The following are the outputs of the real-time captioning taken during the Eleventh Annual Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Jalisco, Mexico, from 5 to 9 December 2016. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the event, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
***
>> Hi, everyone.
>> Hi, everybody. Welcome to Workshop 5. I have some advice for you for the correct development of the investigation.
We have this remote mic. So if you're second row, you can use it. But first say I need it and wait till it arrives for quality and streaming. And please stand up when you're talking. And if you are on table, please use the desktop mics, please. We are five minutes now, so we are starting in a minute.
Thank you very much and welcome.
>> LUCA BELLI: Good morning to everyone. I think we can get started while we wait for.
>> ALEJANDRO PISANTY: Ledge to join us. He just wrote me he is on his way. So welcome to this first General Assembly on community connectivity. The event will be divided in three segments. We will start with what is meant to be state of connective they and provocative ideas and provocative thinking on why we still have 4 billion people that are not connected and what the community we will further analyze this will be in the second segment divided with some case studies, some stakeholder perspective on specific issues related to connectivity and then, finally, in the last segment, we will discuss together, we will try to crowd source, to refine the declaration on community connectivity that has been elaborated by the connectivity committee over the past few months. There are actually two main outcomes that have been elaborated by the dynamic community connectivity collaboration. You can go on the website, the IGF, to take a survey to say what you think about the declaration and what points maybe could be modified. And the other outcome that will be presented on Wednesday at half past 10 is our first report on community connectivity where we discuss governance of community networks and case studies of community networks. There are a lot of very smart and interesting people that have been contributing to this. So we will have the possibility to thank them all on Wednesday morning at half past 10.
So to provide a couple of words of introduction why we have decided to have this meeting and also to organise a series of events over the week until next Saturday. There will be a closing event at the University of Guadalajara. Is it we all know that connectivity taxes is becoming increasingly essential but we know there are had billion people that are not connected yet. And so therefore there is something that is not working properly. We have different strategies that were put in place over the past 20 years, 30 years, but 4 billion people are still offline. The majority of those people are low income population, ruler of population. For sure there are several kind of digital divides. But the rural are the most striking and evident digital divides striking population to be ‑‑ so to start the first segment understanding the state of connectivity. We will start with Manuel Haces from the U.S. Department of State that has been behind the global connect initiative. Then we will pass through Alejandro Pisanty, as soon as he will come here.
Alejandro Pisanty, for those who don't know him, is very known Internet activist and academic here in Mexico. And then we will close this first segment with Bob Frankston who has been a pioneer on Internet networking and one I think we can call him the father of home networking. So we will have a very interesting segment. I would ask for Manu to start while we are waiting for Alejandro to join us.
>> MANU BARDWAJ: Thank you, Luca, and thank you to the IGF for putting together this community and thinking about connectivity. We launched global connect the initiative September of last year we launched it right when all the governments were adopting the 2030 sustainable agenda and its goals. And we did that strategically to highlight the importance of the Internet in achieving all of the SDGs. And we also kind of, in order to catalyze action, highlighted a specific metric to try to connect 1.5 billion people by 2020. This is an international metric.
But a recent study found that the 90 percent is covered by mobile broadband. Only about 50 percent of those people are actually connected or online. Meaning that half of the population while being in a region with coverage cannot actually connect to the mobile Internet.
Research into this cause reveals many barriers to Internet use. One is lack of locally relevant content. Lack of digital literacy and skills and limited affordability among segments. Population. I also want to provide another observation which is there are countries in the region that are doing really well. Mexico's doing really well. Chile, Brazil, Colombia, United States. Mexico, for example, we'll hear more soon ranks very strong with 123 million users and an adoption rate of 56 percent. But then there are countries that are not doing well. Bolivia, Belize, Paraguay are lagging in the region with adoption rates that are 40, 41, 42 percent. I would say and I'm interested in kind of talking about this. But there's probably a reason why access is relatively high in Colombia and relatively low in Bolivia. There's a reason it might be in Chilean more in another country so o people in poor or remote areas. The starting point is for every country to have a clear and comprehensive broadband plan that encourages competition removes bureaucratic obstacles and takes full advantage of shared Internet centres at schools, Internet cafes and libraries. That's why the United States launched the global initiative 14 months ago. The strong coalition really sought to leverage the strength of stakeholders in the technical community, the finance community and really elevate political connective they to senior people in the cabinet, finance ministers, why connectivity is important.
One of the ways that we did that is we convened a meeting during spring bank fund. For those who don't know. The spring bank fund is when all the finance ministers, all the banks get together to talk about their global priorities. And in April we made it an all about the Internet. We brought John Kerry, Jim Kim, all the MDGs and we talked about how important connectivity is to their own country. And we got certain agreements working with the World Bank and Jim Kim. One is we want to see transformative increases in lending. The second one was a call to action, that we wanted to see a double in public and private funding from 2020 from all stakeholders. The third was to recognize the cross‑cutting impacts on healthcare, education, all aspects. We're really proud of that effort, but there's so much more work to be done.
Through this initiative, we plan to plan to continue to partner with our key strategic partners, Internet Society, World Bank, IEEE, ITU, really broad coalition of stakeholders and continue to highlight the prominence and importance of connectivity at all the future bank fund meetings. It meets twice a year in April and October. This will be a recurring theme for every single one.
Second, we were taking a listening first approach and we're basically saying to governments that are interested, if there's a way that we can help you, we being the U.S. government and coalition of countries, which now is about 40, meet your broadband goals. Whether it's more technical assistance, more financing, more funding, through this approach, we are ready and available and hoping to be helpful. Since the launch of the initiative the U.S. government has announced almost $2 billion in financing and funding from organizations like the overseas investment coalition to Myanmar, Kenya, a number of countries in partnership with private companies. We also have announced programmes from USA ID and others. And we're encouraging other countries that are able to provide this type of development assistance to also do the same. Buttes what I am most worried about because I want this to be a conversation is there's so much interest today in connectivity with companies, with governments there's so much talk. Yet the last year of state of broadband report from the ITU said that we only got .3 billion more people online. We have to really think strategically about how can we make progress going forward to really connect the rest I think you said 4 billion people because the Internet is one of the most amazing inventions of mankind but it could also become something very different. It could actually drive inequality. And we don't want to see that. We want to really work with everybody here at the IGF and going forward to think about what is it that we can do better to leverage the expertise in this room and at the IGF to really accelerate progress. So thank you so much for the opportunity and looking forward to the discussion.
>> LUCA BELLI: Thank you for perfectly respecting the time. There are still a couple of chairs here if you want to have a seat. So thanks a lot for highlighting the relevant and instrumental role that connectivity plays to really achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. The fact that there are a lot of stakeholders that are not at the table when these discussions are held. And also the fact that I would say that not only the finance ministers and governments are not at the table, but as we will try to show over the week, also some very smart and passionate people that are building connectivity frequently are not included in the discussion. And the purpose of this week of events is also to include those people. So I would like to have the comments of Alejandro on the state of connectivity here in Mexico in Latin America. I know he is always a lot of interesting provocative and excellent talks on this.
>> ALEJANDRO PISANTY: And stupid ones, as well, I'll try to avoid those. My name is Alejandro Pisanty. If you still need that welcome to Mexico, for my part, I realized during several conversations please allow me 30 seconds before I get into the matter. I have realized during several conversations this morning that some of you may need an additional ‑‑ may benefit from an additional word of welcome, which is welcome to the high altitudes of central high plans of Mexico. It is not as high as Mexico City but almost as high as Denver in the U.S. And at these altitudes of 1500 meters above sea level in Europe, you only have key stations. So if any of you feels dizzy, a headache, dry nose, dry throat or wobbly legs, if your legs fail you after climbing stairs fast it's not the IGF and it's nothing wrong with you. It's just the altitude. Take it easy for a day or two. Drink lots of water and juice.
For the Europeans I may add and Americans not that of but for the Europeans, I may add, enjoy the orange juice. Once you see what we call a normal sized glass of orange juice, you'll feel it's a barrel and you'll cry next time you ask for a glass of orange juice in England or continental Europe. So day after tomorrow you can enjoy all the Tequila you want. Fail at the attribution problem for what is making you dizzy. Thank you for your attention and patience. Connecting the poor, the marginalised faces many more difficulties. People more expert than myself. Others can speak better about the challenges. Considering the way communications have been built. Considering the technologies that are mainstream and that are most business friendly for big companies and big projects, even the physics is against us. We're trying to build. We're climbing a hill that has already been climbed through optical fiber and communications, et cetera. Every single piece of equipment or every person connected needs for us to deal more smartly with the physics of low power densities, difficult distributions of satellites have a nice of nice properties. But they are not always built in a way that scales well. And we really need to look at the different levels even at that level. Get gear, we know, for example, I hope Mahabir was going to be in this session. You should be taking the microphone.
>> LUCA BELLI: He will take the microphone in the next.
>> ALEJANDRO PISANTY: I shouldn't be talking about before him. Hermano‑‑ and others for the same model, the same distribution of signals. But to have to look even at the physical level, try to understand what the different challenges and with lots of fiber into city blocks where you're going to be paying for it. The reason we have chosen that physics instead of this other physics is money and not only physics. That's what I said at the beginning, it makes more business sense to do that with fiber than with distributed signals.
