Internet governance hui session transcript
Internet governance hui
Tuesday, 26 August 2008.
1515-1730
KEITH DAVIDSON:
OK, can everybody take their seats, please? Thank you. This session will provide some presentations from a number of different perspectives relating to Internet governance. This remaining session today is entitled a hui, which is a Maori word which can mean a congregation or a club, and I hope it is not a congregation, or a conference or a confluence. Today we will work towards the concept of a confluence. ISOC have collaborated to bring together the session, broadening the sessions from the pure IP address space to issues related to overall Internet governance, which is moving towards impacts on operations of all core Internet issues. There is seldom, if ever, a one-size-fits all solution for the Internet. So our first two speakers will have 15 minutes each to present their views.
First, Dr Frank March from the New Zealand government's Ministry of Economic Development. He will discuss Internet governance in New Zealand and touch on the role of the government within ICANN. Frank, the floor is yours.
FRANK MARCH:
Thank you, Keith. Can everybody hear me? OK. I thought I would start by defining Internet governance and look at why governments, in fact, are interested in the Internet very briefly, and look at the perspective of New Zealand and then look at the role of ICANN and the GAC.
I want to say something about the international climate, which will reiterate something of what Paul Twomey said. I have been New Zealand's GAC representative since its inception, though I haven't been going to many meetings. I have been to 40%, which is not very high. I was on the secretariat of the working group on IG to provide input to WSIS. I was in Geneva for six months in 2005. (Government side)
I have led a double existence, really. I was the inaugural chair of the .nz oversight committee, responsible for the policies and processes under which the .nz registry runs, which is now the DNCL (Domain Name Commission Limited) but it has changed its spots a bit. I was involved in that entirely as a personal point of view, rather than a government point of view. I'm currently vice president of Internet New Zealand.
Definition of Internet governance (from WGIG), it came from the government definition and formed part of the input to the WSIS process. It is more than Internet names and addresses - it includes public policy issues, the security and safety of the Internet and development of issues pertaining to the use of the Internet. It was a very wide definition of Internet governance and there was a lot of discussion around that point at the time but I think this is now well established.
The issues for governments, why are they concerned? First of all, virtually every government of the world looks to the Internet as the basis for social and economic development. They all seek a secure and stable economic environment, again, the Internet is critical. Governments all over the world are looking to deliver a better outcome in health, education, and similar social services, again, they see the Internet as being the critical delivery service for that. So the issues are the need for sound regulatory policies.
As I said this morning, there is more to regulation than governments simply stepping in boots and all. Governments have to be very careful, they need consistent regulation, sound regulation, regulation that looks to best international practice because governments also face a competitive world and the wrong regulatory regime can lead to less than optimal outcomes, shall we say, on the international stage as well as nationally, there is a need to ensure security of the critical infrastructure and the Internet is part of that.
It applies internationally and nationally. The government needs to look at the consequences of or failure of what critical infrastructure might be. The Internet is part of the core of any national structure and on the same level, these days, perhaps as power and transport.
So in New Zealand national view is that it always has been that normal commercial privacy laws and other commercial laws, privacy laws, and so on, apply to the Internet as much as anything else. In fact, New Zealand has a practice of, as far as possible, having technological neutrality in the law. There are only two laws in the books even mentioning the Internet in New Zealand and they are relatively recent. There are some specific laws, there is an E-Commerce Transaction Act, there are amendments to the Crimes Act in light of the way that computers can be networked and accessed over networks and there is recent changes to the Copyright Act, which are a bit more controversial, actually in recognition of Internet practices and the role of digital content, in particular. Otherwise, monitoring from a distance is the rule.
There is no formal relationship with the .nz registry. I was involved purely as a private citizen, although perhaps it gave some comfort to both parties, to New Zealand and the government I was in that role, but it was entirely informal. Internationally, New Zealand supports the ICANN process. And we see as the first priority in any view of the way that the Internet is governed internationally as security and stability being the prime concern. It is a critical infrastructure and that stability and security is vital. Attendance at the GAC is seen as an issue for industry. The practical outcome for that is when I attend GAC meetings, for the financial support of Internet New Zealand in practice, the government graciously allows my time, but doesn't normally contribute anything financially to it. You can say it is a hands-off stance in many ways.
The role of ICANN and the GAC, very much a personal view, actually. My observation of ICANN over the years is private sector leadership, we all recognize that, it needs strong government support. The private sector needs to know that it can operate in a sound and secure environment. That really means that they need to be certain of the type of government support they are getting for what they do. ICANN has brought about a, as Paul said, something of a revolution in the way that international negotiations are conducted. We now talk about a multi-stakeholder environment, not just multi-lateral, but the government is a critical part of the environment and the Internet community but equally important, if not more important are the private sector, the civil society and the research and academic sectors.
The GAC role is advisory. This is actually somewhat controversial in New Zealand. If it was a treaty organization capable of making decisions, there would be no doubt that the New Zealand government sees it as a high priority. Because it is advisory in nature, it is automatically somewhat downgraded. Within the ICANN community, the GAC advice must be heard, must be listened to, and especially when there is a consensus within the GAC. It operates by consensus but the advice is not always clear and concise. For example, over .xxx the GAC did not reach consensus and its advice to the Board was that. Said some governments had a problem. It was interpreted in different ways but it was a very deliberate, if somewhat obscure advice that first of all, there was no consensus, secondly, that some governments did have problems and it was up to the ICANN board to take action accordingly in the light of that knowledge.
It was absolutely certain government interest in the Internet, governments pleural and singular, will increase and not diminish because of the vital role the Internet has. If they don't take appropriate steps, their citizens will be condemnatory if something goes wrong. They are expected to take an interest. It is their role. It is what their expectation of people outside of the Internet community, and outside the technical community, but the ordinary users of the Internet will expect the government will take an interest. So long as nothing goes wrong there is not a problem. If something goes wrong, the government will be expected to take action.
Just very quickly, the changing international environment I think is worth looking at. Talked about the influence of the WSIS and the WGIG on multi-stakeholder participation, the broadening of stakeholders and bringing in other parties. The Internet and ICANN has had enormous influence in that area. ITU is looking for new roles. They are looking to seek to extend influence in the Internet governance area.
As recognition, really, the days of the old telecommunications systems are limited. So that ITU is an intergovernmental and treaty organization; governments take a lot of interest in the ITU. Many governments are very comfortable working through the ITU; they understand how it operates. The challenges from the so-called BRICs, Brazil, Russia, India, China - India and China are represented within APNIC - there are challenges here that are driven by language and script requirements; there is a certain amount of concern about US government dominance and we had a reference to that in the earlier discussion about that today as well.
They have alternative government policies. The New Zealand one is hands-off, not all governments take that view. Some governments regard the view of being hands-on on all aspects of the economy, including critical infrastructure such as the Internet. That range of views has been to be accommodated somehow. But there has been, as I said earlier, a need of a broad perspective of what Internet governance is. One of the contributions that came out of the WSIS program was the establishment of the IGF to deal with a wide range of issues, not all of which have a home in the international arena. I think, actually, the IGF has begun to function quite usefully over issues such as IPv6, for example, where it is not clear any particular international organization has a responsibility. That concludes my bit, thank you very much.
KEITH DAVIDSON:
I think if we could hold questions until we deal with the presentations one after each other, we are playing musical chairs because the cord on the laptop that is connected to the PowerPoint presentation won't go any further. We will do musical chairs between presentations. Hopefully we will have time for questions after the conclusion of these four speakers. OK, we are now going to Rajnesh Singh from ISOC, a former chair of the Pacific Island chapter of ISOC for a presentation on outreach in the Pacific, thank you.
