[governance] NYT opinion by Vint Cerf: Internet Access is not a HR

[Avri Doria]

Hi,

A subject I will mostly avoid, at least for the moment is the contest about which rights are most important and whether the availability of information infrastructure and access to knowledge is critical in the alleviation of other issues by allowing access to the information on how to overcome issues of food production, water purification and the avoidance of disease.  I see this as one of those 'dancing angels on the head of a pin' issues and beleive that all rights need to be provided for, without allowing predators to take advantage of disadvantaged populations.

A point I do want to make is that the submarine cables were not meant for just the purposes of access in the coastal countries but where meant to provide sufficient access for all of the populations in the developing economies inside the continent and away from the coast.  Yes there are issues about transit and dark cable that need to be dealt with, that have not yet been dealt with adequately, but the point is Kenya's and other coastal countries use of bandwidth, whether your estimate are correct or not, was not the full load intended for these cables.

avri



On 10 Jan 2012, at 08:08, Jean-Louis FULLSACK wrote:

> Example 1 : in 2012 there are 6 submarine cable systems along the West African coast (a seventh is planned and three others are envisaged). Half of the six would be largely sufficient in terms of traffic (even for the ten coming years), redundance and even competition. Extra cost generated by this situation : 1,6 billion dollars (only CAPEX). 
> Example 2 : Kenya has 7 terrestrial networks the half of which carrying just a symbolic traffic. Three networks would largely satisfy the domestic needs for the ten years ahead. Extra cost is about 30 million (only CAPEX). Another example : In African countries the mean number of mobile operators is between 4 to 8. In industriallized countries this figure is betwenn 2 and 4. Unless to say that here are huge amounts of resources spent for "ideological" reasons (competition, free market rule ...). 

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