[governance] the sad broadband workshop...

[Jean-Louis FULLSACK]

Dear Carlos and Michael
and all members of the list

I fully af agree Michael's opinion : Carlos' analysis is an interesting point of view seeen from a DC, although Brazil is generallly ranged as an "emerging country". Anyway, this country knows a lot about "development" issues and has a lot of lessons drawn from its own experiences to teach DCs and all those -especially CS Orgs- involved in trying to find adequate solutions. 

However one major component of the "fascinating mobile solution" touted during this workshop is missed : You need a connection to a network If you want to communicate with a handy or with a machine of any kind ! And this is the point in DCs, especially in their vast remote areas where more than the half of their people are living. 

In other words, in these areas mobile isn't THE solution : it is part of the problem ! 

That's why I continously called out to the WSIS stakeholders that DCs -and most obviously the whole Africa- first need a backbone network to backhaul these remote, fixed or mobile comms to the hubs (generally cities or urban centres) where they are switched and forwarded to the recipents, wherever they are. And for giving the best chance to these rural/remote areas to join the "communicating society" the backbone networks need to be completed by a great number of spur links for serving these areas.

Of course, some of you may object that there are satellites for doing that very well. Right ! But nowhere is a satellite a "structuring" solution for a country, and second, the services offered (?) are very expensive for the populations in these areas, not to mention BB services ! 

Consequently, the main issue in these countries is the design of a most appropriate, minimal and affordable network infrastructure that irrigates sufficiently and satisfactorily the country, leaving the very excentered areas to satellite services.This was in the mind of the early designers for the African RASCOM satellite ... but this is another problem. 

The isssue is therefore a political one, i.e. a decision pertaining to the tasks of a state who is to provide basic and most useful services to its population. But designing and devising such networks and solutions (e.g. satellite) should (or at least could) be carried out through a multistakeholder approach and work, where CS orgs are the primary partners because they best know the needs of the populations concernerd.

Isn't this a purely "governance" issue, and as far as the Internet is to be the most appropriated access tool in these areas, an "Internet governance" issue ? 

Warmest regards

Jean-Louis Fullsack
CSDPTT and CESIR



> Message du 16/11/09 12:11
> De : "Michael Gurstein" 
> A : "'Carlos A. Afonso'" 
> Copie à : governance at lists.cpsr.org
> Objet : RE: [governance] the sad broadband workshop...
> 
> 
> Excellent comment, Carlos! The first communication I've seen from the IGF
> that deals with issues of possible concern to the "other 5 billion...
> 
> M
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Carlos A. Afonso [mailto:ca at cafonso.ca] 
> Sent: Monday, November 16, 2009 5:42 AM
> To: governance at lists.cpsr.org
> Subject: [governance] the sad broadband workshop...
> 
> 
> Hi people,
> 
> I come from one of the ten largest economies in the world, with nearly 
> 200 million people, 8.5 million km2, and 5.564 municipalities, where 94% 
> of the people do *not* have access to any form of broadband - the "B" in 
> the famous BRIC acronym.
> 
> I am just coming out of the IGF workshop "Expanding broadband access for 
> a global Internet economy: development dimensions". I left the workshop 
> a bit shocked with the concepts expressed, not by the AT&T 
> representative (who not surprisingly said AT&T subdsidiaries countries 
> other than the USA should be considered local companies because they 
> employ local people), who as usual is just doing his job in defending 
> the so-called "market", but by other speeches which seemed to completely 
> ignore that, in most of our contries, there is a de facto monopoly or 
> cartel situation regarding the telco infrastructure, and that public 
> policy ought to centrally take this into account if the aim is to 
> universalize broadband access with quality to all families.
> 
> One of the speakers (from LIRNEasia) said that "lower prices require 
> lower costs" and therefore one should just "phase out universal access 
> levies and rationalize taxes". I retorted that pricing per Mb/s of ADSL 
> broadband in São Paulo might be 65 times higher than the same price 
> charged by the same company in London -- and therefore no amount of 
> levies or taxes would justify such scandalous pricing difference, not to 
> speak of the much lower QoS.
> 
> I suggested that, instead of eliminating the universal service funds 
> (whose levies are a very small portion of price composition of 
> broadband), we should insist on reforming policy regarding the use of 
> these funds. The reply I heard was that it makes no sense to keep funds 
> that are not used or are squandered (!!). Impact of the fund's levy in 
> Brazil is just 1% of the price of the fixed line telephone connection -- 
> its impact in the price of broadband (a separate bill even if the 
> service is not unbundled) is zero.
> 
> There was also a recommendation that we should be "gentle on QoS" to 
> facilitate things regarding universalization of access -- fascinating. 
> Again, examples abound in which telcos guarantee only 10% of the nominal 
> contracted rate, and in practice this might be even less. Should we just 
> agree with absurds like this in the name of "it is better to have 
> something than nothing"???
> 
> And then there is the crucial question of unbundling, central to the 
> policy debate in the developed countries as it directly impacts 
> universalization through an effective reduction of prices for the final 
> user. It is a major challenge for broadband public policy in developing 
> countries, where regulators are usually in the hands of the telco 
> cartels. The word was not mentioned (not a single time) by anyone in the 
> panel, as if irrelevant to the development dimensions of broadband.
> 
> The speaker also mentioned that the "need" to reduce costs for the big 
> telcos would require reduction of international bandwidth costs. One of 
> the two big carriers in Brazil, a Brazilian conglomerate, owns redundant 
> fiber running from Brazil to Miami in rings passing through countries in 
> the Caribbean and Central America. They own their own international 
> link, in summary. So do the other carrier in the de facto duopoly -- a 
> major operator from Europe. This does not make any difference in pricing 
> for the final user, although it does contribute to their profits in 
> Brazil being far higher than in Europe for example.
> 
> Finally, the fascination with mobile. Of course the AT&T speaker started 
> his talk by waving a fancy iPhone to the audience -- mostly natural for 
> a commercial wireless giant. But the infoDev representative and others 
> mentioned mobile as a "solution" for the poor, and not even bothered to 
> separate the discussion in the two main topics here: first, the mobile 
> phone as a connectivity device to enable the user to fully use the 
> Internet through a friendly human-machine interface, be it a common PC 
> or special equipment for people with disabilities; second, the phone 
> itself as *the* alternative to the full user experience that a PC or 
> similar might provide. It seems the agency bureaucrats are satisfied 
> with having two castes of users: a small minority of the ones who can 
> fully use the Internet as it evolves requiring more and more multimedia 
> capabilities on both sides (server and client), and the ones relegated 
> to a small device on which it is barely possible to type small messages.
> 
> In the first regional LA&C preparatory meeting for the IGF, in 2008, a 
> representative of a major telco said we should not worry about bringing 
> the next billion to the Internet -- they have cell phones, so they are 
> connected already, problem solved. I wonder if this executive would take 
> the place of a carpenter looking for a job, who has to compose and send 
> by email his CV together with images of letters of recommendation to his 
> would-be employer, and had nothing but a cell phone (smart or not) to do 
> it. Not to speak of comparing the executive's thin-fingered hands of a 
> pianist with the big callous hands of the carpenter.
> 
> fraternal regards
> 
> --c.a. ____________________________________________________________
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