So the economy has been built in a way that is not favorable to community networks. It has made us choose a physics that is not favorable. In the end, money is very scarce. The return on investment is very slow and limited. And getting worse in that sense. There's another complicated thing you can think about community networks, which is every small village, every small set of ‑‑ or homes in the counsel ‑‑ huts or homes in the country side are unique. But you can't have 25 million or 25 million unique sites that don't have something in common. There has to be something in common but what keeps us from realising what we have in common is that they are badly communicated from the start. It's a vicious circle in this sense. They don't know that the next village has the same unique absolutely local problem here in the coast of the Caribbean doesn't know that someone in the him an lie I can't say ‑‑ Himalayas as solved the problem. There's no big commercial push bringing gear to these communities at the prices they can pay. And even when that, you manage to get a piece of that to happen, coordination is difficult. But the most important part we often bump against is regulation, law and public policy. We have policies that are explicitly in favor of connecting the unconnected, of doing the utmost effort, huge budgets. But once you have a big country and you have all the local subdivisions, it's very hard to get that money to have an effect that spills down to the local contributions.
We are facing in Mexico situations like this. We have had a very significant reform of the telecommunications regulations and laws. Which allowed for a huge decrease in prices for telecommunications. This in turn has brought millions of mobile phones into the country. We have many more let's say distributed spaces, spots where you can connect things to. And still we have 50 percent officially 40 percent of the population that we cannot connect. If you look at the number of sites, it's immense. And each one of them is going to need a solution where you can connect something that makes sense economic and regulatory sense for 500 people. Whereas in cities you're used to 500 people in a building or in a building block.
We work ‑‑ Mexico works with Telcos. Mexico is building very complex backbone projects which is going to be a public/private partnership that will use the fiber that is along the electrical utility high tension cables together with a reserve spectrum in the 700 megahertz band which has been set aside by a huge investment in the transition to terrestrial digital television. Digital television became a critical point in the universal access project because it freed the band. And it totally freed the band in one night over the night of December 31 last year. But there are difficulties again to be dealt with with the 700 megahertz band. You need telephones that operate. You need mobile devise that operate on that. You need a lot of other things and then the model for getting that to the payable is mobile, virtual network operators that is resellers, this backbone, big backbone is going to be privately operated and will not be able to allow to sell to the public but will have to sell to intermediaries. So it's a complex architecture and it even depends on some properties of the electronics of the phone so that they can deal with multi‑vendor capacities and so forth in the phone. So it's a complex project.
And in the meantime, even if it were something that's going to work fully and smoothly, it's something that will for now has us four years working on it, and we still have millions of people who are not able to reach. So it's not a complaint. This is basically trying to make an assessment of the situation on the ground. I'm optimistic mostly. But we find similar situations now if you go to more ‑‑ other Developing Countries. Whatever the model is you still find that the edges are expensive. Hard to reach and filled with wrong incentives. The last point is that many of us think that if it's bad business, then it should be subsidized, should be paid for by the government and so forth. Whereas on the other hand, we cannot get these communities to actually pay for the service as if it were a commercial one because it takes some time for them to actually get some personal profit investment from these expenses. Very smart young people and very smart grownups.
Even one small piece of gear once a year when they go to market are able to bring into town lots of information that helps them educate themselves, that helps them keep healthier than they would otherwise. And in some cases where a single message over what's up now previously over SMS can make a big difference. If that message is the price of tomatoes at which the market is buying tomatoes Mexico City, Puebla and Veracruz, so he will know where to send his pickup truck to get the best price. Thank you.
>> LUCA BELLI: Thank you, Alejandro for this and highlighting two very interesting points. The fact that there are a lot of very particular problems in every single reality, to that I would also say the effort we are starting to do starting with this report is map those problems because many of them although they are unique may be similar. So having ‑‑ knowing how people have faced and coped with those problems and maybe having operated solutions that could help other people that are in the same situation to solve the problem.
Another very important issue is about policy. The fact that it is not only ‑‑ and here I join what Manu was saying, it is not only the fact of having very brilliant smart people willing to do things but an environment that allows you to do things. And then we have more on this and the next section. I saw that Bob was already boiling a couple of minutes ago, so I am sure that he will have some remarks on this. So please, Bob, go ahead.
>> BOB FRANKSTON: Okay have I'm glad I'm listed as provocative so I can start out.
Let me ask a question. Can people afford to use the sidewalk? Sidewalks and roads are very expensive. Yet we make them affordable. As a matter of fact, they're free to use. They're very expensive but they're free to use. Because you recognize sidewalks are part of the basic infrastructure Vint and it doesn't make sense to charge people for walks.
There is a business for sidewalks is where you charge the communities for using the sidewalks as a whole.
Now, I could understand why we're stuck in a narrative telecommunications because the last millennia you would basically have a business of carrying messages to people. You would give a postal worker a message. They would carry intact. Telegraphy was like freight. Even telephone calls needed careful management.
But the Internet is a complete break for that past and I think we've wasted 20 years putting fiber all over the place. We could have done this all over the initial copper by changing a few inexpensive line cards because the Internet is not a thing. It's not a place you access. It's a technique we use to programme around or create our own solutions.
Now, when I say that it doesn't make sense. How could a computer, the Internet with concrete? But I'm a programmer. I look at the raw materials I could use. And one story I tell is when a group of us after a night of programming decided to go out and get breakfast. I don't know if you know what American French toast is, apologies to the French to are the name, but the diner was told we're out of French toast we're out of bread. Are you out of eggs? No. We're out of milk? No. He didn't know how to make French toast. We gave him the recipe and he was able to make French toast. We didn't accept his he can't do it. That's really what software is.
And over the years we've developed the techniques for us to create our own solution at the edge. And it's purely about economics. There is no physical limit any more than running out of the color blue. We've developed this because longer target can go into the history of how we developed mythologies you needed. Special tracks and things to keep messages intact. But instead of I want to talk about how I discovered this. Take on my journey. Because I started programming when programming was of simpler.
How many of you know what a punch card is? The way you programme is you put each line of code on a piece of cardboard. It's hard to imagine but that's how simple things were. You could look at computer circuits and look at every which are and figure out how it worked.
So you start up with that level of understanding you sort of realise that you don't have to accept complexity.
But I also learned a lesson. That was 1963 when I first learned to programme. Half a Century ago in 1966, I got a chance to build one of the only informational services. So at that period I went from the simple instructions, you had to build a very complex realtime systems that a lot of people interacting and we built our own networks, we created our own services and as a kid who's fearless, you can do it and build yourself. I do have a tendency find the elevator back there. Nobody told me. So I had this tendency to explore and see what's possible. And I was growing up just as software is giving us this tool.
So as an aside, I also learned about finance, so I don't take that as seriously, either.
But it's that experience that I approach the Internet with. And it also at that time took a terminal home. This was half a Century ago. Personal computing, the reason I say personal computing is outside of my job I can explore and discover. I didn't have to worry about the financing of it. And that's the way I discovered the future.
What do we really want to give people? What do we mean by giving them the Internet? We want to give them opportunity. We don't care about giving them the Web. That's one thing they could do themselves. More phone calls. All these are simply apps anybody can run and anybody can write.
What's important about the Internet as a concept, whatever you mean by that term, is the opportunity to do things using the raw materials. Now, after that job, which happened on Wall Street, I got to MIT. And I didn't just study computers, the fun stuff, I also studied cognitive psychology. How do people communicate? Where is meaning? How do people share concepts? And that's been very important for me to understand the Internet because it's really about what it means to communicate.
The word communication, telecommunications has nothing to do with what people do when they communicate. Just language works because if you can find two telecommunication wires you'll just re‑purpose that word. We use the word broadband which has a technical meaning, it is now a business model. So we have to be careful with language which prevents us from communicating.
And one important class I have been taking at MIT, we studied a network called Aloha net. What's special about Aloha net is there was no network. It was just computers with radios, kind of like WiFi sending each other packets. Now, earlier I said telecommunication, you sent a message. You would get this whole piece of paper the telecommunication provider would say: Make sure this gets there intact.
Instead, we just do this. Turn it into little pieces, number each one and throw them up in the air and they get reassembled at the other end into a meaningful message. But if we lose a few words talking backwards, doesn't matter. You can put them together and figure out what I meant. So you lose a few, retransmit. Programme around. We don't depend on the provider. We take these unreliable packets, meaningless numbers to anybody in the middle, and out of it we recreate the services to be depending upon the telecommunication service provider. Without the guy in the middle, there is nobody to pay. There is nothing to pay for. We could send the package, anyway. We don't need the pipes. We don't need any particular technology. We don't need fibers. We can use them all but it's just like sidewalks. Sidewalks facilitate walking. They're not required. So communities do sidewalks to help the communities but it doesn't prevent people from walking. As a matter of fact, it's the walking around they want to improve. If we put line cards on copper wires to give people open connectivity without somebody in the middle having to make money at a profit centre. If you had to do for profit sidewalks, the only way is basically preventing you from walking, instead we need economic models which encourage supporting the community. And if all we need is best efforts package then we can do that. Fortunately, I took the class, I didn't fully understand that. But some other people at the time understood that if you want to interconnect all the networks in the world, if you had to make them all work together, you would have failed. We try to make it all work together, worry about making this radio work with this. It doesn't matter. All we need to do is exchange raw package and hope enough of them get through. Then you could Internet work. The key to the Internet is we're not solving the problems. We're simply giving raw material. We're not worried about connectivity. We start out with separate networks that are interconnected and it was simple to do the interconnection local networks. And it's understanding how that best efforts work that gave us today's Internet. The problem is: As with Aloha net, we can make it look like telecommunications so we could maintain the old narrative but it's completely different thing. There's nothing to pay for it and nothing in the middle. And it is about creating opportunity. After I left MIT, first electronics spreadsheet. Now that was a trivial computer. Equivalent to 1 million of the computers. But we took the intermediate out of the loop. People were able to work directly with numbers themselves. They didn't have to explain to programmer. Calculations people can do. That little leverage point just like raw packets enable the Internet. Luca mentioned home network. Eventual found myself at Microsoft. And Microsoft wanted me to move to Seattle. My wife wanted to stay in Boston you can guess who won.