RAJNESH SINGH:
Thank you, Keith. So, woops, I did something. I guess that is good enough? I'm using PDF. So I'm here today as the regional bureau manager for ISOC for South and Southeast Asia. And in the next 10 minutes or so, I have been told to cut down from 20, I will explain to you, or perhaps put forward to you some of ISOC's perspectives on Internet governance in the wider context.
Briefly, what is the Internet Society? I hope most of you are aware of what ISOC is. We have been around since 1992 and we were first founded by a range of Internet pioneers including Vint Cerf. We continue to ensure that the open development, evolution and use of the Internet is for the benefit of people throughout the world. We have two offices - one is located in Reston, Washington in the US and an office in Geneva in Switzerland. In terms of our membership make up, we have 90-odd organizational members. We have some 26,000-odd individual members worldwide and have 80 chapters worldwide which provides input into local issues and concerns.
Apart from that, ISOC has set up regional bureaus, Africa in 2006, Latin America and the Caribbean in 2007 and South and Southeast Asia in 2008. Currently, I also look after the Oceania region until we have another bureau set up for that area.
In terms of ISOC's programs, there are a few. I won't run through them all but they cover public policy, education, and standards, some of you may be aware it is the organizational home of the IETF, we provide fellowships to the IETF and we also do ccDTLD workshops with the people from the Cisco etc. If you have been exposed to ISOC in the past, we used to be set up under what we call three pillars. They were education, policy and standards development.
However, with the changing face of the Internet we realized that a lot of these issues were now cross-lateral, it was not just a policy or education or standard issues, so ISOC came up with what we call the initiatives for 2008 to 2010. These fall into three broad categories enabling access which is all about capacity building, policy, access and the environment and importantly, enabling access to under-served communities, global addressing, which most of you are here for this week, security and stability of the Internet and we also look at trust and identity, looking at architecture so people are confident in the Internet they use for work and play.
Why engage with ISOC? We have a worldwide presence and impact, good relationships with the technical community, we have been a respected voice in the policy community as well. We have a large number of active Internet experts and decision-makers so it is good and easy to tap on them. We do have an historical record of making somewhat of a difference in the evolution of the Internet. And the stakes for today, we would love for you to be a member for ISOC, we have a category that is free. If you go to isoc.doc you can find the details.
Today the Internet is evolving rapidly. The Internet of two years ago to today are different beasts. It is not a legacy system, it is continually evolving and a network of networks which work cooperatively together. Intelligence has been predominantly at the edges rather than the core. It has been flexible and responsive to people's needs. Perhaps for some, not as responsive, but we try our best. The Internet model does present a challenge to traditional governance players and mechanisms.
Firstly, it is global, it has no borders, so it brings up trans-jurisdictional issues. Also, there is no shared model for what is acceptable and what is not, with perhaps exception of child pornography and issues of that manner. However, this is nothing new, but the challenges can appear to be new, particularly when you transit from the old telecommunications era to the new, which is into that base. Internet success is largely due to its unique model. It brings a shared global ownership without central control, a very important factor on the success of the Internet. It does present us with collaborative engagement models, where we have business, civil society, academia and governments working together. We have development based on open standards rather than proprietary standards have openly developed standards based on participation rather than formal membership, we have key principles such as the end-to-end principle and an open bottom-up, freely accessible public multi-stakeholder process for both technology and policy development, a mouthful but important.
During this afternoon's session I would like you to consider two questions: 1. What is Internet governance; and 2. What does it mean to you? As Frank said earlier, the working group on Internet governance came up with a definition of what Internet governance was. It was a rather broad definition by design. So if I look at the final report, it says, "Internet governance the development and application of governments the private sector and civil society in their respective roles of the shared principles, norms, rules, decision-making procedures and programs that shape the evolution and issue of the Internet. It means different things to different people. It is not just names and numbers, today's Internet governance issues are larger. What does Internet governance cover? It is what the Internet is today and how it will evolve tomorrow, a secure and stable Internet available to the world at large, not just closed communities and one that contributes to social and economic development in the larger social scale.
It is more than just laws enacted by governments, not just limited to government activities, though governments play a vital part. It is every Internet user's concerns, yours and mine. It includes social and cultural norms and covers all sectors of society, not just the governments and technical sides. And more importantly, decisions need to be transparent and democratic with multi-stakeholder input, I guess the Internet community is one community at large which has been very successful in using this model of multi-stakeholder decision-making and consensus making.
If I refer back to the WGIG report again, it came up with broad areas of Internet governance issues, one was centred around Internet infrastructure resource management, beyond that as well, broadband, names, numbers, VoIP, broadband, convergence and so on. There were issues relating to the use of the Internet, spam, cyber security, cybercrime, issues with wider impact, so things like authentication, privacy, consumer protection, local content, dispute resolution. And we also have issues with development aspects, for instance, the cost of access, universal access, capacity building, free and open systems in today's Internet world, cultural and linguistic diversity and social inclusion.
Why does Internet governance matter? For all intents and purposes, the Internet is the communications medium of choice in a whole lot of forms for a large part of the world. There are areas that don't have readily accessible Internet access but it is for most it is the communications of choice and even in the developing countries. How is it used - telephone, web sites, web portals, web preferences, etc., all these have evolved over the Internet. We have more than 1.4 billion Internet users as at the end of June, 2008. That is some 21% of the whole world population. It makes the Internet an important global public policy issue.
The Internet is a significant part of the world economy. The world depends on Internet technology, you can find a word, put an E in front of it, and it is something people are keen on and people are keen on using and selling and so on. There is big business in the Internet world, businesses such as Google, Yahoo and Amazon which would not exist if it were not for the Internet.
I won't dwell too much on this because Frank has covered it, but in terms of Internet governance and the United Nations the WSIS process has gained a lot of prominence. One of the issues was the openness and diversity of the Internet model posed a challenge for governments and the intergovernmental United Nations process. Vice Versa, complexity and formality of the UN process posed a challenge for the Internet community's culture. One thing was apparent was the willingness of most stakeholders to engage in open discussion and has contributed to the success of the summit; it set a benchmark for follow-up activities and the IGF is a large part of that.
The IGF exists as a multi-stakeholder forum. There are no formal negotiations, arranged seating or policy statements. It does encourage frank discussion among equals. It has a large focus on capacity building and development and the need to set up enabling environments to facilitate Internet deployment and growth. There are other United Nations Internet governance related activities, the WSIS implementation efforts, ITU counsel working group, the world telecommunications policy forum in Portugal next year which has issues concerning you and me on convergence, Internet policy issues and emerging policies including things like child protection.
Why is the IGF important? It is about an evolving model of engagement, it exposes government to multi-stakeholder bottom-up community-based processes. It also exposed the Internet community to governments' concerns and issues because the two groups need to work together to reach the common goal. The community building is based on interest, not on geography or politics. Skills development and capacity building through the discussion and sharing of experiences and good practice around the globe.
People say it is a talk show. Perhaps, but there is good work happening around the IGF. The dynamic collusions are one avenue. More often than not, it is the ability to be able to meet at least once a year and interact with the whole variety of people on a whole range of issues. The challenge, however, that still remains is to prove that IGFs does add value. How do the Internet communities and the IGF interrelate? ISOC has supported IGF since its inception and so have the RIRs and ICANN. The participation of the Internet technical community has been appreciated and for the most part it has been highly valued as well. There is value in an open multi-stakeholder forum and the IGF continues to evolve and it is important to see where it takes us next.
