[governance] Cost of access - the meters ticking

[George Sadowsky]

All,

Let me add to the excellent list that Suresh started, the following:

- Appropriate policies for consumer protection for Internet 
transactions, both national an international

- Fair and equitable licensing regimes for ISPs consistent with 
general business licensing processes at the national level

- Regulation that encourages, or better yet, requires cost based 
pricing of Internet access

- A level playing field between incumbent telcos and international 
Internet gateway providers on the one hand and independent ISPs on 
the other hand

- Ability of ISPs to form their own international gateway connections

- Issues of filtering content at the national level

- Permissive policies for anonymous communication

- Acceptability of tools (such as encryption tools) for protecting 
confidentiality of communication

- Net neutrality with respect to traffic type, e.g. VoIP

- Strong anti-spam legislation, effective implementation and vigorous 
prosecution, including enabling national authorities through training 
and facilities the ability to identify, prosecute and convict spammers


These are issues that by an large unite civil society, the Internet 
community, and the business community.  They are issues of policy 
that can be addressed in parallel in all countries of the world, and 
the goal of addressing them is to make the Internet available, 
accessible, affordable, useful and more secure than would otherwise 
be the case.  IMHO these are the kinds of issues that not only should 
be discussed here, but are directly actionable at the national level.

Are members of this group mobilizing action in these directions; if 
not, is there interest in doing so?   Or is it just easier to talk 
on-line about issues at the international level that have little if 
any connection with the real individual user experience in, say, 
developing countries?

George

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At 7:55 AM -0700 6/4/08, Suresh Ramasubramanian wrote:
>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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