So I called my house the Boston area research facility and set up home network because it's trivial to set up networks. Though at the time we were told home networking needed professionals. I didn't know why. So I set upon when I was at Microsoft, removing anything that made connectivity hard. Thanks to software I can do that. But at that time we had a thing called broadband just coming in.
Now, people old enough to remember, everybody's phone line you pay another monthly fee. When you got another television, you pay a monthly fee. You got another computer, they want to charge a monthly fee. They also want to charge you every purchase. This is a telephone classic telecommunications business model. Mini tell did it. I didn't see why I connect my computers together and just needed one connection to the rest of the world. So I basically put in the support for the now familiar router at the edge of the house. So also you need was a tunnel to the rest of the world. Now the phone company cannot charge you for new connections and AT&T's business model collapsed but that's minor, except to them.
Just to give you a sense of how reverse that paradigm was, how many of you know what a dial tone is? Nobody remembers dial tones? The signal for the phone company that they could handle your phone call. So I did some work on the phone monitors. The phone company was puzzled. This he heard a dial tone. But it wasn't coming from them. It was coming from inside my house. I was generating that service myself.
So basically I gave people control of their own connectivity. And that's really what is connectivity from the edge.
Now, okay. So let me tell you another story that really helps understand what the Internet, how different it is.
In 1998, my mother wanted to send a toy to my nephew in Seattle. She was in New York. So she gave me the toy. And if she ‑‑ well the postal services which is like giving a message to the phone company. They would have had to carry it across the country and everything. She gave it to me. I said it will be there in an hour. And in fact the toy went from New York to Seattle in less than an hour without existing in the middle. No energy used. Nothing. No media in the middle.
Now, some of you might figure out. I sent the Radio Shack part number to my brother who bought the part for his son. You could say that's not the same toy. That's really what the phone companies would say because they don't know the purpose. But I knew that it was the same toy as for any useful purpose. And that's liberating.
And the Internet where we connect services outside any network where there's no service provider to second you allows that innovation. And that's why if we use existing copper wires. Remember the Internet started with dialup. The Web was with dialup. The speed came because we made it about video, because video gives perceived value. But the actual value is single message, the price of tomatoes, whether you're having a heart attack is infinitely higher. Yet by trying to make the connectivity a profit centre instead of making it like sidewalks, we prevent people from discovering new value. And buy not understanding software, we don't see that it's actually just wires, radios, things we can do ourselves without depending upon a provider. And once communities understand how to do that, they're liberated. And it's really teaching communities how to create their own solutions.
For example, if you have a single cellular pipe coming into your village, if you share that as a resource, that becomes a resource. Instead of every time you have a phone, you have to register it.
And also connectivity locally is just as important as connectivity to the distance. Just like ‑‑ is doing. If you want to connect to your neighbors that doesn't depend on the rest of the world. The Internet came from local connectivity at the edge rather than connecting everything from the centre. And it's about knowledge. The knowledge of how to do it. Nobody has room for you. Knot dependent upon providers. Once you understand how to provide this, anybody can do the networking by themselves and they can share that expertise.
Now lawyer talk I would say it's not just about communicating. It's also about APIs. In other words, when you get a train schedule, you want Google maps how to ask, think about all the information you can get about where you are, the train schedule. All that's very expensive. GPS billions of dollars yet because it's free to use it's transformative. We have to understand the difference between free and free to use. If we fund things with models that don't prevent discovery, we get value for society as a whole. What we need to do is educate people how to create their own solutions and how to help others. I argue we have the physical facilities just about everywhere. It's amazing where cellular phones are. If we take the same facilities, change without economics at all. Now the physics will change. That dialup phone wire, a USB cable that gives you 20 gigabytes of copper. The people who say you need fiber do not understand how markets work. We'll discover how to get that performance. And the simple idea of sending the part number of that toy instead of the toy, that's the trillion to 1 improvements you get by simply knowing how to do it. And I worry that all this time we spent on fibers created stakeholders. In the past with telecom instead of you empowering people to create their own solutions. That's what we need to do, to empower communities to communicate locally, among their friends. Doesn't matter if the guaranteed voice will work. The market will drive capacity. The reason we have Voice over IP is we tried an experiment. We created two systems, one was the current SS7 phone network. The best system in the world. Guaranteed phone call quality work. Was very expensive, which is built for that purpose. And can do voice wonderful.
We did another experiment with the Internet. We said we don't care what happens. Accidentally it gave Tim Burnsly the chance to do the Web. The Web drove capacity. We discovered voice worked as an accidental by‑product of the Web. And not only did we get voice, but we got video and there was nobody charging it for you and nobody was doing it as a favor. That was a dynamic. Hard to understand. Indirect always worry about cost and effect is backwards.
So the question is how do we create opportunity? How do we empower people to create their own solutions? And how do we get that understanding of the new literacy out? Basic this is our new infrastructure. Understanding this is a disconnect from basically the previous world of telecommunications as a service. It's almost like saying people doing their own social networking rather than having arranged marriages.
>> LUCA BELLI: Thanks, Bob, for being very provocative as usual. I really enjoyed it. I think the very important message is that the paradigm that we have had so far is not the only possibility. The Internet one of the greatest things about the Internet is empowered edges and allows people to do whatever they want, basically. It's a matter as you perfectly said, a matter of knowledge and knowing how to do things in order to be empowered and be able to do things.
So another very important element we have to bring into discussion is how to educate, how to spread this kind of knowledge, how to empower people, how to let them be their own connectivity providers.
So with all these very excellent initial comments, I would like to open the floor for comments and questions before we pass the second segment. So please, if you have any comments, questions, remarks, please go ahead and raise your hand.
>> My name is Pedro from Brazil. I want to an comment sometimes when I hear people speaking on community networks and connecting the borders of unconnected people, I think that some make it sound too easy. I hear my friend from Mexico speaking. I can see all the problems he raised relates a lot to Brazil. The differences in geography, the technicalities of each region makes it really hard.
Just a comment from Bob, yes? You mentioned making sidewalks affordable. Where I come from, making a sidewalk is reason for mayor to be reelected because it's not affordable at all. So imagine Internet. It's a region where FM radio is still hard to get because simply because of the geography of rolling hills. Just picture Internet. So I'd like to hear more. How can we ‑‑ I don't see the economics being the only point. I can really see ‑‑ please convince me that economics are enough to change it because we have huge problems in specific areas of each region that are just too significant. I think that rich countries, they both have more money and they also really small and concentrated and makes community networks a lot easier than, for example, somewhere in Brazil where you can walk for 100‑kilometers to get to another person.
>> LUCA BELLI: We can take two more questions or comments and then the panel.
>> Hello. Me? Yes. I'm Luis Martinez from Mexico. And I kind of agree more than our colleague from Brazil that just spoke. Really, after all this experience working in community networking, what I have learned and my team has learned is that economics is not the solution for networking and bringing people into the Internet. The real challenge is cultural. Yes, people living in areas where still you don't get telephone, radio or television, which are a lot in this world. Really need a lot of effort to understand what are if benefits they're going to get from the connecting to the community. Hence, the world is not flat. It has a lot of mountains. And it makes very complicated. But culture can bring these barriers down. We need to think how they are going to explain these people, what are the benefits of getting connected? And then worried about what engineering can bring these people, a connection to the Internet. Thank you.
>> LUCA BELLI: Yes, we had a third comment there and then we can go back to the panel.
>> Yes. Perhaps going into the more specific technical problems of connectivity, we talked ‑‑ I agree. I'm Juan Ortiz from Argentina. I agree with my Latin American colleagues about the economic difficulties. And I wanted to know how you thought the government would achieve universal access policies? In Mexico, they have pro grove called Mexico connectado, which relies ‑‑ it is that they have incentives to connect connected areas rather than unconnected. It's cheaper. And people in connected areas have more resources. So they are probably to buy the product once the infrastructure is set. So how do we get the service to those areas?
>> LUCA BELLI: So we could have a quick round of replies. Bob, Alejandro and then I think Manu has comment.
>> BOB FRANKSTON: First, I want to make it clear. Equating culture and economics is really an understanding of seeing the value is very important. It's like the sidewalk examples. If the community as a whole sees the sidewalks as valuable, it pool the resources and do it. So how do you get that understanding? One is local understanding. Does the community see connectivity among themselves as being value? Among themselves or the rest the world. But there is also one problem. If the country sees it as valuable, then it will become a priority to spend it as infrastructure.
The problem is ‑‑ a problem is we're stuck with this idea that everything must be profit centre in its own right. That we have parts but not wholes. And this is a very frightening trend. That we don't understand. Again, as if you're trying to build roads by having everybody just pave in front of their house and no where else.