This year's IGF is in Hyderabad, Tulika will speak of that shortly. One of the key challenges is we want to maintain participation and demonstrate added value, not just what happened last year and the year before but newer things are happening. The members of the Internet technical community have played a significant role in shaping the IGF today and we hope it is important to continue the engagement, we don't want to create a void by disappearing from the stage. One of the real strengths of the IGF is bringing together people who generally tend to meet separately. Enough said.
It also mobilizes the friends of the Internet and the Internet model region by region. This is important, we need to have regional focus on the meetings and ISOC is working to see how we can regionalise the discussions and debates.
I will skip through that as I have been told to hurry up or shut up. Now looking ahead, ISOC and our partner organizations are key advocates for the open and collaborative model. The governments need to look at the current Internet model that we preach and use does work. The last thing we want of course is some knee-jerk reactions from governments in terms of censorship control and shutting down the Internet in some regard. We need to keep involved, keep talking, engage, not to confront but to engage. It has a track record of successfully overcoming problems and a pretty good history of collaboration between us and those around us. The challenge is to continue to do that, of course.
I promise this is my final slide. Key challenges in the wider scope:
Earlier on I mentioned that ISOC has three strategic initiatives. So we have touched on the initiatives to what we see as the larger challenges in the Internet governance space. It has to do with bringing the next billion users online. One is an issue of scaling, tying in with the initiatives ensuring global addressing and infrastructure are able to keep up with what is required of it as well as being able to support applications and services, and of course cultures and industries which the Internet, those which the Internet enables - trust and identity to ensure we continue with our confidence levels across the Internet, that it is trusted and does not become something that people say, "Well, if you use the Internet for that it is no use, not secure and safe."
And the concept of user choice. The next billion users we can certainly say, they will not come from the Western world, English-speaking countries, a large part from this region, Asia Pacific, with different cultures, scripts and languages and we need to ensure the users have the ability to choose the levels of service and freely access content according to their cultures and languages because there are costs to take into account. It falls into our "enabling access" initiative.
With all that, I would like to invite you to talk to us. We are good people at ISOC. Sometimes we may not appear to be, bald people like me, but we are good people. My contact details are there and I wish you all the best for the rest of the week, thank you.
KEITH DAVIDSON:
Thank you, we will make a slight change to the order of the presentations. So while there is a change happening, I guess, it is probably important at this stage to remember that ICANN is not the home of all issues of the Internet. A lot of people expected over a lot of years they can take any issue to the ICANN arena and ICANN's mission is to fulfil the policies around the unique identifiers of the Internet. It is a good reminder, thank you, Raj and Frank, that ISOC and the IGF provides forums on the far broader issues including outreach, cyber crime, developing economies, connectivity and so on. Our next speaker is Raul Echeberria, a member of the IGF multi-stakeholder advisory group and he will be addressing us on the development of the IGF program. Thank you, Raul.
RAUL ECHEBERRIA:
Thank you. Good afternoon, everybody. We could, thank you, Mr Chair for the introduction. We could speak probably one week about the Internet governance and we could remain with a feeling that the time has not been enough. So I have been asked to talk about the specific point, which I say, the characteristics of the multi-stakeholder characters of the advisory group of the IGF.
So let me tell you some antecedents. The World Summit on the Information Society, known as WSIS, was a very special summit because it was a summit that was written in two parts, first in December of 2003, the second in November 2005. When the governments met in December 2003 in Geneva, it was clear that there was no consensus in two important issues. One was the how to find the relevant Information Society in developing countries and the second was Internet governance.
The first point was there was no argument at that point because the people who participated, many people who participated in the process were not enough informed or involved in the Internet governance matters to get to the point of physical argument. So one thing that the delegates did at that point was to recommend to the United Nations Secretary-General to create a working group known, later as the WGIG, a Working Group on Internet governance and I'm trying to explain the acronyms, and sometimes we forget what the acronyms mean.
It is, funny for people who participate in the events, because everybody finds agreement is difficult. One possible outcome is to recommend the United Nations Secretary-General do something. Every morning I imagine when he comes to his office, he has his basket, his inbox with plenty of things that he has to do because nobody agrees in the world, has to do that.
So finally, he created the working group in 2004, and it was created as a experience without precedence, formed by foreign people from around the globe, belonging to different sectors. I was one of the people of the four that was honoured with the appointment to this working group.
The process of the Working Group on Internet Governance including open consultation meeting in the United Nations, for those of us that were in those meetings, had to confess it was really a strange experience. Now we went to the United Nations building in Geneva, there are other meetings working in the same fashion but at that point it was a very strange experience. I remember that even the - those who have connectivity in the meetings or enough power and connection for the adapters were challenging users. This is very normal now. In fact, the United Nations has changed the facilities for providing power and connectivity in every room.
So it was the fact that governmental representatives had the custom at that point to accept that somebody from an NGO, from a given country, raised his or hand or her hand to talk in the same conditions as the representatives of the Russian government or any government. It was an exciting experience. The process itself was very productive. There were many lessons learned from this process.
Frank March was telling us, he said before, he was part of the Secretariat and I'm still trying to understand if it was a promotion for him or he had done something very bad in New Zealand and so the government decided to send him to Geneva. The real thing is that he did a magnificent work there. It was not an easy task and the amount of work was really huge.
Among other principles that were part of the outcome of the first part of the summit, the concept of multi-stakeholder was consolidated with that experience. Finally, the WGIG issued the document with recommendations that had defined some controversial points to be treated by the governments in the second phase of the summit. When we arrived at the summit, as part of the - really the conclusions of WGIG were taken very seriously in the discussion and the level of the discussion was very different from the discussion that had been held in 2003 in Geneva.
As part of the consequences of the working group on Internet Governance Process, people were much more informed and the difference was very clear so it was more easy to concentrate the discussions in those points that were more controversial.
One of the agreements that we got in Tunisia was the creation of the Internet Governance Forum. It was one of the working group's recommendations. It was created as a non-decision-making body. One of the conditions was the participation of all the stakeholders would be in equal footing. Again, the summit asked the UN Secretary-General to do something, and in this situation, the UN Secretary-General was responsible of creating an advisory group for convening the first meeting of IGF in Athens in 2006.
So, since the beginning, this new Working Group, the multi-stakeholder advisory group of IGF was seen as a continuation of the Working Group on Internet governance, or at least at the recreation of a successful multi-stakeholder experience. I have to say that I - again was appointed to this group, to the advisory group, and at this point, I am - I don't know if it is a price, but I am one of the five persons who are still in this group since the beginning of the Working Group on Internet Governance. Sorry?
SPEAKER FROM THE FLOOR:
What did you do wrong?
RAUL ECHEBERRIA:
I have the same doubt that I expressed regarding Frank. I am not sure if I have done this very well or exactly the opposite. What does the advisory group do? I could say that it is possible to establish the agenda of IGF, but it is not true at all because responsibility at the end is the UN Secretary-general and working together with the IGF security advice, the UN Secretary-General. And being responsible for suggesting the structure of the IGF, suggesting the workshops, how to establish the main sessions and also suggesting panelists for speaking in the main sessions. And also, to take care that all of the stakeholders are being considered. The IGF Secretariat are responsible for getting a successful IGF meeting every year, that those meeting with the IGF are a useful tool for the community. There are three open consultations a year followed up by the advisory meetings, and so the advisory members would participates in those consultation meetings and the open consultations and also an appearance in which the opinions can be submitted through the IGF. Those opinions are being considered in the discussion.
