, and take
and adapt and understand the technology. And a second subsidiary question,
which has a particular interest for me as a European Parliamentarian, is we
have given a lot of support to the European Union's program to roll out a
high-capacity backbone research network called GEANT which I think is now being
expanded into a number of African countries as well as worldwide. The question
is, are we making enough of that investment? How many of you know about it?
And are there things that we should be doing to help exploit that
infrastructure capability with the skills to be able to use it?
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Mr. Chairman.
>>CHAIRMAN MAGLARIS: Sir, I am the chairman of GEANT, so I could give you just
a couple of reasons why GEANT was important, why it is really (inaudible) for
the European Union, for European Commission, for the European Parliament. One
is that it interconnects like you said. All countries to the European Union
plus. So there are about 34 countries interconnected. It promotes the
interconnection at very high speeds between 4,000 research and education
institutions, or possibly all universities in Europe are interconnected at that
speed. And also it has many satellite projects, satellite not in the terms of
visa but satellite projects that support narrowing the Digital Divide within
North Africa, in Latin America, in southeastern Pacific and so forth. So I
believe in GEANT we did a very good job and we are very proud of the job. And
one of the reasons I am here is because of this success. It is a success
story. You know it very well. I know it very well, and probably we should
promote it better.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Georg Greve.
>>GEORG GREVE: Thank you for bringing up that question. I mean, I really do
-- I mean, now we are really talking about essentially what is described as
access to knowledge, which, in fact, is one of the topics that we are very
concerned about. So concerned about, indeed, that this morning we launched a
dynamic coalition here with industry participation, participation from
governments. And anybody who is interested in that kind of effort is very much
invited to come -- come to us and get in touch because we want this to be an
open group, to think about such issues. I mean, from my perspective, I have to
say that no, we're not doing enough. I think we have to do more. I mean, the
fact that we have to sit here and the fact that we realize the majority is
still excluded from access to knowledge, ultimately, tells us that we are not
doing enough. So we have to figure out what are our priorities. How can we
bridge that gap as effectively as possible. And from my field, I know that one
of the ways to do this ultimately is free software. Because that is software
that people can really make their own. As it's done in the Brazilian
telecenters as it's done in other projects around the world, in the (inaudible)
in Spain, in Europe. We have many examples of this now where people take this
software, make it their own and also thereby learn how to write software. This
is I.T. education, ultimately. Because I.T. education, you cannot learn how to
develop software if you do not read software. Software is something you have
to read in order to know how to write it. It's just like any author of books
needs to read many books. I mean, it's the same thing, ultimately. Therefore,
we must have access to this. We must deliberately help people access this,
gain them access so they can learn this and help themselves. That ultimately, I
think, is the only way we can really, for the long term, change anything. So I
believe this access to knowledge question is very essential. And I think,
indeed, we could do much more in terms of focused initiatives to really bring
that knowledge, create competence center where the people are who need that
knowledge and help them gain that knowledge. I do know, for instance, Brazil
has a cultural hot spot program where they try to do something of that kind,
try to give people access, try to give people the technology, and let them, you
know, do something with it in their local communities. Maybe that's a
reference that could be interesting for other people as well.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Okay. Thank you. Michuki Mwangi.
>>MICHUKI MWANGI: Okay, I think we need to do more. Coming from Africa where
significantly there's a need to build advanced capacity in building networks,
building scalable services and scalable infrastructure. There is a project
that has been ongoing for the last seven years called AfNOG, Africa Network
Operators Group which is similar to the North American Network Operators Group.
But its main focus is on building high-end technical people who are actually
able to work or, actually, build scalable infrastructure and services. In
addition to that, what would be of interest for me to see is our regulators and
governments being trained as well on how to understand the economics of the
Internet, like the west. And then we will probably be in a better position to
understand really the impact it has for them to regulate it in a proper manner.
Thank you.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Thank you. Mr. Diop.