So a lot of it I think is really understanding the value and see examples. I think in the case of communities don't see the value, there either is an education problem or ‑‑ in other words, if the country sees that it's valuable for that community to be connected, is there funding socially for it or the question is where is the reluctance to invest? There are some issues and understanding on the technical is a big you because if you've used telecommunications, we depend upon providers and pipes. You then, again all the regulatory and all the other problems.
If you see outside the network and all you need is raw infrastructure then you could have opportunities. For example, one real short story. The first transatlantic telegraph cables put in there was actually another plan because going through the ocean long distance is a plan to go through Alaska and Russia because it was less water. And that would have worked, too. Might have worked better because this is not a factor.
So in a lot of these areas, if you reduce everything to raw packets and don't depend on everyone getting through, you can start a mix and match all sorts of flexible solutions. You're not tied to a particular technology. You are not tied to a particular technology, you have many more ways of reducing costs.
And also when you see that the value is not in high speed Internet but in any connectivity you can find a value for, then you can also be of opportunistic and take advantage of many more opportunities.
And again I can't get into all of this here. But this is why it's a really a very, very different way of thinking about what it means to communicate. Like if you can just send SMS messages even using the phone company as a resource, you can do a lot. So it's really the understanding that's important. And, again, there's a longer lecture so I better stop now.
>> LUCA BELLI: I would ask to the panelists to quickly reply so we could have another two questions.
>> ALEJANDRO PISANTY: I am very glad that Miguel Martinez has spoken here. People don't know, but we're very good and close friends and work together a lot. Luis has done some very good work connecting communities in Mexico. And also setting up radio stations, community radios. So through him, the chapter of the Internet Society in Mexico learns a lot.
I really think that this room needs a round of introductions because a number of the people who are here are absolutely stellar and key in their roles in not only Mexico but the ones I know in Mexico in particular who have the community networks person who is Eric Juerta. We have someone from one of the Telcos here. So we can really have this dialogue if we open it up.
Very briefly in response to what has been said right here in this round. Pedro, every country except van you at oh and you the Val oh has long distances over land. Great altitudes. And deep ravines. There's almost no country that's compact geographic unit which is easy to communicate.
What I meant to address, the way I meant to address this is that we have 25 million unique problems. When you have 25 million unique problems, there has to be some way to split them into three or four classes. So we will have the places with your hard to communicate because actually the towns are closed geographically. In distance but hard to reach because there's a ravine or a mountain or mud in between. Or it's hard to reach because it's a set of small islands like you have in the Caribbean or in the Pacific. But you can reduce this to a few classes of cases and begin to see what works. And we should be doing of more use of what has already been done, which is a green book. And Internet Society and Jane Coffin is here. Are rewriting it or updating it. So that green book tells you how to do your societies and technologies and start working. This is not easy. It is very hard. And you don't have the money. As Luis said you don't always have the culture for the people to know what to do to it.
But the other thing that will help us think more clearly here is to segment the problems. To use like you know very well in software development good use cases. If you don't have good use cases, you don't ‑‑ you have no chance to get a good result. So you have very poor and illiterate people like Luis mentioned who don't even know the value of communicating at a distance could be. That's our western white person assumption. City person assumption. But in that community you have a kid who went to junior high in a town, lived in the school itself or in a small house. And this guy needs Facebook. And it's not only, it's not a capricious desire of feeling westernised. It's actual the way he can reach the knowledge to do some things as email was a few years ago. So we have to do use cases and we have to know that some people need one text message a week with a number that says what's the price of tomatoes. And other people need full reach multimedia communications in order to be effective. Once you do that, you have cases like Nepal which others have done the long distance re‑purposing of WiFi and whatever you do when there was the earthquake, the ISOC chapter did something stellar first which is providing power for people to recharge their phones. That's a use case and segmenting of needs. And then of course I concur completely with Bob. Mix and match will make a lot more sense. And easing at the edges the regulatory environment will be indispensable.
>> LUCA BELLI: Couple remarks from Manu and then we will take only one final comment or question to conclude this first segment.
>> I just want to fully associate myself with some of the comments we govern the from the audience.
>> MANU BARDWAJ: I want to fully associate myself from some of the comments we govern the from the audience. One of the struggles that I've had and many people have had is there's this misimpression that the private sector and the market can solely connect the rest of the world, rural areas. This is a miss connection a lot of people have in very powerful positions. And there needs to be an education campaign of hire lighting the importance. It's frustrating to have conversations about it but we could use help in trying to really educate senior level policymakers. And I think what you are doing with your scholarship with the book is a good first step. Really trying to socialize case studies that have worked, playbooks that have worked, provide some guidance to communities. The only other comment that I wanted to say is United States is still struggling with these questions, as well. We have a vast swath of tribal reservations, places we still have grappling with and trying to extend the benefits of the Internet and connectivity. I think we have a lot to learn from efforts like yours.
>> LUCA BELLI: Let me remind this book we present Thursday morning. It is the first step to have a report and expand initiative. This is only the first one. We have created this group so we are just at the right beginning. So one last comment if there is any we have one here. And then we will have final remarks. Please. Go ahead.
>> For the network. The comment is about strategy. I suggest not to limit community networks to connect then connected but also to recover some of the spirit of the Internet as a whole. Regarding infrastructure and so on. You can have WiFi as mentioned on the board but also with fiber, why not. We are doing so. There are many people doing so. And also in the point, so on. Just a comment.
>> LUCA BELLI: One of the brightest examples of how people can do things themselves. So if we've ‑‑ do we have final remarks from if panelists? If not, we can pass being extremely on pass and pass directly to the second segment. That will be moderated by Jane. So I will switch. We will just switch for one minute places so that Jane can moderate easily.
>> JANE COFFIN: If you can take your seats, we'll start in about one minute. Thank you.
So we have a great lineup in front of us of speakers. I will give you some of the lodge logistics. Each speaker will speak for about 6 minutes each. We know that's a short period, but that leaves time at the end for some questions and some more information. There's an amazing group of individuals in this room. From the ‑‑ to the ‑‑ team to Nepal. Luis who does work in what hack an and other places. Ritu is here? Not yet? Okay. Our leader this week. Carlos who's working in South Africa. The guys from ‑‑ both Leandro and José are here. Mike Jensen, Steven Song. Casas Buenas, a lot of amazing people and all of you who can help contribute for this for the unconference format but we really want to hear what you also have to say because the key thing here is community. And that's something Bob and I were just saying. It's not only the economics. It's also the community building. And you'll hear from speakers about some of the barriers to deploying networks might just be the 80 percent of working with the community. Some often say with Internet, it's 80 percent community building 20 percent technology. For some of the community networks you find you have the key tools and the technical experts, it's the community you've got to build to bring together and these people are experts at this. I wanted to just make a note.
In 1984, a long time ago, right, there was a report called The Missing Link. That report identified issues, barriers to connectivity and deploying basic telephone. That came out of the ITU years ago. Here we are different perhaps technologies, obviously. Why is it that some governments and communities having connected some communities. If we identified these problems 15 years ago, I would say that quoting Vint Cerf, the Internet allows for permissionless violation. Why are there so many permissions we need? Why is spectrum so hard to get for community networks? Eric worked at the team and Peter bloom have come forward with probably the first commune network license we know of for spectrum. So why is it that we have to be allowed to connect people to the margin and the edges who we say we want to connect the next billion, and our people made here Raul from ISOC, our global VP often says is it the first or last billion we're trying to connect? So we're going to move forward. You don't want to sit here and just listen to me. But I did want to say that there's a key thing happening with development. The community networks are taking the place of some of the massive development projects that went on. We have small pockets of people providing connectivity. So I would say we have a challenge to the development banks. Why are you making these loans so high with your percentage rates? Let's talk about grants. Help the people that actually build the networks, right? With the funding. If you give them high priced grants, the high percentage rate loans, this is difficult. So let's think about grants versus just loans, yeah? Okay we will turn it over to Nathalia Foditsch. Six minutes. Thank you very much.
>> NATHALIA FODITSCH: Thank you very much. Thank you, Luca, for the invitation. I'm really glad to be here today to present short brief summary of the book that I co‑edited and co‑authored. The book it's called ‑‑ in Brazil. Past present and future. We talk about different aspects of policy regulation the institution that is allow for broadband in Brazil to be developed and also we talk about some really interesting case studies. Today I'm going to just give some examples of what is covered in the book. Also wrote a chapter with Luca. Thank you for that, too, Luca. The book has 23 authors covering all these issues. And first I want to raise an interesting aspect for the Brazilian last mile access. In Brazil, we have a lot of medium and small operators, medium and small ISPs, of more than in other countries. Actually nowadays, we have 5,000 medium and small Internet Service Providers in the country. Given the size of Brazil, that's actually one of the main ways we are reaching out to areas with lower connectivity. And this is certainly helping digital inclusion, too. How did this happen? How did it get to this point in which we have so many small and medium Internet service providers? For several years we differentiated telecom operators from what they call an Internet providers, right? And now, for example, last year, this municipalities were also able to buy spectrum from an auction. And that over 50 percent of municipalities in the country will be reached by the auctions that were bought.
Second, I'm going to talk about two case studies that are really interesting. And they are raised on the book. One is digital beltway in the state of Sera which is in the northeast of Brazil. They are building an interstate optical fiber ring. And it's already reaching 100 out of 184 of the urban areas of the state. No, sorry. 90 percent of the urban areas and from 100 of 184 of the municipalities of the state. It is the current fastest broadband network in the country. And it was done through a public‑private partnership between the state government and the private sector.