The development they mentioned is transversal to every added issue in IGF and it is always present in the debates. The challenge is really to focus, on the issues that are important for the IGF for the community, but also in those issues which are not being discussed properly in the other forums. It is a new format of interaction and there have been a different level of difficulties for all of the stakeholders for the new format. But it has still been successful.
But, the multi-stakeholder is not a fashion. It's something that came for remaining and it is interesting that saying while many people are trying to see the governance model for the Internet. At the same time, we have achieved a new Internet governance model. The collaboration among the stakeholders has improved very much since 2003. And let me take advantage of the fact that I have the mic to speak for three or four minutes about one of my favourite issues.
KEITH DAVIDSON:
Or two, or three minutes.
RAUL ECHEBERRIA:
Three, OK two minutes! For this enhanced corporation, during the last part of the negotiation, and I have to say that I was part of the negotiations in Tunisia, we were discussing 34 hours in the last two days before the summit but usually, it is reported that when the summit starts, sometime before the summit, they are ready for being there by the Government. So in this case, we arrived without any agreement and we had to spend 34 hours in the last two days and so there were a list, two issues during the summit and after those visions remained after a long process that started in 2003 and there was agreement that Internet governance be improved but there was no agreement in the way that they're improving and the improvement could be achieved. Some people promoted the idea that this improvement could be achieved through the evolution of the current organization, the organization that already had some function in the governance of the Internet.
And some of the people promoted the idea of creating newer structures, so that I represented this discussion with the two verbs - evolution and creation. There was no - beside the fact that there was no agreement, there was agreement in a set of principles, and the value of the multi-stakeholder model is very important. Finally, there are three parts that are very important, 69, 70 and 71. I selected 71 for showing you because it is the most interesting for me. In the same paragraph, in the beginning, you can see the letters in red - it says the process towards enhanced cooperation to be started by the UN SG involving all relevant organizations. But in the same paragraph, it says "Relevant organizations should commence a process towards enhanced cooperation involving all stakeholders".
What is clear is that "enhanced cooperation" is not a single process, it is just a concept. The introduction of the term "enhanced cooperation" related to the lack of agreements around the ideas of evolving or creating, so there was the need for the final agreements. It is clear that if we ask them to do something, the Secretary General to do something, it is because what we doing is asking them to convert in a new concept. So, there was this agreement and this is my last slide - there was this agreement in creating something new, except the IGF, and it is important to remember that we don't need agreement to not create something. We need agreement only for creating something new. If there is a lack - a lack of agreement to create something is just not created anything.
It is not explicit said, in the Tunisia agenda that something will be created by the single fact that there was no such agreement on that. But at the same time, it was clear also that there was no agreement for supporting this. Something had to change. So, what was the big challenge? The big challenge was to develop new collaboration/cooperation models for increasing the participation of all the stakeholders in their respective roles without creating new mechanisms/structures. I will finish saying the following, the experience that have been developed in IGF and the advisory group or many other multi-stakeholder experiences, we've had in Latin America last week, a preparatory meeting for IGF where hundreds of people met for discussing the same things.
Under the new rules, the new fashion of participating there on equal footing, all those experience are really, is the expression of the enhanced co-operation which is something that we have already created, and the discussion about the Internet governance for the last ten years has been very productive. We have achieved something. We have achieved a new model of working among all the stakeholders related to the Internet. Thank you.
KEITH DAVIDSON:
I didn't cut you short as I thought it was of high interest.
KEITH DAVIDSON:
Our final speaker on this panel is Tulika Pandey from the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, India, to provide us with an overview of the IGF 2008.
TULIKA PANDEY:
I will start by thanking APNIC, to give me a chance to use this forum to welcome delegates to IGF 2008 in Hyderabad. I would also like to thank the local hosts, New Zealand, to have me here and to continue thanking Frank and Raul, to talk about IGF and its values, quite a few, and thank you to Rajnesh for opening and throwing a challenge at me to garner the same level of participation that has been seen at IGF meeting. I hope I'm able to do that using this forum.
The date for the third IGF that India hosts will be from 3 to 6 December, 2008. And the venue is Hyderabad, a state of India. So we welcome to you all to India, which is a country which adds 8 million mobile phones per month, has the lowest telecom rates and the highest talk time, so welcome to a talkative country. This is what Raj mentioned that IGF is all about, getting together and talking, so what better place than Hyderabad, India, for all of us to get together and deliberate on our concerns on the issues of IGF that we all have on our mind.
To continue what you can see in India, we have 226 million phones, about 89 million Internet users, we have about 0.7 million kilometres of fibre cable laid out, and it is continuing. We are trying to cover the entire country, especially the rural areas of our country, which has around 6 million villages. And to service, to help us out are at least 138 ISPs, which are doing their best and to link them up is the National Internet Exchange, which is helping them peer amongst themselves to reach out to a faster, better service to their customers.
We are also proud to say that India has a manpower, IT-skill manpower, of about 1.60 million. And a software experts in IT and IT network services is about 31.3 billion. Then, let me now introduce you to the city where you'll come, which is Hyderabad. And Hyderabad is not just a city, but it, let's say, not one, not two, but three cities. So the state of Andhra Pradesh has the city of Hyderabad, the twin city of Charminar and Golconda, and the third city of Hyderabad. This state, the city, is not just - it is a city which has a history of 400 years old.
It is the fifth largest city and has tradition, culture and the technology. The city is a place of royal cuisine, so when you hear the word "Biryani", it has originated from the city, so it is the city of Nawabs that has a lot of interest in culture, food and art. You get to see that. And also, because of them, the city has also become a city of monuments and a city of birds, it is known, to quite a few.
Well, this is where you are, Hyderabad is equal distance between Dubai and Singapore, 7.5 hours from Frankfurt and London, 5 from Hong Kong and Singapore. You have at least a good very - no breaks in your journey, you have direct flights coming to Hyderabad from most of the major cities. Travel will not be a major issue.
Coming to the theme of IGF 2008, "Internet for All". This theme is of great interest to this country - reaching the next billion. India, in itself, is a country of more than a billion. So what better place than to have this IGF than in India? Also, it is a very vast and difficult terrain.
To reach out, the infrastructure has been a big effort from our end and you will get chance to interact and see, the promise of India in reaching out IT to its citizens across the nation. It is not just the problem, we are a country of 22 languages, and more, sorry, we have another language which has been added recently so 23 official languages but more than 800 living languages, 11 scripts and I do not know how many dialects that exist today in the country so to be able to reach out to, to give access, reach out, diversity and localness, in the country for all its citizens, the government and all its partners find it very challenging to reach out to IT and its services.
So what would attract you? What are the highlights we can bring you to this IGF meeting per se? It is the first time it has come to the Asian region. The first was at Athens, the second was Rio, Latin America, and now the Asian region. It will be well participated by many other countries which are our neighbours and we will get to see more and hear more from them when you visit. This is also being seen as a mid-review of the mandate given to IGF, therefore it will be wonderful if all of us could partake in the discussions and deliberations to see if we need to review or to take a direction further ahead for the mandate that IGF was given. The IGF Secretariat is coming out with a compendium of the deliberations of the first and second IGF meetings. This book will be released at IGF Hyderabad, which will be another very interesting book to look at.
And the most important thing that has made me feel that maybe I will be able to request more and more of your attention and participation at the IGF is the IGF has, the themes have become more specific. The first two IGF meetings discussed the access, diversity, openness, security, and the critical Internet resources but now we have gone ahead and got a little more specific on what we would like to deliberate on in the IGF meeting.