>>MOUHAMET DIOP: I just want to give two examples related to this access to
knowledge. One is related to an in-house initiative launched by India that
tried to connect all the 54 countries, give them access through four different
points of presence in each country in order to allow a very strong exchange
program between different doctors and medical research program in Africa. I
think this is an incoming program. The second project is a probably similar to
the GEANT product, and I want to congratulate someone in this room, George
Sadowsky who is trying to push a lot on this project. Which is a like an
evolution of Internet 2 as it was built in the U.S. They start talking to all
universities in west Africa, and the major goal is to be able to bring them the
high-speed Internet connection for them to be able to share all the library,
the knowledge they have online, and the remaining capacity will be used in some
way with the private sector in order to see how they can make that program
worthwhile in the future. Maybe George can elaborate a little bit. But it's
really a key issue regarding how we can develop the research program in Africa.
We cannot do anything regarding the university or the development of knowledge
if the access to the Internet at the high-speed is not available for our
research and university.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET:. Thank you. Bill Woodcock.
>>BILL WOODCOCK: I think there is an interesting commonality between this
question and the prior question about gender equity in Internet access. And
that's this. The Internet is not a basket of potatoes to be divided equitably
among a bunch of recipients. It's not a collection of objects. It's labor.
It's the collective action of many, many skilled engineers and scientists and
people in industry who are working to provide a service to each other and to
the constituency. And as such, it's disturbing to me to see, particularly in
developing countries, fewer and fewer women every year entering that industry.
And it's been a delight. What reminds me of this when I go to AfNOG meetings
and LACNIC meetings and I am in a more gender-balanced environment, I realize
that when I go to the same kinds of meetings, particularly in the United States
and to a lesser degree Europe, it is almost entirely men. And the reason this
is really important is not everyone needs to be a mechanic in order to drive a
car, clearly. But it is the people who are doing the work, the people who are
doing the engineering who ultimately will decide what direction the technology
goes. And I think that it's very important that we get a balanced
representation of people, both in terms of race and in terms of gender, in the
people doing that work.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Thank you. Hugo.
>>HUGO LUEDERS: I get the floor again. Now we talk about access to knowledge.
It's needed to get the full picture here. What we call the competence value
chain, the competence access value chain starts somewhere with the cables, if
you allow me this reference. Or technology. Infrastructure. It moves on to
knowledge, to content. Don't forget the next stage which is training,
education. We have not yet talked about that. And at the end of this value
chain, you have placement for employment. Now, just two examples here, and
again, we need more time to talk about all these things. I give you two
examples. We talked earlier about disruptive technologies. Now, with access to
knowledge, you don't get this, what you need. About one among ten companies
today ready to go to the market with RFID disruptive technologies. Only one of
them has sufficiently invested, has trained the management, has trained the
labor force to be able to go to the market. Second example, this was mentioned
already at the cyber security. There's also a skills issue. There is the
issue of human capacity building. Our global market research findings and over
a series of a couple of years now continuously shows that more than 60% of
cyber security issues failure are based on lack of skilled labor force, is
based on lack of human resource development. Now, to fill that gap you have to
enter now what I mentioned, the training area. How do you get trained, these
people? Who is providing -- who is providing the qualifications? So that's
another aspect of the full picture of the competence access value chain. And
every different step needs to be addressed in the required details. And I would
strongly recommend, again, that if we go to Rio, that we take some time to
allow us to bring experts to the floor who can share their experience with all
of us. I think this would be very, very important to do so. Thank you.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Thank you very much. We have a question from the blog.
Please, go ahead. While we are waiting for the blog question, there is another
question from the room, which is asking the following: If one might just
elaborate upon the PPP question, the public/private partnership issue.
>> Thank you. We have two questions by e-mail. I'm not sure if I can
pronounce this person's name correctly, but it's Abi Jagun. I'm not sure where
she is from but she has two questions. Firstly, two panelists think that the
developing world needed infrastructure or affordable infrastructure. The
question is asked within the context of the theme of the IGF for development.