They are not only ‑‑ through that, they were not only able to reduce the cost of the cap ex, the capital expenditure of the state from $50 million in 2007 to $2.6 million in 2015.
Not only the capital expenditure of the state government but also they are now leasing access, fiber, to private sector companies, which are also providing more competitive prices in the state of Sera.
Another example of a case study we have in the book is the fiber in the Favela. Favela are the poor communities in Brazil. Hocina is one that is located in Rio de Janeiro. It is actually the largest one in the country. And these two entrepreneurs they started some years go, they had an idea of providing fiber in this community. They show in the book how they were able to overcome bureaucratic hurdles. And also they got help from ‑‑ so because we have this really strong small and medium Internet Service Providers, there is this organisation called Abrinci, and they got help from them also to overcome these barriers. And now actually they have ‑‑ they predict they will have 4,000 clients only within this community in the country.
One example of a challenge they face is that it took them 15 months to get a license. So that's the sort of things we have to work on because without formalization, they cannot go and extend.
And, lastly, the chapter that Luca and I have written talks about how much we need to improve our spectrum management. As it happens in several countries, we really need more license spectrum. Not only that, we also need to improve regulation for new technologies such as dynamic spectrum access, TB white spaces that will certainly help these communities to develop. And I reached the 6 minutes and thank you so much.
>> JANE COFFIN: Thank you. That's brilliant.
[Applause.]
And as Nathalia pointed out, if it takes 15 months to get a license in a community, and we're hearing this from others, 6 months, 7 months, 8 months, how are you getting the network deployed? You're trying to build a community. It can delay you for a long time. Nathalia?
>> NATHALIA FODITSCH: I forgot to mention the most important thing is that we now have a version in English that is freely available and was launched last week. So you can find it online if you don't find please reach out to me and I'm also going to pass the version in Portuguese here. Thank you.
>> JANE COFFIN: Thank you. We will take questions after all the speakers speak. Percival Henriques from CGI.br is up next. Percival, we would love to hear from you from CGI.br. A very interesting multistakeholder group which combines technology, government officials and others. So Percival, over to you for 6 minutes. Thank you.
>> PERCIVAL HENRIQUES: I have two problems. The first I don't really speak English. The second, there is not translation in the room. But I will read. Let me let you read it together the presentation.
We have 1.9 million people in Brazil with access to the Internet. But the access is not regular in our area. Only four companies have 80 percent for our connection in Brazil. But 20 percent connection in Brazil is 6,400 small ISPs. In special case of Brazil.
Still national association set years. Created set years ago. Solved this problem have local community, small ISP. For making the last mile itself to make last mile. The authority of Brazil, promote action to develop of network in Brazil to the Amazon region.
Next?
This material is between now for the installation of the tower of the network that connected bell lane to Macapa. Amazon forest.
Our towers for the state.
Next? 100 meters.
Donkeys. We use the donkeys for transporting to our material including all the cement for the concrete. Who don't have tractors for access this preservation area. Selection of tower. Skymont. The collaboration of the community is very important for our operational point.
The final, one of the 520 towers built. Our network in Brazil. Planning the project for last mile. The fiber. This is one installation of the fiber to the home. Operates by a small ISP. It is very social project in opt fiber. The popular houses.
One of the project you have is Jones, WiFi project in place for collaborative use. The home is the mile.
Is 4 megabits MBPS.
In the access with cells, phone in publica WiFi place.
Another project. Digital space. There is one in the ‑‑ community. Final. Result in 20 gigabytes Internet exchange point. This is mostly ‑‑ finally 50 ‑‑ of Brazil in volume of ‑‑
Okay.
>> JANE COFFIN: Obligado. Thank you.
[Applause.]
Thank you very much, Percival. And as we're hearing from our speakers, it's not just WiFi or wireless, but it's a combination with fixed, fiber, Internet Exchange Points that help build these pieces of infrastructure, putting them together. You're going to hear from Mike Jenson. Or Yensen, I always say it wrong, Mike. Mike has worked on many different points from regulatory to spectrum. Mike, over to you.
>> MIKE JENSEN: Thanks, Jane. I think the first point I'd like to make is that when we look at this issue of connectivity from the lens of community networking and building communities connectivity, it's not just a matter of connecting the unconnected. Obviously that's a priority. But many, many of those that are connected are on lousy connections where they pay way too much. And they don't get the coverage they need. And they don't get the speed that they need to really make use of the Internet fully. This is mainly in Developing Countries where people don't have the money to pay the very high prices for the meted bandwidth services that the majority of them are on the mobile broadband service providers. But also in developed countries, it's quite easy to drive out of an urban area and find you're back to an edge connection with almost no bandwidth or people in rural areas who can't get a decent DSL connection. And all of these people also need to have a better connection. And that's something that I see as part of this whole community networking initiative. And we can see some of the largest and most successful community networks such as those in Spain are in developed countries. So there's a lot of potential here.
And I think the second point around this is the idea of changing the paradigm of waiting for service. Currently it's incredibly disempowering for people in most Developing Countries. If you don't have a good service, well, too bad. You'll just have to sit around and hope that the environment improves or scrape together some money to pay for the more expensive service. But most people don't see that there's any opportunity to really effect a better service themselves; it's know the really an option because we've kind of drifted into this thinking that we have to wait for service from some commercial provider. And I think it's interesting that there's now an interest in alternative models here. Especially a lot of us who remember the old days before the Internet was really something that is interest as a commercial position for telecom providers. We essentially had to build these networks ourselves. We were building community networks on top of telecom infrastructure that wasn't aware we were there. But we could do it. So that's how the Internet really started because the beauty of the Internet was that once you had a connection, you were free to give it to someone else, which was completely a fundamental change from the old telecom model.
Unfortunately now, we've kind of drifted back into this idea that we have to wait for the service provider to come along and provide the service that we need. So we really need to raise the awareness that this other paradigm is possible. But at the say.
Time, it's not actually possible in most Developing Countries and even most developed countries because the policy and regulatory environment still by and large protects the vested interests of the large incumbent operators be they fixed or mobile operators.
So there's very little room for community initiatives to get going in that environment. So I think for me those are the two most important areas that we need to focus on is awareness raising by communities that there are alternatives, awareness raising to the policymakers and operators that there are alternatives, and then a way of building the change in the policy and regulatory environment so that communities can actually provide these kinds of services.
And when we have to recognize that there's going to be pushback from the incumbent operators. It's not a conspiracy. It's natural. They're looking after their shareholder benefits. So they will do as of as they can to resist us. We've seen this all over the world. Not only in Developing Countries where mobile operators have resisted giving any TV white space licenses or resisted number portability, for example, or in the U.S. where we've seen the telecom operators push very hard against the idea that municipalities might want to run services. So that's another aspect of this kind of paradigm shift is to think of this broadband as something that is a basic infrastructure service just like water or electricity. It's not some luxury that people need to pay a lot for, which is kind of where we've evolved to date. So I think I'll leave it at that for my comments. Thank you.
[Applause.]
>> JANE COFFIN: Mike, thank you very much. When you talk about lousy connection and the time it takes, again the issue of why do we have to wait? I think that's why there are so many people in the room who haven't waited Mahabir Pun will tell you the work he's been doing with the Nepal Wireless Networking Project.
>> MAHABIR PUN: Thank you, Jane. Let me tell you why we need community networks in Nepal. I think most of the people who are working in the community network have the same problem. The first problem no were in the ‑‑ to bring Internet. So there was no choice. The reason they were not going is because it was not survival for them. They were not going to make ‑‑ commercially viable. They were not going to make any money. So that's the one reason I started building community network.
Second, the area where I built community network, in that area the mobile went after several years after I built wireless network, even after there is wireless access in some of the rural areas, most of the services they are providing is just the voice. There's no data services. Even if there is data services, it's very slow. It's just 2D. That's why the focus of the mobile services are the stupid voice service not the data service. That's why I got involved in bringing Internet in the rural areas and using WiFi technology. That was right around 2000.
So doing this, what I have seen so far is doing this when you have built wireless networks in the remote rural areas, there are challenges. The main challenges of the technology that we are using is WiFi. We're using 518 gigahertz for the point to point and the .4 gigahertz for the last mile connectivities. And most of you know that we are using this WiFi technology, the big challenges is the line of sight. Which is not a big problem in the especially mountain areas but it is a big problem in the plain areas where there are many trees. So we're using that technology for bringing Internet.
But now, after working 14, 15 years using WiFi technology, now I'm trying to test the ‑‑ technology. It took some months, about four months for me to get the permission from the government to use the ‑‑ some banding, 18 megahertz banding in ‑‑ technology. So we are doing a pilot project right now. So we'll have to see.
But I hope, I think TV white space technology will be enough for us to get remote villages connected to the Internet.
And I have heard in the media that there's one of the new technology coming, live high technology, I don't know of about that. But if it comes, I think that would be very helpful, as well.
The model that we have been using so far to get this in remote areas and rural areas communities get connected is not that successful. It is because mainly because we are heavily dependent on the commercial service providers. And the commercial service providers are not likely to build the Internet in a sparsely populated rural areas of the Least Developed Countries. So that's the reason. And all this 3 ‑‑ 3 or something billion people are not connected. So we have to change that.
And even if there is connectivity, another problem is if some service providers, if they bring Internet in the remote rural areas and that another problem is content. There is not any content. Because most of the people in the remote rural areas, they don't understand English language. They only understand their own language. So that's why we need to develop content in local language and we are also doing that. What we are doing is we are developing content for the school children in their own local language. And we are providing that.