Last but not least, since you're coming to the cyber city, you have state-of-the-art IT campuses and you will get a chance to interact with them and get to know more of the young India, the young skilled India, members of the young India who would be keen to interact with you and maybe you will find discussions are interesting.
A quick review of the logistics support: state-of-the-art international airport that has come up in Hyderabad, which has at least 12 international flights into Hyderabad. We will, as the host country, take care of your immigration, also your visas if required. We will also be happy to extend any support for customs clearance. All this would require that we have a prior information of your itinerary to facilitate it for you in good time. A month's time would be a very good time for us to be able to reach out all that you would require from our end.
In terms of accommodation, the city of Hyderabad has large number of accommodations, we are talking not only in terms of the 5-star hotels but also budget hotels and also talking in terms of the service rooms. So therefore, the issue of accommodation is being handled with a range of accommodations available, which range from $1.50 to $250. So the accommodations will be very appropriate. Most of them do offer a WiFi included in the rate of the hotel. We will also provide reception at the airport and also have separate immigration desk at the airport for facilitating a quick entry into the country. And you will also have a travel desk at the venue so that in case there are any issues of ticketing or needing certain services you'll have a travel manager handling it for you at the site itself.
Last, I suppose, I will not want any of you to come to Hyderabad and miss visiting these historical sites. The Golconda Fort, the Charminar, the Falaknuma Palace and the Chowmahalla Palace. These are just a few and there are more, you can shop for and others.
I say thank you and in India, we welcome by saying "namaste", I would like to do it now, just like you see in the morning which is holding your hands and saying "namaste".
NARESH ADJWANI:
We would like to welcome you to our country where we ensure you more experiences than monument visits, he who moves around the trees... We look forward to your visit and also wish Rajesh to extend the invitation.
SPEAKER FROM THE FLOOR:
We welcome you to IGF 2008.
TULIKA PANDEY:
Thank you Rajesh, and thank you.
KEITH DAVIDSON:
Thank you, Talika. If anyone was sitting on the fence, I'm sure they are going online to check now.
Internet Governance hui
Tuesday, 26 August 2008
1630-1730.
KEITH DAVIDSON:
Can you hear us, Kanchana? Hello, can you hear us? Kanchana, can you hear us?
KANCHANA KANCHANASUT:
Yes, we can hear you.
KEITH DAVIDSON:
We're heading into the final session today and the panel is assembled to help with Internet operators and the first is appropriate Kanchana, please provide your presentation and if you would, just call for Paul Wilson to change the slides.
KANCHANA KANCHANASUT:
Can you see the slides? Good. All right, so what we would like to talk about is our experience for deploying the network that we were doing research on into action. DUMBO is the name of our project, it stands for Digital Ubiquitous Mobile Broadband OLSR, that is the procedure for the mobile network that we are using and we did the demonstration in December 2006 and using the elephants and we moved the elephants in the jungle and connected them together to get the OLSR.
This project was a joint collaborated program between AIT and Hipercom project with INRIA France, which is a very famous research institute and the WIDE project in Japan. Most of the funding came from the French ICT-Asia project, I Pauline, they funded our collaborative effort and meetings and so on. And 12R from Singapore and Live!E Project from Japan. We did the first presentation in December 2006 and we're now working on DUMBO II to be held in October 2008. For the design of this kind of network, we wanted this network to operate for an emergency situation. With that scenario, we do not think that one should wait for specialized equipment. We should rely on existing equipment that you can gather from ordinary people, from volunteers and so on. And so, our system should work with normal laptops, PDAs and PCs.
The system should be simple enough that we do not have to run, you know we do not have to train specialized engineers. It should require minimum training for people to work and make use of this and the system should be able to meet diverse requirements in an emergency situation and it should be of a wireless nature without having to wire their network. And it should be able to support multimedia applications, so you can have rich conversations and you can indicate sensor network if necessary, as well as applications such as face recognition.
So, sorry, my slides are slow. We designed our network scenario where you can construct mobile ad hoc networks at different disaster sites so you can see the two below. They represent a network within two disaster sites and all of them are connected using a long-range satellite link. You can replace this long-range satellite link by point-to-point WiFi if necessary. However, in our demonstration, we used this satellite link in order to link Phuket to Bangkok. We assumed that Bangkok was the headquarters of the rescue operation. And from the rescue operation centre, you can connect to the Internet and from there you can access the international expert in case of needs.
This is our experimental testbed; you know when we set up the testbed, we set up our satellite station using IP Star satellite and it took us three hours to set up that satellite dish. We used a normal laptop and PDAs and you know, our team ride on the elephants and they can talk to one another, they can talk to the headquarters and some of them may be working on the ground as you can see on the bottom right corner.
So we released the elephants to walk in inside the jungle and they can communicate to our headquarters. This is our simulated headquarters at AIT during the demonstration, so we were happy with the quality that we could receive from the field.
So, however, even after this, I'm not sure whether our technology was sufficient to be deployed, you know. Whether it was adequate - not sure about the primary aspect of the technology as yet. This is the example of our multimedia communications. You can see that we could set up video contrast with people on the field, OK on the left slide, you can see that we can communicate with people who are on elephant back or in some disaster state. And we can monitor the network performance at the same time. We tested our network with a censor - we connected our network to censor equipment in the project and we were able to send information from the sensor to the common headquarters. And our face recognition system also allows people in the field to capture video and send it to the headquarters and to search our database to pick up the people that were missing.
So, that was the part of DUMBO you know that came from our DUMBO research. And another group, a developer in the Asia-Pacific from Sri Lanka developed the system called Sahana which is an open source disaster management system that grew out of the 2004 tsunami, and this system allows you to help keep a record, a special record in order to track families and coordinate work and relief stations during and after a tsunami disaster. So since then, Sahana has been deployed in Government, NGO and UN and volunteer community level in many countries including Pakistan, Philippines, Indonesia, Peru, Lebanon, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and more. So it is very successful software. And Sahana could help us in building a missing person's registry, disaster victim registry, organization registry.
You can also incorporate a map into Sahana and this is a big help after a disaster, you can build your own GIF on top of the map that you can include it into Sahana. OK, so with the two locally developed systems, DUMBO and Sahana, we were able to take action for the Cyclone Nargis which happened in May 2008.
At that time, we were not sure when Cyclone Nargis hit, we were not sure of what to do, because we were working with DUMBO. I was not sure whether it could work because for research purposes, we had well-trained engineers and researchers so it was - I was not very confident about how to deploy DUMBO in a real life situation. However, this Cyclone Nargis kind of put pressure on us to take action, because you know, the people in the field need communication so we were not sure of what to do we were thinking of sending our people to Myanmar, but this would not work well so we decided to train people from Myanmar. There were five people sent from the Myanmar side, they came from the Myanmar
Computer Association. What I'm presenting to you now is the slides that came from them after the training, the five days training at AIT.
So, these are the names of the people that were sent to AIT for training.
After they finished the training, we asked them to plan their activities so this is what they released out - their plan to organize the activities in this way and they set up the line of their activities so you can see that occasionally, they have to report to the authorities and get approval in order to move to the next step, so it is - let's see for example on May 27 after returning to Myanmar, they had to make a presentation to the authorities to get approval. So it is not easy to manage.