Would it be development if the poorest people in developing nations continued
to spend disproportional percentages of their income on access and information
infrastructures? If the affordability of infrastructures matter then shouldn't
the solutions reflect the realities of people in developing countries. The
panel should be encouraged to address the real issues to affordable
infrastructure rather than provide blanket recommendations on the virtue of the
market slash private sector. And the second and slightly related question from
the same person is, how many of the panelists actually use a mobile to surf the
web? The prices for mobile calls and connections are so high, the speeds are
painful, you go blind from reading such small text, and at such high cost, is
it really an affordable way to have access in developing countries?
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Let's try to answer those questions first. Panelists,
anybody wanting to comment on that? Please. Jonne Soininen.
>>JONNE SOININEN: Thank you very much, Mr. moderator. Two things. I think the
question of affordable access is a very important one. We can say that we will
bring broadband to the developing world and we are bringing them fiber. But
how many people can actually afford that? How many people can even use that?
Do they have electricity at their house? So I think the question of affordable
access is very important and should be addressed better. I personally think
that we should use the same technology that we are now providing voice services
to the users. For instance, GSM networks that are deployed in some of the
developing countries and the new growth markets already. However, then I come
logically to the second question, which was becoming blind from reading the
text on a mobile phone. Sometimes these text screens are challenging,
especially if you have to read them for a very long time. However, the
technologies there have developed and are developing. Their screens are
becoming bigger. And also, we are working hard to bring making the browsers
better, making the e-mail clients better, making the user experience better,
learning on that what we did on mobile phones when we used them just for
calling. What comes to the tariffs or costs of mobile data? That is a business
issue that has to be addressed, of course. And especially in developing
countries. To bring that to the affordable level. It is very important that
the access to the Internet is affordable and people can actually use that. And
I think that when we are looking at affordability of access and usage of the
Internet, we have to look at two things. And that can be combined as the total
cost of ownership. One is the cost of the service, and one is cost of the
actual device, handset or PC, or whatever you are using to connect to the
Internet. And those, both things are very important in the developing markets.
Thank you.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Thank you. I would like to now turn to the room. We have a
question from Indonesia, Mr. Moedjiono, are you there, from Indonesia? Are you
still here? Oh, sorry, I didn't see. Can you please introduce yourself.
>>MOEDJIONO: Thank you, Mr. Moderator. I am from Indonesia. My name is
Moedjiono. As we know that Indonesia has a uniqueness that is a biggest
(inaudible) country. We have more than 17,000 islands. That's why we have a
big problem in bridging the Digital Divide. Of course, access to the Internet
may be the single most important issue to most people to (inaudible) for this
problem. Are there any thoughts from the panelists, maybe from the best
practices, to serve this kind of problem? Because we have tried a software
model to solve the problem. The main problem is the connectivity prices and
cost is very high, and if we use satellite connection, it's very expensive. So
is there any kind of model, public/private partnership to solve this problem?
Thank you.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: So in our panel, perhaps I could put the question to you.
Would you like to pick this question up, sir?
>>CRAIG SILLIMAN: I can't suggest specific technological solutions for the
particular issue of Indonesia and the number of islands, but I think clearly
what we have seen as we operate as a company around the world is that every
market is different from a usability standpoint, from a regulatory standpoint,
from a geographical standpoint. The core issue that we see is that when you put
various technologies and providers up against each other, you push them all to
be more innovative and to come up with more creative solutions. And often the
solution of picking a single technology and saying this is the single best
technology and trying to run with it can have a very short life cycle because
of the life spans of technology and the rapidity with which things are
changing. And so as a general principle, I think we would see what we have
found as a major, not only provider of access but a purchaser of access in
every country in which we need to provide access to our services is that we
always look for multiple technological options. Put the providers up
specifically against each other, set metrics for them and ask them to exceed
each other. And it's amazing, when you put two providers with smart engineers
in competition with each other how quickly they can come up with new and
innovative and cost effective solutions.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Thank you, Craig.