So that's why my suggestion, my suggestion to bring ‑‑ to connect the 3 billion people connected is to, for this the government must be involved in it. Without the government involvement, it is not possible to get all these people get connected. So my suggestion to the government is to use the USS fund. The universal service obligation fund. And that universal service obligation fund is for helping to get unconnected people get connected. So using that fund, the government can provide some subsidy or some incentive to the commercial service providers to bring Internet in the rural areas. And that's what I'm focusing on in Nepal, as well. I'm trying to convince the government to use that fund to involve the commercial service provider to bring Internet in the rural areas. So that's what we are doing.
And also another problem, in the rural areas, in all the Developing Countries, it is not possible to bring ‑‑ put fiber, cable, in every village. So the only way to bring in the Internet in the last mile, for the last mile connectivities are in remote areas is only option, the viable option can be the wireless. So we have to develop this wireless technology in whatever way we can so that we can reach these people. Otherwise putting fiber and using the expensive solutions like the satellite is not going to work. Thank you.
[Applause.]
>> JANE COFFIN: Thank you very much, Mahabir. We are going to turn to Nicolas Echaniz in a minute. But Mahabir you identified a new, small community networks to change the viewpoint of government for public‑private partnership assistance. So Nico, who does work in Argentina is going to talk to you about what he's doing from both a technical and community building perspective.
>> NICOLAS ECHANIZ: So this is just one picture of the network that I would want to have online, shown.
So, well I'm Nicholas from Altermundi from Argentina. I won't be sharing that of today about our model because we have many activities. I hope those of you who are not aware of the activities regarding community networks that we have during the week, this paper's circulating with all the information. Please ask for them.
First of all, I wanted to ask because I feel that we assume that everyone here knows what community networks are. And I want to be sure about that or not. So please raise your hands the people who are listening about, hearing about community networks now but didn't know about them before. Please raise your hands.
Great, great, great. Okay. Well that's very good.
I know many faces here of people that are actually working with community networks. But we never know what's in the audience.
I wanted to raise some of the things that have already been mentioned. First I want to make clear that our focus in Altermundi is not about billions of people. We are not related to connecting the next billion, all those kinds of programmes which we don't share of. We think there's a basic problem about exactly about economics, about the unconnected people is not a problem of connectivity for us. Mainly the disadvantaged communities usually don't just have a connectivity problem; they have many problems, like access to health or proper housing and so many other things. And this is all related. It's about the model. About the social/economic model we live in.
So when Alejandro was saying the decisions have been mandated not by physics but by money, that's the point. People who don't have money don't have access. They don't have access, they don't have good food, clean water, et cetera.
So, to me, when some people talk about we need to connect the whole world, but then we are not talking about ending poverty, then that's a big problem. And what I think, what we think at Altermundi is we need a shift of paradigm, the paradigm of concentration we live this is what is moving us towards these decisions and is what's creating these models not only in the Internet but in many other areas. Pell, the people that cannot pay for a service are just not served. And this is the market, right?
So what happens? This is a reality. And then some states or some other actors, mostly states start thinking about oh how do we connect all these people that cannot access through the market? So there are different initiatives. And it's not only the states because of course there are a number of companies that just want to get people online so they can be new consumers for the services. And so this starts creating, to me, two different sets of strategies. The first, the strategies from the government that try to get connectivity to the unconnected so they start building infrastructure. For example, in my country, Argentina, 30,000‑kilometers of fiberoptics were laid by the previous government. And now the current government is seeing how to put that into value, into operation.
But these sorts of networks have no popularity. So they don't get to the homes of the people. And actually they have no idea of how to get to the homes of the people. I mean, I have talked with the officials in charge of these projects. And they really have no idea about how to get there.
They know how to get there in medium towns or where they can find local operators, small operators, even cooperatives which in Argentina there are many, but then in smaller towns, in maybe 3,000 people and lower, which, for example, only in my province, in Cordova, there are 300 towns that are less than 3,000 people. That's one of 20 some provinces, so it's thousands of towns that won't be connected by this model.
And then there's this other set of strategies that are, for example, Google balloons or Facebook planes, even free basics, I point he cheers for that but he explains very well its limits. But all of this are actually creating what I'm usually calling an Internet for the poor, which is creating a second rate digital citizenship. Yes, people that are not actually properly connected, they cannot host their own services or provide their own contents or have meaningful networks in their own communities, but they just access whenever they can, wherever they can to these silos of information which are usually these concentrated services.
So, what we are doing in many places, of course, many different alternatives, is empowering the people from this different perspective and mostly, at least in our experience when we work with very small communities, small communities are already used to working around the market. Yes, they may have like, for example, local farming and local markets for what they farm locally. They even coordinate to build houses. There's a lot of community effort in small communities, which does have money as the connecting instrument, the connecting technology between the need and the resources.
So in these places, it's more natural for the people to say if we don't have a network, if we don't have connectivity, we can build it ourselves. Thus the technical barrier. The information barrier. So many groups are working on different solutions that try to lower these barriers. As for example in Altermundi, we are working in different projects now developing a complete set of tools that enable people without previous knowledge about networks, about deploying networks to build their own community networks. And that picture is actually the town where the village where I live. The blue dots are wireless nodes of the community network. And this is deployed by the people. At first, of course, we started experimenting in this place. But then now it just grows with people getting together in workshops and sharing the knowledge and using a set of tools that is designed to that end.
So the only thing these people do is download firmware that they will install on regular routers and then they install these routers in outer casings. They point using web application that just tells them what's the sign‑on level to each neighbor. And that's all they need to know to build their piece of the Internet.
We believe ‑‑
[Laughter]
Under the table.
>> JANE COFFIN: Is the next infrastructure building the infrastructure for us.
>> NICOLAS ECHANIZ: Usually my daughter is making a mess around me. So, I wanted to share that. Of course we will be talking a bit more indepth about these technologies, these solutions. And of course everyone who's interested about knowing more about this just contact us, please.
[Applause.]
>> JANE COFFIN: Thank you, Nico. I and others are designing a router. We'll have questions over. We'll have Leandro go next. But many people in the room are designing technologies. Steve Song has done this with potato mash or mash potato, sorry. You can talk to Steve about that, not me. But the other guys are thinking about how to use new technology to help propagate and connect. So take a chance when you can to talk to them about what they're doing.
So Leandro Navarro Guifi is an amazing project started in Barcelona but they can tell you more. WiFi fixed in a community of people that are working to build connectivity both in urban and rural areas. So Leandro, over to you.
>> LEANDRO NAVARRO: Okay, thank you. I have several hats. One is Guifi community that I'm a member of. But another is like I'm also researcher in community networks, let's say, for the last maybe seven years or so.
First of all, I think just a little bit of refreshing the typical sentence of connecting the next million or billion. I think we have to let that billion to connect themselves.
[Applause.]
Because, I mean, I think it's not about funding. I mean, the major roadblock is not funding. The major roadblock is not technology. It is not even the high performance technology. It's say the high impact in technology, the commoditized technology, most or all the community network societies because suddenly WiFi was not fast but was so cheap and people could play with it, it became a commodity, they could block it like level blocks and then you could build your own networks. And that is the most important thing is letting people have the knowledge to build their own networks because they will know how to do it locally. And maybe we don't really understand exactly where are their needs. And when I hear about like for instance public efforts, it's fine. It's welcome. But it's related to politics. So it covers some space. We know already about the for profit initiatives in which a company comes and provides access and they get money back. And, well, it works for some, but it doesn't work for many others. And I think community networks are more in terms of participation. It is not even do it yourself. We don't do ourselves networks. We do it together. Because a network implies like a community that many know that can help with each other. And as a friend used to say in European Commission, there are some models which they are not ready to work in a competitive market simply because ‑‑ but there is another model, which is the cooperative model. In fact, the Internet exchanges so that at another level and shows that it works quite nicely.
So then the initiatives that are known about community networking are based on a collaboration between the people in a given area that decide that they want to have their own infrastructure. Of course they later on connect to the Internet and they become Internet citizens. But most of it is about local infrastructure, local connectivity, local content. And then of course you can connect to the Internet and enjoy being online or being part of the world. So it's about participation. And I think one of the most important things that I've seen in all these years beyond technology and technology innovation is that people came up with a model which is really ‑‑ it's a very old model of managing common resources, which is a common model, which is being used for ages to manage like natural resources or fiduciaries or common forests, water supplies since which are required for everyone in a community to survive. And in a sense nowadays being part of let's say digital world, it's a necessity. We can learn a lot for the common space models. If you read documents for rostrum, she explains the principles of natural commons. And what communities have done, community networks have done is to find how to translate that model from natural resources to artificial resources which are digital, which are material, as well, that these infrastructure produce very cheap connectivity. And that connectivity is what keeps people connected.
So I would say that the most relevant innovation in community networks is this kind of governance model, this participatory model in whichever one can build its own access to the network, can manage the sustainability of the infrastructure, can participate. And that participation can be collaborative but also when you go from nothing to an infrastructure, then you can start doing business in it. So you can have a life. You can earn money, let's say, to live your life. And that creates the bootstrap economy in a given place. And then, maybe then, there can be commercial providers coming and provide service because people have more money than they used to be at the beginning without that infrastructure. So it's about developing infrastructure, developing connectivity. And the return that goes to the members of the community. Not the a third‑party company that abstracts values from them.
