[governance] IGF review

[Michael Gurstein]

McTim,

This technology looks cool and I would love to be proven wrong on this
one...

(and the problem with Telekom from what I could figure out wasn't that it
was implementing bad policy directions from the government but rather that
the government was implementing bad policies directions from Telekom...
Maybe a new Minister of Communications in SA will get the order straightened
around... 

Also, one of the severe limitations in relying on CS for achieving basic
connectivity is the difficulty of scaling... The project quoted from the
Shuttleworth site looks very interesting but as Shuttleworth and others well
know moving from a successful CS (or small entrepreneur) project at the
local level to any sort of national, regional or even significant
urban/peri-urban/rural deployment requires vastly more financial and human
resources (or the means to mobilize these at the local level) than any
current CS structure is capable of...

MBG

-----Original Message-----
From: McTim [mailto:dogwallah at gmail.com] 
Sent: Sunday, May 24, 2009 1:10 PM
To: governance at lists.cpsr.org; Michael Gurstein
Cc: Milton L Mueller
Subject: Re: [governance] IGF review


On 5/24/09, Michael Gurstein <gurstein at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>  Milton,
>
>  There is in many (most?) cases no direct (and arguably little or no
>  indirect) connection between the "most developed infrastructure" or 
> "the  strongest content industries" and "development"--certainly among 
> the poorest  and the least developed pop(ulations...
>
>  There are in many cases statistical associations because 
> infrastructure and  content industries support economic and social 
> advance among the alteady  developed sections of those societies, but 
> the reality is very different on  the ground as can be seen quite 
> directly for example in India where highly  sophisticated 
> inftrastructure/content development has had little or no  impact on 
> the bulk of the rural population.
>
>  I'm now somewhat familiar with the situation for example in South 
> Africa  where further liberalization whether of infrastructure or of 
> content is  likely in fact to be an impediment to development by 
> restricting the  opportunities for public sector intervention 
> precisely to support  development among the 85% of the population 
> which is currently not  effectively engaged with/enabled by the quite 
> advanced infrastructure and  content industries in that country.
>
>  Whether the State or not for profits would or could do any better is 
> not  something I want to argue in this context, but at least as I see 
> the SA  situation for example, further liberalization (i.e. more 
> competition) will  lead to a reduction in cost for the already 
> connected and have virtually no  effect on the not connected.

hmm,  this project (in SA, but supported by a variety of folk
worldwide) might prove you wrong.

http://www.villagetelco.org/2009/05/first-phone-call-on-mp-architecture/

and an early implementation of it:

http://www.shuttleworthfoundation.org/our-work/blogs/yabba-dabba-do

and Telkom complained to the regulator that Dabba was "interfering" with
their service and had ICASA confiscate their kit.

I for one would applaud "restricting the opportunities for public sector
intervention", if by public sector you mean Telkom SA!

My original point in this thread was that African CS can actually DO
something instead of just talking about doing something (at the IGF).

-- 
Cheers,

McTim

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