>>BILL WOODCOCK: Specifically with respect to Indonesia, APGI, the Indonesian
ISP association, has done a wonderful job in getting an exchange point going in
Jakarta. They have 110 Internet providers interconnected there. It's one of
the largest exchange points outside of the two or three -- well, five or six
largest developed countries. And they are very eager, I think, to start trying
to do builds down from Singapore which is where the largest undersea cable
crossings in that region are. Obviously, that's a major construction project,
and that's something that the government could help with by providing rights of
way and infrastructure for that passage. But I think the main thing is just
deregulating enough to allow that private investment to take hold and solve the
problem.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Thank you very much. Jim Dempsey.
>>JIM DEMPSEY: Just very quickly, I heard a presentation yesterday at the
building local access workshop by RAJNIS sing who is confronting this same
problem. So I hope you and RAJNIS can connect and learn from each other since
he is across the Pacific islands confronting some of the same issues.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Thank you very much. I would like to remind the audience and
the panelists that we are ten minutes now from the ending of this session.
It's going to be the time to ask the audience if someone would like to ask a
question that was not addressed yet. And that you would like to -- And so I am
going to the -- and I think the chairman has a point to make.
>>CHAIRMAN MAGLARIS: Just I wanted to ask if there is any time constraint from
the interpreters or not.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: We have to conclude the session at 6:00 p.m. with the
interpreters, and then we will finish it in English without translation, if I
understand correctly. So please, if there are questions -- one here, one here.
Who else? Three. Four questions. So let's go fast. Please.
>> (Saying name), International Federation for Information Processing. I'd like
to just point out the following. I this afternoon have heard very interesting
issues as to how to solve the issue of access and looking at infrastructure
aspects, the affordability aspect, as it's called, as well as that of knowledge
and literacy. We've looked at the quality and usage issues as well. Now, if you
were to look at those five categories as a part of the eight variables of ITU,
they would actually make up the digital access index and that is what was
discussed in Geneva 2003. So I think it's no use, actually, starting back from
scratch. But we ought to tap into that work that's already been done and see
that these issues have been addressed to a certain extent in terms of access.
That's the first comment. I think it's also interesting to note the following:
The use -- I think the uses issue is very important, and not necessarily linked
up to development. And therefore I think that there was a resolution of the
United Nations in 2001 in launching the world summit, was explicitly to try and
dovetail in with the millennium goals. So I do think that this is something
which could also be taken advantage of. Perhaps, to cite an experience that I
have already, which is called Acshire (phonetic). This is something which is
quite costly, but it does establish certain kiosks, which are called Kendras.
Now, what is interesting in this particular experience, that it is a joint
venture undertaken by the government and the private sector, and the costs are
quite monumental, because it does in fact move into the hundred million Euro
range, part paid by the government, three-quarters by the private sector. But
this is for a small state, because we're talking about other cases, such as
India, with its population count. So this is something which might be of
interest. So thank you very much.
>> Thank you very much. (saying name) from Tunisia. I am the head of a
technology enterprise, and I am participating in a number of panels. I would
like to draw your attention to specific aspects apart from the best practices
and everything that is in terms of exchange of experience. But perhaps in terms
of the recommendations, what are the programs implemented? 2015 is a deadline
for all of the recommendations to be implemented. But I do think that this is
fairly near already as a deadline. And we feel that we are discussing here and
repeating what has been done since 2000 onwards. So we really must try to speed
up in terms of the developing countries especially. Now, wouldn't there perhaps
be recommendations in terms of development programs, those programs which are
undertaken, in fact, by UNDP in terms of the digital divide being privileged.
Are we talking about a development divide rather than that of a divide of
knowledge or anything else?