I've heard that community networks provide some connectivity, but I found out that in some cases, they provide the best connectivity. We did some studies with measurement up and we found out, for instance, when you look at for instance the upload average bandwidth available for customers in Spain, it's given by Giufinet. Or if you go to UK, the best you could beat connectivity is given by a community network in the rural north. It is not given by BT. Why? Because in the rural north, all the investments go to provide the best possible service. So they are getting the best connectivity that probably you would never get in London.
So I think it's not just a cheap way to get connectivity. It's a sustain able way to create local value, to let people participate in that infrastructure, and probably get the best possible service that I think would never come from outside. So that's my comment.
>> JANE COFFIN: Thank you, Leandro. And thank you for that excellent point. Do it together or do it yourself. And the power of the community to come together to decide what they want and to connect. And that's critical because if we try to impose something on communities that we don't know, don't understand, whether it's religious, social, other, it's not going to work. We have seen this, as you said, with ISPs. But it's so critical with the connectivity that you're all providing and the work you're doing.
We have about 18 minutes. So we are o e going to take some questions. We're going to have some of the folks that spoke answer or respond or anyone around the table. Steve, Henriet, who is here, as well. Any of you jump up. There's a roving microphone. Eric, you've been waiting patiently so I'll turn to you. And Carlos next.
So, Eric, please.
>> Eric: So some of us as we see in this panel, in the first panel we were asking a question whether it was economic matter, if it was technical matter, cultural matter. Now it seems it's regulation matter, no?
But the thing is that this thing has been discovered long time ago, no? The first cooperatives in Argentina, how old they are, like probably 50 years? And it was something that the government couldn't give them communication and just let the people do it by themselves and grant them access to the fiber or to the backbone of Argentina. And they grow up and start give service to those areas where the company in that moment the government company couldn't get access, no?
So we see the WiFi. So most of these projects have been successful because they gain access to some sort of a spectrum that it's free. So they can develop themselves and communities did get to these places where people haven't got, where the companies haven't get.
So the question is why if we know that from so long time we keep doing the same stuff and spending millions and millions in Universal Service Funds just to give them to big companies that are not sustainable in those areas. So that's the question. Why?
>> JANE COFFIN: Excellent question, Eric, and it's one that we've seen. For those that don't understand what universal service fund is, this was created for basic connectivity for telecom. Governments put a tax on the networks or the services. The service providers paid into a fund. The fund was held by the regulator in most instances or the ministry. And the idea is you would administer these funds to start up networks, provide connectivity in other areas. Mike and Steve are some of the experts on this, I know from the work they've been doing. We've seen innovative use of some of those Universal Service Funds, but some of them sit millions of dollars not being utilized. Why not tap into some of that? And that's what we can do to speak to governments and say: Give the community networks some of this funding to try and start up.
Carolina who's here has to leave and you have a question or a clarification.
>> Carolina: Sure, thank you. So as many of you might know, I have joined Facebook recently on the global connectivity policy team. And I actually want to do some clarifications regarding some of the statements.
So first I think over the years and even before I was there folks really tried to engage with stakeholders locally. We don't have just a policy thing, we have a partnership, a grove team and things like that that are transversal teams around the world that it's wonderful to see actually how many local community‑based partnerships these folks are developing on the ground.
So I have tons of examples, but I'm happy to talk to you more later.
But I just want the actually clarify that taking free basics aside for a moment, some of the projects that were mentioned in terms of the Telco infraproject and the express WiFi and even accula, which is the plane, they do provide connectivity to the whole Internet by extending to remote areas the infrastructure that the Telco operators were not able to expend to those areas. So we are really trying to partner with governments, community and the Telcos on the ground to actually invest and lay down infrastructure to those areas that the Telcos don't have interest to invest.
So I just want to clarify those projects. And there are actually a couple of videos online setting our 10‑year strategy on that, introducing all these projects if anybody want to check that. Thank you.
>> JANE COFFIN: Thank you, Carolina. I know many people are interested in whether or not you have a foundation where they could obtain grants? So ‑‑
[Laughter]
>> Carolina: Yeah, I know. I was asking money. Now I am giving.
>> JANE COFFIN: But Carolina is around this week.
I will turn to Steve in a minute but Carlos Martinez from LACNIC had a question or something to add. Is there the microphone that's running around? Thank you.
>> Carlos mane Martinez: Hi, everybody. This has been a very enlightening session for me. This is actually my first indepth contact with the community network community. I have some long story in the ISP community but I have been working with LACNIC which is one of the IRRs are the organizations who actually assign AP and numbers to networks and you guys operate networks. And I see that a lot of effort, significant amount of effort that the community network community puts on is related to last mile connectivity, right? I mean actually delivering packets to people, which is of course probably the most difficult problem that you face.
But I understand that in the end you want to communicate with a wider Internet. And at some point you need to deliver packets to the wider Internet. So please don't forget that.
And remember that if you use private IP floor space and you sit behind a net, you're a ghost in the Internet. You sit behind a of larger network with different priorities and with different requirements and with different expectations. You don't have independence in the network.
So to be I would say a full citizen of the Internet, you need your own IP resources.
This is what I wanted to say but I want to add something else. Please help us. Please help the IRRs understand your needs and understand how we can better help you because, I don't know. This is very unfamiliar territory for us, right? We are used to deal with large telecom operators, large companies and so on, so forth. But our communities are open. The IRRs. The five IRRs have for an you can contribute to and present your problems and perhaps help us create policies that will better allow your networks to own your own resources so you can be full citizens of the Internet. Thank you.
>> JANE COFFIN: Sure, and bravo Carlos. And Nico wants to add something but I want to get to Steve and another Carlos. Just a reminder the Internet Exchange Points have gone to get management space at the Iaccess. This is a bottom up process in most of the IRRs where you come and you're the community. You go to the RIRs, help formulate policies by coming with ideas that the community will agree to. Carlos can help you walk through that. But you also have others here I think from AfriNIC for the African region, Aaron which is some of the English speaking Caribbean, Canada where there are rural community networks. United States trust me there are networks there, too. But also LACNIC, AfriNIC, Aaron, APNIC and ripen CC, they're all here. So take some time. If you don't know them, come up to some of us we can introduce you.
I'll take a speed round. One minute for Nico one minute for Peter and over to Steve.
>> NICOLAS ECHANIZ: I think less than one minute but wanted to say that Altermundi has its own system and alternative number system. It was the first in LACNIC to ask for the resources. And in fact we don't pay for our resources. And we have to renew every year a commitment that we made that we would send information to LACNIC about how we are using, actually using, deploying IPv6 and using the resources to renew this. And I think it would be actually great to have the RIRs consider the case of community networks to make this a standard policy.
>> That's where we need a policy for that. And we need your help for that.
>> NICOLAS ECHANIZ: Great. I'm here.
>> JANE COFFIN: And think of it this way if you come to the RIRs and you're getting a policy together, one more thing you can take to governments and say look, we're getting IP address space from the RIRs. Next we want to spectrum. Now, that can be tricky.
Peter, a minute. They do. I've got a list, yeah. Okay but actually Steve Song is before that. He's been waiting patiently. Henriet you're in the queue. Steve, over to you.
>> Steve Song: I want to pick up a point Bob made. His metaphor about sidewalks I think is profoundly important, this notion of thinking about ICTs as infrastructure versus thinking about them as a commodity. But I think one of the most important places to an my that is not so much on wireless spectrum, which is important, but in the other aspect of what enables community connectivity, and that's back hole. Right now, certainly in Subsaharan Africa in the last 18 months there's been an explosion of WiFi networks. Community WiFi. Government. In Kampala Dar es Salaam announced free WiFi access. That all happens because they are sitting right on the point of international access.
But the minute you try to extend that out into rural areas, the cost of national back hole networks is prohibitive. It denies you access.
And state investors attempt to solve the problem by building national back hole networks. But the problem is when they decide how should we price it? They look to the private sector. And that gives them no clue as to what the pricing of that infrastructure is because when you talk about maybe 96 strands of fiber, virtually infinite capacity with a 20‑year life span, the cost of a gig bit of access is maybe a dollar. You're talking about something that in terms of the strategic value to the country, the pricing should be of completely different order of magnitude. And it comes when you stop thinking about it as a commodity that can be sold for the maximum amount and start thinking: What is the infrastructure value to the country?
The second point I want to make is that I don't think a single service provider is sufficient. I don't think it's enough to have one. If we've learned anything from the arrival of high speed undersea cables to is shores of African countries is that having a single cable is a very, very dangerous thing because it's very ‑‑ it's fantastic. But the minute it's interrupted, it actually is critically disabling because there's no way around it. So diversity and redundancy of access is equally important I think. Thank you.
>> JANE COFFIN: Thank you, Steve.
And critical thing is many of you know, I hope, right? Some of the undersea cables, critical part of the Internet, right? The traffic doesn't fly through the air between country to country, right? There's swimming involved. Or undersea. And the more of those pipes are built, Steve is saying if one's cut, we've seen that happen when it was cut off Kenya. The traffic was rerouted all over the world, long hall traffic costs are high, tricky.
Peter is next. Sharata Henriet, Carlos Moreno. Bob, can we do speed rounds like a minute each? Peter, you're up.
>> Peter: Yeah, thanks. I wanted to draw one of the statistics that the gentleman from Brazil shared with us that 80 percent of the Internet in Brazil is provided by four companies and the rest by 6,000 something ISPs.