They were deployed, Sahana and set up all the networks with the content and databases and the expression trip. Of course, they again had to get the statement approval from the authorities and they trained local people to work on the field. They set up the network and started launching the project. And this is a thank you note from them. Now, we asked them to summarize their experiences and lessons later and this is another set of their slides - their report on their activities since cyclone Nargis. We worked with an organization, we initially worked with an organization called Myanmar Egress which is a non-profit organization founded by Myanmar scholars and social workers who have been actively involved in a various civil society activities. This was set up in 2006. It had nothing to do with disaster management or anything like that and it turned out that after Cyclone Nargis, there were also - you know, they were also - their objective to handle the situation after the cyclone hit. OK, so they set this up called the Nargis Action Group.
So currently, they are deploying DUMBO and Sahana in Myanmar, and on the IT department of the Myanmar Egress, set up this network where they connect to sites, one in Rangoon and another which of the worst affected area in the centre. And the two centres are linked by a satellite link and on the ground, they have normal land or you have mobile ad hoc network.
So, this came from when they tested DUMBO successfully. By June 18, OK. These are the pictures that they sent, they too and from different offices, and July 1, they were trying to test the setting up of mobile ad hoc network in a village using our small single machine, but, it was raining so heavily that they could not work properly. Now, they said by July 3, we were able to deploy DUMBO in all of their department and they use DUMBO for interdepartmental communication, but within the site, whenever they send out workers to a village, they can use their DUMBO for their intra-communication where the workers can communicate using DUMBO. There is no DSM, so even today, there is nothing. They have CDMA but of course, it cannot be used.
This is the DUMBO headquarters in different slides, and so they claimed that things are working and these are some of the pictures that they took with the test when they were using DUMBO in the village and they also did their own training. They trained volunteers who were working for Nargis Action Group. This is a one-day training on DUMBO and Sahana. This is Sahana data entry.
So, they found that one of the issues, they can still not use - you know, we have provided them with long range WiFi point-to-point Internet, and they still cannot make use of that because of Government restrictions, and the weather has been raining heavily still. And we found that the battery life of our laptop is very limited and that affects the transmission and sometime the video option is not there.
So, thanks to the following organizations and you can see that APNIC is included in the thanking list. Many organizations there that took part in this event. Of course, Paul Wilson played an important role in trying to get many people to donate either providing financial support or sometimes providing equipment. DotAsia played an important role in this activity. They were actively involved in getting a donation for the EPC. So, this is the thanking note from the Myanmar people. So, as you can see, the help that they could receive from us, they liked it highly. This is the plan, to put DUMBO and Sahana at the heart of the operation, so they are hoping that this structure would - I mean, this is the organization that they are hoping for. I think the slides and our slides have not synchronized.
So, this is what we would like to recommend - after having been through this experience and I also discussed with the people in Myanmar Egress and I was there a few weeks ago, we would like to make this kind of proposal. OK, there should be - kind of this coordinating centre for disaster, you know post disaster coordination centre. Maybe from the Internet community and this one, this organization should have a kind of website that, you know have a collection of all the relief organizations, all kinds of useful technologies and case studies and no how, resources that we can access, you know expert based and everyone here. And tools that can be used as well as funding that we can access. These organizations should be able to help in terms of shipments of equipment from different places to the disaster site in order to help the relief operation, and thirdly, I think it is very important - this is very important.
We should try to train personnel to be able to construct emergency networks and of course, this kind of training should be done locally within their own country. For example, in the case of Myanmar, the most difficult thing is to get equipment and also to send people out of the country, so local training is needed and maybe this kind of training needs support from all of us. So, that's it, thank you.
KEITH DAVIDSON:
Thank you very much and most interesting project. I'm not sure where we can get the elephants in New Zealand!
I'm sorry panel, I hate to put pressure on you as a result of other speakers having absorbed time, but can I ask, can I impose upon you a five-minute slot each and I'll enforce at a certain point after that, a stop. I think it's really important and crucial that we do get some question time this afternoon as it is the feedback that is actually really critical to the outcome of this decision.
We have four more speakers so it will be about five minutes, can we either speak very quickly or abbreviate a little. Our first is Fred Christopher from PITA.
FRED CHRISTOPHER:
Thank you, Keith. First of all, I'd like to give thanks to APNIC for allowing us to participate, particularly for the IGF session as we are also planning to host a workshop in the IGF in India. Perhaps together with APNIC on access challenges for the Pacific Islands.
So, there seem to be challenges for Internet operators. I saw there the map of the Pacific Islands with all the countries. Now, you'll note that they're mostly made up of dots so there are some difficulties and challenges there.
Now, before I go on, let me introduce firstly the organisation that I work for which is commonly known as PITA, it stands for the Pacific Islands Telecommunications Association. It was formed about eight years ago as a non-profit organisation to represent the interests of the small Islands in the field of communications. So, it has been an effective forum where a lot of issues, common issues for the Pacific Islands have been taken up and consolidated as a representation.
So, having said that, the Pacific Islands is a very vast open space - about one third of the planet and it has thousands of small Islands and if you put the population together, it is about eight million. And we see here, APNIC represents about six million of that so about 10 million is spread over the other countries, so you can imagine the small Island populations and dispersed population challenges that the operators have in telecommunications but this is not only the case for the telecommunications, we'll also find this with transportation, export and import. So the Pacific Islands have quite a lot of special challenges. Probably special needs - assistance!
OK, I would like to have one of the operators come and do the presentation, but they were short, so I managed to put together something for everyone's benefit. The challenges that the Internet operators have with access and the challenges and the typical access scenario for the small Island countries, basically all are naturally dependant on the satellite except for Fiji, Papua New Guinea and some in the north. It is important not only for the international communications. And being small Islands, you have hundreds of small islands in one country, so you will have in some cases, Haiti, 157 islands and the example I have here is another one with 15 satellite stations. So you can imagine the difficulty and cost particularly with the satellite having to go twice to reach the outer Islands to have access to international destinations.
We also have rough terrain along which, you know makes satellite technology also being the most appropriate. And again, there's a heavy dependence on satellites there. On the last mile access, on the big Islands, we have copper and this is very expensive. There is also an introduction of wireless technology. It is cost effective, but again, there are quite a lot of challenges with the terrain, so you might have cases of a small Island with so many there. For the outer islands, maintenance means that a technician has to travel up to two weeks to go and restore services, so that's another major problem.
Power - in the Islands, that's a problem. And the initiatives from solar power should be encouraged as they generate the constant need for transportation for the small Islands.
We all know about the sinking Islands off the Pacific, so salinity is really an issue. I'm not sure when the Islands are sinking and we might have - we will have a 100% problem.
On the operational side with the Internet, SPAM is one of the major problems. For this particular country here, a small Island country, I used to block about 100,000 SPAM messages everyday, and this block made it to the destination, which means that they are taking up the bandwidth from where it originated to the
Islands, so it kind of cut off the bandwidth availability for the general communications. Growing peer-to-peer traffic which is welcoming a major problem**. One of the major challenges for the operators providing the satellite bandwidth or enough bandwidth for the demands of the Islands and generating that bigger and bigger chunks of the bandwidth appear to be a problem with music and movies and social networking.
So, some cases, they probably offer some packages to allow these activities to be handled for a very attractive pricing like unlimited bandwidth, but gives you access only in the evenings. In one case, I've known that they've kind of limited the bandwidth allocation for this kind of activity, so it allows the - it allows the activities to have enough bandwidth throughout the day.
Human resources for the Pacific Islands is an ongoing problem. We spend money to train staff. Once they get skilled, they'll find more and better working opportunities and places overseas so there's a lot of migration of skilled staff. Overseas training is expensive and one of the aims of PITA and other organizations that we work with like APNIC, we hold training in the region to await** and minimize costs.