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Before answering that, perhaps we can take another question.
Madam, yes.
>> Linda --
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: I want to take all the questions.
>>CHAIRMAN MAGLARIS: It's 6:00. So let me thank the interpreters. Because I
guess they have to leave. [ Applause ]
>> CHAIRMAN MAGLARIS: I should say this in Greek, because it is a matter of
promoting multilingualism across the Internet. So the chairman kindly thanks
the interpreters. Unfortunately, we have slightly overshot. But you have done
excellent work. Thank you.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: That was said in Greek. And thank you for the translation.
Okay. There was one question here.
>> Yes. This is now a rhetorical question, first of all because of the late
hour, and secondly because several people have addressed it. But -- and it's
also a bit open-ended, especially late in the day. I'm Linda Misek-Falkoff. I'm
in the Communication Coordination Committee for the United Nations at
headquarters in New York. Personally, I have been a computer programmer,
educator, and user for 48 years. I'm eager to be part of this ongoing
enterprise in any way that I can be helpful. And I would like -- I hope this
would be a question for a panel for Rio. And this is what I wrote earlier. If
township create a universal education package or tool kit for raising awareness
on access and accessibility for everyone everywhere, what would be in it? What
core topics and perspectives? Thank you.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Is there a volunteer for that question? Let's hear the last
one over there. Gentleman over there, before we go to the panel.
>> Thank you. I'd like to ask the panelists whether you think that the adoption
of new technologies that could help the expansion of the Internet can be slowed
down or inhibited by software patents. Thank you.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Okay. First answers from George Greve, please.
>>GEORGE GREVE: Well, I mean, yes. The answer is very simple. Yes. Software
patents are a huge problem. They create monopolies and barriers to
interoperability that ultimately are the exact opposite of what we need in
order to interoperate or to talk to each other. One of the reasons why the
Internet, and, in particular, also the World Wide Web exists and why it is
possible and why we can sit here and talk about this ultimately is that there
were no software patents on this. And, in fact, even people who could have
taken out patents didn't. And this is, you know, a relative, very central part
of it. Software patents are a huge issue, especially when they are on formats
and standards, which is also why the dynamic coalition of open standards in
fact has industry players who have very great concerns exactly on that issue.
So, yes, the answer is very simple. And we have that discussion not only here,
but also at the WIPO, another fora. Software patents are a big issue.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Thank you. Jonne Soininen, please.
>>JONNE SOININEN: Yes. I would like to a little bit disagree with that notion.
And I -- saying that it's not the patents themselves. It's, of course, how they
are used that make certain technologies more expensive than others. And I think
that more than saying categorically that patents are bad, we should look at the
-- how the value of patents is addressed and how to make sure that it doesn't
inhibit people implementing their technologies. It is -- our position generally
on these kinds of things is that there's also an issue of enabling companies to
invest in technology and making better technology. One question there is to
make sure that they can somewhat get something back from that. Software patents
at least give some protection, and -- in certain cases. But it's very important
to see that the proportionality of the royalties and proportionality of the
cost doesn't go overboard and the technology can be accessible for everybody.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: Thank you. I'm going to give the floor to the chairman to
conclude this session. I just would like to remind you, because there were
several questions or interventions about why are we talking again about what
has happened five years ago or ten years ago. This forum here today and this
session specifically was made to try to put you together, all actors together,
to speak, to exchange, to communicate, to disagree or agree, but at least to
establish a link and prepare the future. So even if some subjects have already
been discussed before, it was important to give you a best comprehension of the
different aspect of the access. And, of course, it's not perfect, and we need
to organize better and to launch some platform, as Mr. Hugo Lueders said
before. So there's been a lot of suggestions and ideas for the future. So we
will really thank everybody to participate in this session. Before giving the
floor to the chairman, we have an announcement for Mr. Markus Kummer, who would
like to do some housekeeping announcement, or if you prefer, Mr. Chairman, we
will conclude and we will wait for you after. What is better?
