[governance] Cost of access - the meters ticking

[Suresh Ramasubramanian]

That is a governance issue of direct and immediate consequence to the
general public.

* Last mile unbundling

* Monopoly internet service and its pitfalls

* Regulators who favor the government owned telco over private players

* Monopoly suppliers of international bandwidth who fleece local ISPs
   (how many satellites or cables would the typical LDC have access to)

* Local ISPs who need capacity building to use their existing resources
   (And who dont trust each other enough to peer at an exchange point)

I do wish these got raised as well here, besides all the interesting (and
depressingly familiar) discussions about ICANN and the RIRs.

I do know various people are proposing workshops about these at the IGF.
And these are issues that CS should get involved in, at an international
level.  At least the RIRs do capacity building, groups like PCH help local
ISPs set up internet exchange points .. some real work gets done.

	suresh

Babatope Soremi [04/06/08 15:01 +0100]:
>Hi all,
>
>Its not just the cost of access that is prohibitive but poor quality of
>service with no proper mechanism to deal with erring service provider.
>
>An example is the mobile telephony industry in Nigeria where quality of
>service has failed to *significantly improve *and subscribers have no
>effective outlet to address this.
>
>Best Regards,
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