That's some of the operator's problems that I managed to get. We have a few operators here who might want to contribute, but this is the table of Internet indicators, so with the country and the population in relation to the users, so we are taking some more time to update this table and ensure that we've got the necessary data to have this meaningful forever.
After that, as I mentioned earlier, we'll have a workshop in the IGF and with a multi-stakeholder approach and the service providers and policy makers and also if you have any other interests as well, please contact me and that's my address there.
That's all from me, Keith.
KEITH DAVIDSON:
Thank you very much. Our next speaker is Sylvia Cadena from APNIC staff to discuss wireless success and resources. Welcome to Sylvia.
SYLVIA CADENA:
Well, today I'm going to talk a little bit about my former job six months ago before moving to Australia, and the last bit of the conversation at the end would be about my current job, so I hope it is interesting for you all. I was participating last year in IGF and I was invited to bring to the table, the experiences from
the regional community, wireless networking for the last three years and that happened because the project that I was working on gained a lot of attention after breaking a world breaker and long distance wireless links using very low cost equipment like common use and indoor offices and spaces like that. Blue and black Cisco boxes that lead to the boxes and really big antennaes, our team reached 289 with 382 km connecting the mountains of the Andes in
Venezuela. This successful experiment brings a lot of attention to what we can really do with wireless and WiFi without having to wait for WiMax to really be ready and cheap, and the team of this experience, the team that led this experiment were able to show that the modifications to current equipment and lots of imagination and hard work, you can overcome geographic and market barriers and the possibility to expand it and modify it is also less expensive. But after we helped change the paradigm of what can really be done with the wireless that we have in this building which has been making us suffer for a few hours yesterday, there is also another set of questions that what you can do with that in terms of what are the platforms that you need to encourage collaboration among the people that are actually deploying the technology.
That this particular technology requires a lot of collaborative processes along with the frequency allocation processes, the use of the channels that are needed in terms of everybody to have a good experience when they are using the net. A lot of things, a lot of things can be accomplished through this collaborative platform like trying to make sense of the crunching numbers when you're going to training initiatives for example, or build consensus needed to provide the proper approach to the regulatory frameworks or barriers in particular countries and avoiding reinventing the wheel every time you need to do something or resolve a problem.
There are a lot of platforms around, but there is this question about how do you participate in those? How do you connect to those? If the language is not - if English is not your main language, like mine, so capacity building is also a key element, a key aspect of spreading the wireless or any other technology that comes around to solve a particular problem. And in this aspect translation and promotion of practical guides and local languages, it keeps again - it is still a need, although we have been talking about this for years and years about the necessities we have translated materials and technical guides and that. There is still a lot of need in that aspect to be done.
There is also a growing need of applied research that is integrated into low cost solutions, trying to cover really practical aspects of what you really need in terms of deploying your wireless network. So such as building antennas or recycling antennas or aligning antennas when trying to deploy a long distance link without having to buy equipment that is over the top, and how do you put your imagination to work and do something that is actually useful in terms of that?
There is also this need of work on energy management and applications that are sensitive to the amount of power that they consume and what the services are really needed in terms of the community that they're going to serve, and the administrative skills that are required to keep the projects up and running. Research should not be focussed only on the technical aspects of the bits and bytes going back and forth, but also about the need of - for example - the research on alternative distribution channels for the small companies that are - for example in Asia, producing various pieces of equipment that are needed in Latin America, but because we don't have direct links to this commerce world and we do have to pay a lot of money to bring the equipment in and deploy at the end, so a very cheap piece of equipment can turn into something expensive because of getting something from the other side of the ocean.
The other aspect that also we're seeing for all these years is about the regulatory framework that is needed to enable all these technologies to work and enable the scientists and the technicians and the practitioners who are deploying to actually come together and test things without breaking the law. And using frequencies in places that they shouldn't, or using things like voice over IP (VoIP) in places where it is illegal to do so or allocating frequencies which are restricted and insidious, but are not used in the rural areas but there is this legislation which is not allowing other areas to access these frequencies and use them to deploy their networks.
So, a different approach is also required to modify the regulations and so, the research I was talking about before also is an input for the regulators and how do they attach the equipment from the laws that they are writing and they're open-minded about how knowledgeable people can be with the current things and they can stop some of the innovations only by adding a comma or a word to it.
And my last point is about funding - how to get this technical community of people interested in doing interesting things and bringing everybody to the Internet, to actually grow and make sense of the proposals that can turn their ideas into projects which are actually sustainable and will be there to serve the people in different years to come. So, although there are many ways to get your hands to different opportunities, there's also like a different set of skills that people need in terms of being able to write those proposals and share what their ideas are and get their funding and negotiating. I encourage the technical community to step down or step up, I don't know what would be the right position - but to step up! To write their ideas and consider the tools or the services or the research that you produce will be useful for others and there's also a way to give back to the community and maybe with a small grants program like the APNIC and ISOC are running with a generous program from DotAsia of which there is a brochure in your delegate packet, with ideas to get your ideas funded and test the processes that you're willing to do. Don't only have wireless but other aspects of the Internet development.
KEITH DAVIDSON:
Thank you very much.
SYLVIA CADENA:
Sorry!
KEITH DAVIDSON:
Don't worry. Next we have Don Hollander from the Asia-Pacific APTLD among a various number of roles.
DON HOLLANDER:
I'll move very quickly. If you look at that, that's the same Pacific that Fred showed - just a different map. So we'll just go to the next slide so I would say that Keith is delighted because this is going quickly! Again, the same issues that Fred raises, the geography. It's a very diverse place, the economies are very diverse from first world countries in New Zealand and Australia and from very rich resource countries like PNG and Australia to very, very small places - PNG for example has - as Fred was saying, six million, and Niue has 1500 each, so probably less than these three conference rooms hold together can hold up an entire country, so just to give you an idea of the culture. And the telecommunications deployed are very different, and just to add to Fred's technology, short wave radio is still used in quite a number of places and there's a group in the Solomon Islands who use e-mail over short wave radio, so that's kind of neat. Given that I am the GM of APTLD, I'll talk about the ccTLDs and for those of you who are from ccTLDs, remember they focus on names and APNIC votes on numbers. So if you're a names person and you would like to join us at the bar about 6:30 or 6:45 just before we have the Cisco event, you would be more than welcome.
The diversity of the organizations is very strong. Some are private organizations, some are Government departments, some are not for profit organizations, it is again a wide gamete of organizational structures and what they do with their money also varies. Some of it of course goes into peoples' pockets and some goes into communities and at least two of the territories in the region, the revenue that they earn from their ccTLD provides free Internet for the entire country - I think that's quite an interesting thing.
So I'll go to the key issues slide next. As Fred said, there's a lack of resources and it is not just money, but it's time and it's people and it's people with the right skills and as Fred indicated, one of the challenges in the Pacific is once you get somebody with the right skills, they leave. So there's a program called PIP - Pacific Internet Partners - who are in support of the APNIC meeting here in Christchurch and the goal of that group is to provide and make sure that there are geeks in the Pacific that have a commitment to staying and living in the Pacific. So, we have a fair number of people from memory in that corner. I've got my spectacles off so I can't see, so we're just keen to make sure that everybody can be skilled and stay there. But in terms of Internet governance, it goes far more than the technology. It's about how you use the technology. So forget about the people here or even the people listening Online - it's how do people use it?
These are key issues, we need to build awareness. The fact that the Internet exists - what you can do with it - and how to keep people safe, how to keep people free and how to keep people safe. So, there are issues. There's cyber- crime issues, there's phishing issues and 418s and other sorts of scams and spams. But, they can't all be addressed through awareness building and education. And education is bible. APNIC take their major, I would have said, Paul, very geeky - but looking at the program, I realize there's stuff well and truly beyond.
