[governance] IG and its linkage to technology

[Norbert Bollow]

Karl Auerbach <karl at cavebear.com> wrote:

> It's not that I don't want to solve the world's problems.  It's just
> that I'd rather start small, making small, and correctable mistakes,
> rather than make big mistakes that are hard to undo.  (Just look at
> how deeply entrenched the ICANN mistakes have become.)
> 
> This is why I have suggested that discussions of internet governance pick a 
> fairly neutral, but certainly difficult topic, as a proof-of-concept.

I feel the same way (with the topic proposal that I made being
certification labels.)

> My suggested topic is this: How can end-users (or their
> agents/local-ISPs) obtain assurances (not guarantees) of end-to-end,
> cross-carrier service quality sufficient to support the user's
> application (such as VOIP).
> 
> That's not a trivial topic, it deals with issues of the balance of power 
> between users and providers, and between providers and providers.  It deals 
> with costs, it deals with routing and inter-provider peering, transit, and 
> exchanges, it deals with user-desired traffic preferences (and because it is 
> user-desired it tends to keep the topic out of the "net neutrality" debate.)
> 
> It's a topic that could make the difference between usable VOIP and unusable 
> VOIP, particularly for "southern" regions.

I agree that this proposal is a good one.  Compared to the
certification marks topic, this proposal has the advantages that
it's technologically very interesting (and is therefore much
more attractive to technologists to think about), and that it
has obvious significance with regard to economic development of
economically disadvantaged regions.

Greetings,
Norbert.


-- 
Norbert Bollow <nb at bollow.ch>                    http://Norbert.ch
President of the Swiss Internet User Group SIUG  http://SIUG.ch
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