>>SECRETARY KUMMER: Announcement better. It's proper usage that the chairman
concludes the session.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: I have a few announcements.
>>SECRETARY KUMMER: Remote participation has really taken off. The bad news
is, the traffic is overwhelming the server. Our Web site is down, and I was not
able to send out an e-mail to the list of the advisory group members.
Therefore, allow me to make an oral announcement. There is an invitation to all
advisory group members and their friends at the hotel bar that is immediately
left after the entrance of the hotel. The president of the Swiss federal
commission for communications, Mr. Marc Furrer invites all members to drinks
after this session. And last, but not least, the most important reception is
hosted by the Greek foreign minister, Mrs. Dora Bakoyanni at 8:00 at the Astir
Palace hotel. Buses leave from all hotels at 7:30. Thank you.
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: So we are really going to conclude with the chairman. But let
me thank everybody here who organized the session, the interpreters of course,
the group which supported the organization, the blogger, the steno typist, who
did a great job. I think we should applaud them, because they really did a good
job. [ Applause ]
>>ULYSSE GOSSET: And all the technicians, the cameraman, the light, operation,
the sound people. And now, Mr. Chairman, your conclusion.
>>CHAIRMAN MAGLARIS: Okay. Thank you very much, Mr. Moderator. And thank you
very much for the excellent job you did in putting those multiple stakeholders
together to say what we believe what they believe, along with the audience, and
the blogosphere, the Webosphere, everyone together to give an excellent forum.
And it is really the purpose of this group. Let me say that just 20 years ago
or so I was in a similar panel where the chairman was Vint Cerf himself. So one
of the -- when he started making his speech, he said, who owns the Internet?
Question mark. It still remains a question mark. Now they call it who governs
the Internet, things like that, but still it remains a big question mark. Let
me just say, since I'm a European citizen, after all, what are the three
pillars that the European Commission promotes for the Internet? And those are
the openness, interoperability, and neutrality. Those are the three pillars
that the European Commission is promoting. And, of course, I don't think there
is any conflict with that with the patent issue or whatever, open patents
versus or anything else. It is really an open environment. And as such it is
being treated. It's just I would like to make a few -- I mean, I have three
pages of notes here. But I cannot go through all of them, obviously. There was
-- of course, you know, there was -- there were a lot of discussions on the
role of government, on the role of private industry, the role of liberalization
and deregulation, public-private partnerships and so forth, competition. There
were lots of discussions on the role of wireless local loops that might break,
the last bottleneck, monopoly bottleneck, on 2G, 3G, open and unlicensed
spectrum, licensed spectrum, and so forth. There were discussions and many
remarks that referred to exclude from poverty, developing countries are paying
probably more or as much as developed countries do for the same service or even
less services. Political isolation was mentioned also. Liberalization was
promoted, especially by U.S., Korea, and some European states. And they showed
very significant numbers in terms of penetration of the Internet. And we heard,
however, from other countries in developed -- the developing countries, like
Kenya also, and Iran, lower numbers. And here this is the main, I think, task
of this group and the main task that was put in the Tunis WSIS agenda, how to
promote the information society towards developed countries. Problems like
power, problems like poverty, problems like the lack of education, so forth,
were put forward by many speakers. On the digital divide, there were many, many
talks about the digital divide, affordability, affordability of access, and
good level of access was an issue that was brought up by everybody. There were
very good and strong points made about access not only to the digitally
enabled, but also to disabled people, to not only gender gap, as well
unemployed, exactly, how to get the e-skills promoted around the globe, and so
forth. Overall, I would like to thank you personally for the excellent job that
you did, and also -- [ Applause ]
>>CHAIRMAN MAGLARIS: -- thanks to all the participants that stayed until so
late for this very interesting session. Thank you very much. [ Applause ]