You have the policy issues as well, but APNIC takes their meetings throughout the region and there are others who do that. APTLD also hold their meetings through the regions and APRICOT does the same. In the Pacific, PACNOG go around the region. They go from country to country and as it lands in a country, as it brings these hundred international people who are interested in the subject, it catalyses and provides a focal point for the country and there's usually a project or two that leaves stuff behind so I think that's something that is quite important. And I hope I'm within my five minutes, Keith. So, I would like to say thank you. I will provide the slides to APNIC and they no doubt will be on some website somewhere.
We'll also put them on the APTLD website. Again, if you're ccTLD in the region, please join us, and after that fantastic presentation on the Hyderabad IGF, APTLD will have our next meeting in Hyderabad on the 1st and 2nd, particularly given that we now have gratis visas. Thank you very much.
KEITH DAVIDSON:
And our final speaker this afternoon is someone who needs no introduction to the group. Hi Paul. You wanted an introduction to give you time to get the slides ready?
PAUL WILSON:
Give me an introduction! Sorry about the delay, particularly at this late stage of the proceedings. I was going to make some quite brief comments anyway and I'll keep them even briefer. I will just put up a couple of things on to the screen however.
One reason for keeping them brief is the late time of the day. The other is that you'll be hearing plenty from me, particularly towards the end of the week. I don't want to outstay my welcome.
I just had - I was intending to reflect a little bit on some of the work that I used to do before coming to APNIC and I was involved with quite a number of projects in Internet infrastructure development in developing countries from - well initially working on pre-Internet work in Australia, but then from 1990 onwards, Internet providers in developing countries in places like Brazil and
Mongolia and through South Asia and there were quite a few challenges way back then which had to do with educating people about what this networking was all about, even before the Internet was something that people could even find.
Training was an education-worthy major challenge at the time before. Before infrastructure could be built, training and education had to follow awareness building, building the infrastructure itself was quite a challenge and a long time ago, it was all dial-up modems and this was pre-mobile telephony where the copper wires had to be laid in the ground and it was very common back in those days for a telephone line to take more than a year to be delivered from order. There were queues of thousands of people waiting for phone lines. The only way to get up the queue was to generally pay enormous amounts of money - unofficially to get a phone line within that expected delivery of a year or two.
There were no international and national policies about the Internet as such and of course, those were in the old days of telecommunications, so of traditional telecommunications, so the cost of international connectivity was enormous - the monthly cost of maybe US$10,000 for a line. I think this was well before people were using networks around the world so you could say that the challenge back then was getting the first million people online.
Just coming forward to today and where we are today, I'm leaping here into the familiar business of IP address distribution and I've just taken some statistics from the regions, the five regions in which we've got regional Internet registries today and looking at the IP addresses per head of population in each of the regions. This includes RIR allocations and the historical allocations. We have the AfriNIC region with 0.02 of an IP address allocation. APNIC 0.14. ARIN 4.04 in 2008. So, what that shows is that even today, it is a huge disparity and there must be a huge amount of the Internet in a region like AfriNIC where there's 0.02 of an address per population and there's a huge amount of work to do and we know that there's a huge amount of work to do to develop that network.
The significance of 2011 is something that wouldn't have been on you if you were at the hypothetical this morning, that's when we're expecting the IPv4 addresses to run out and there have been some projections for 2011 and those predictions look at where the IP addresses will be deployed based on current allocation rates in different regions. So by 2011, we'll see that the AfriNIC region will have risen from 0.02 to 0.06. And the rest of the world increases are minor, but the overall picture is one of ongoing disparity. There's no solution in the next three years to no radical change expected in the disparity of Internet development around the world, and so, at 2011, we're all facing challenges that are going to be coming to a head at that time in particular. What we see today is that if you look at where with the Internet development, where work is being done in developing areas of the world, the challenges are actually the same very familiar and largely the same, raising awareness at a different level. There is still a huge amount of training and awareness to be done.
Building infrastructure is still being done everywhere and we see it as hugely challenging in the amount of infrastructure that would potentially be needed to bring us up to a level of comparable distribution of imminent services around the world. This has all got to do with national and international policies which are the subjects of heated debates, and the challenge these days is not getting the first million but getting the next billion online, but just saying that the next lot will bring us up to two billion. We have four billion people still once this challenge is met, four billion people still not get served, so the challenge of developing the Internet not through so much developing Internet countries but developing countries and developed countries within the larger
economies of the world, this is a challenge that's going to be going on.
So, a few things have changed as well in this time. Some of the - or most of the challenges are fundamentally the same challenge in nature, but the scope and scale has changed. There's a huge diversity of new technologies that's happening and a time scale compression that is even more of a challenge.
IP addressing is something that's changing and the point of putting the figures up is to point out that v4 consumption which is already a challenge for the developing countries, for the developed countries it is coming along. For the developed countries, it is harder than developing. So, as I say, the same challenges in many different forms and in fact, I would say in many different forms, bigger challenges.
What I'm really getting to here is what could be the role of APNIC in this whole scene and it's always had as part of its mission, a mission and priority to assist in the development of the Internet in and around the Asia Pacific region, so we're not just involved and never have just been involved solely in resource allocation and registration, but there are many more things that we are doing and have gradually increased our activities over the years in terms of looking at resource security which is a big issue these days. The policy coordination and development which is why we're here in this meeting this week. Training and education is a high priority, providing some Internet support, particularly in developing countries with things like root server deployment and structure services as well of which an example is also root server deployments.
The operational support is also a type which is coming back to education and training, a support that APNIC has been able to give to groups like PACNOG and and SANOG and others. There are responsibilities and roles and possibilities that come not only from our initial founding mission, but also through the regular surveying of APNIC members who have been repeatedly over three successive surveys suggesting that we continue moving in these areas.
I think from everything that we've heard here from the co-panellists here, it seems that there are still - as I've said - plenty of challenges and plenty of ways in which I think APNIC can continue to be active, possibly more active according to the needs of the stakeholders and the members of APNIC.
So, those are my brief thoughts but I would like to mention that I haven't had the chance to mention this yet, but we are in the process now of launching the next survey of the APNIC members and stakeholders and I think this is a good opportunity here and now to be mentioning that. That survey will be in preparation starting from now and going on for a couple of months and I'll introduce John at the back of the room there. He helped us with the preparation of this survey and I think particularly in terms of the way if you're interested of being in this there, I think that the EC would appreciate more of your thoughts particularly in connection with these topics and those sorts of activities and hopefully we might be able to continue or even increase in the future. Thank you very much.
KEITH DAVIDSON:
I think we have a few minutes for some questions. Anybody have any questions they would like to raise? Shall I pick up my microphone and go walking? Have you all had enough of today?
I think there is an ideal mail list opportunity for you all, the APOPS mail list where you can continue discussions and raise issues that you might have. So, if there are no questions, I would like to thank the panel and all the speakers and presenters this afternoon for their contributions, it's been fantastic. I don't think we got any answers but boy, we got some questions. I think in particular, Raul would love to hear from you if you've got some major and significant issues that you feel the IGF should be looking at late in this year, but thank you all very much. Ka kite ano.
SAM DICKINSON:
If you want to stay around in the room or come back in ten minutes, we'll be having the IPv6 at your finger tips session so there's lots of gifts coming out, so if you want freebies, come back in ten minutes.
(End of session)