I think in our experience, I work building networks and communities most days of the week when I'm not at meetings like this, that's how the rest of the world is going to get connected if it's going to happen. It's going to be smaller efforts; it's not going to be the large companies. So the question is how do we create regulation? How do we create policies that actually have allowed that to happen?
I actually had the chance to go to Colombia and go to a community in a community called Calco, rural area, number more hours by road, number more hours by mule to the place where the place is going to be on the mule ride there, I crossed paths with the local ISP, which was another person on a mule named Robinson. He's a local ISP. And he was going off with his antenna on the mule to go connect another house in the middle of no where to the Internet. So I started to talk to him about his network and how precarious his network is and all the stuff that goes out. He had 60 percent packet loss on one of his towers and all this stuff. I said what's your biggest challenge? Because here we were it was raining. We were on the mules six hours from any electricity or anything. He said it's the amount of money I have to pay for back call. I pay $300 a month for a DSL line of 20 megabits. And that I have to share to all my customers. April there's like 4, 500 customers. And I can't afford to buy anymore because then I have all the costs of the rest of my network. That really makes me think that's a huge piece of it. For example, the municipality he's dealing with, he's getting that from the city. His municipality, there's a national fiberoptic network that the country of Colombia built but there's no interconnection problem. There's a lot of infrastructure out there. We just need to figure out what are ways from the bottom up we can meet that infrastructure. Not so much build the Internet to people but figure out how where people are coming from, they can build towards what they want to have and to be able to connect in terms that are fair and taking into account all the challenges that that means for them.
>> JANE COFFIN: Awesome. And that was Peter Bloom from Rhizomatica. Shareta back to you for a minute.
>> Am I audible? Yeah. My name is Sharda. And it's a great honour and pleasure to be here. Recent fellow from the University of Pennsylvania. I want the thank all the speakers on the panel and the experiences that they've shared because it has been really, really educating I think for me researcher.
The question and the comment that I wanted to make are linked have the thing that I wanted to say is that I think that there are two like separate conversations that are happening. If we had to look at Internet and connectivity infrastructure as infrastructure and not necessarily as cod my, then we are looking at it as part ways social and health outcomes. However when we talk about metrics and outcomes with respect to what we measure in terms of connectivity to measure growth of networks, we talk about number of nodes, we talk about speed, we talk about bandwidth, we talk about like growth rate, number of people that we reach per year.
I think there is very little conversation in terms of how the Internet necessarily ties to the social and educational outcomes and I think that's an academic challenge I face, as well. Often rather than a correlation. But to the extent we talk about speed and band which had and connectivity I think that's often that's why we are looking at the Internet as a commodity as of as a gateway to other things.
And I wanted to hear from the panelists specifically on how they think those two languages can be linked together, what ought to be given priority when talk about community networks in particular and how they see this conversation going forward academically, thank you.
>> JANE COFFIN: We perhaps will take up some of that when we go through the declaration have we have about two minutes left. And so Henriet, thank you.
>> Henriet: Thanks, Jane. It's really great to have this discussion. And I think it's about time we have this at the IGF because we tend to not reflect critically on what really is happening in terms of ‑‑ we assume that there's always progress. And I think we don't reflect critically on it. In fact, some of the solutions that are supposedly "the" solutions have negative cons. In Africa, when we had store and forward connectivity in the 1990s, and we then moved to IP, and the reliance on permanent connectivity when we had dysfunctional telecoms infrastructure, Africans actually for 10 years had less connectivity than they did when they relied on store and forward technology which worked well on poor telecommunications infrastructure.
Then similarly I think the wisdom that you needed competition actually resulted in consolidation. Small ISPs went out of business. And so small ISPs, which now that there is more back hole could be doing so much to provide last mile solutions were killed by how the Internet industry evolved and how policy and regulation evolved in the early 2000s. So I think it's important to have this kind of critical reflection.
Some of the telecentres which assumed this integrated community ownership, community‑driven model of connectivity also went out of work. I think the mobile operators of course have a lot to answer for in terms of telling policymakers what the right approach is.
But I think just this story and the fact that we are talking here about community networks, about local ownership, about integration models should be a real wakeup call for the IGF, that we do need to think critically about these mainstream solutions, which in fact they've helped. There are more people that have connectivity. But there have been models that create consumers rather than empowered users. So I'm really pleased because I think we've had this discussion at the edges on the IGF. But to have it in terms of ISOC involved in it is really fantastic.
>> JANE COFFIN: Carlos re month reign oh. Carlos is working in South Africa on projects.
>> Carlos: Hello, thank you very much. Well, thank you very much all of you for all the comments. I think it resonates very much with the work I'm doing in South Africa.
I wanted to touch on something that Nico said about lowering the barriers of entry. I think most of us are here working on that. Lowering the barrier of entry, technologically with solutions like village Telco, lowering the barriers to entry at the bureaucratic level that Eric and Peter and other people are doing, lowering the barrier of entry, trying to understand the local economies that are being developed and that actually as Leandro was saying is about not extracting value from the communities by third parties but allowing those communities to reserve that money that they're already spending on connectivity somehow into that community and generate local economy, local employment and other things that ties probably in what was being said, not only local economies but something that goes well beyond the development outcomes that these sobering agency, these people for the first time are controlling their futures rather than being controlled by the interest of other people.
And the last point is so we talked about lowering the barriers of entry of technology and barriers of entry and understanding the economic economies but also lowering the barriers of entries as Mike was saying at rising awareness of making people understand from the local communities to the government to everyone that this is possible. That this is happening. And that there are people from Nigeria like John to the people in northern Canada to Argentina to many places in the world that are making this happen. And I think that this room is empty. Thursday people here that cannot sit down men's that there is a lot of interest in this. And that now we are all ambassadors of this model. It is also our responsibility to raise that awareness and continue lowering that social barrier of entry of people not knowing this is possible.
>> JANE COFFIN: Gracias for that. That's excellent. Thank you, Carlos.
[Applause.]
We have two more people I will ask Raul the comment during the declaration period if that's okay. No, Bob Frankston is after you.
>> So in the Internet Society, we have a development strategy that is basically in four pillars. That's our building infrastructure, building communities, building capacities and trying and bringing our expertise, that expertise that we get from the work on the ground for feeding the policy. One things that I love from these projects community network projects is a project that crosses all the four pillars of our strategy because it's about deploying infrastructure but not only that, as Mike said, it's about building communities, empower the communities. It's about building the capacities obviously for doing everything.
But we are learning a lot of lessons from these experiences for feeding the policy debate.
I was tempted to express my opinions many times during this debate, but really I was amazed about the quality of the speakers that we had around the table with the we had. No I cannot say anything with these guys participating. But I think there is a lot of material here.
Sometimes we are frustrated because things are not having as fast as we want. But we are seeing from the experiences that you are developing that we are already influencing the public policy debate. And we will continue doing that.
So thank you very much for everything I have learned a lot. And I learned to listen. Thank you very much.
>> JANE COFFIN: Bob, I'm going to give you 30 seconds. And Mike wants 30 seconds. So you get to share.
>> BOB FRANKSTON: First it's very important to understand accounting and that price and costs are entirely unrelated. Everything here is about arbitrary price that is nothing to do with the cost.
As Steve said, you put the fiber in, you can amortize it. The cost is 1 percent of a road. There is no real limit of course on the back hole these are all out of policy. The reason you have the single fiberoptic certain we need to keep scarcity, create scarcity in order to maintain a price. This is unofficial.
Other big point the big difference between the telecom and the Internet, the telecom provider manages the path of the service. With the Internet we can take individual pieces and they can he composite the hole. That's why community efforts can work.
>> JANE COFFIN: Mike Jensen, 30 seconds.
>> MICHAEL OGHIA: I wanted to do a triangulation between Leandro and and Nicolas. Community empowerment. As we know rural communities and Developing Countries are tremendously disempowered, apathetic in what they can achieve as far as their own development. To successfully bring connectivity to that community has huge spinoffs not just generally what we talk about with telemedicine and market prices but just in terms of building a cohesiveness in that community in the sense of empowerment that they can do things together. And that is massive in terms of addressing all of this rural development issues.
Just a second point is on, I mentioned the importance of awareness raising amongst these communities that they can do this themselves and amongst the regular la are toy and policymakers in the country to make it happen.
The third area that really needs to be developed is the development financial institutions. They have a huge interest in terms of what happens with the capacity building of the regulators, in terms of the dysfunction of these Universal Service Funds, which are often just turned over to be subsidizing of base stations to give even more market share to the existing operators in a dysfunctional model.
And other areas in terms of the back hole. If every new development financed road actually had a duct in it, then we would really see of, of lower cost back hole assuming competitive pressures or the wholesale environment was there. But there we have a big influence to pay and we need to focus our attention on them. Thank you.
>> JANE COFFIN: I want to give everyone a huge round of applause. Luca?
[Applause.]
And thank you because it's the collective wisdom that comes from the discussions wherever you are and wherever we can bring people together to make things change and happen. So thank you very much.
Luca, you're in charge now.
>> LUCA BELLI: Yeah, just to have a very quick wrapup. I really enjoyed the interactions, and I think what is really clear is that there are a lot of really smart, passion alternative people here that are doing a lot of things. But as we discovered last year in the workshop we had on community networks, a lot of those people are not communicating yet together. And the purpose for which we have created a Dynamic Coalition here at the IGF is to have an ongoing interaction to keep on working together, discussing together, building things together. The report that we will present on Wednesday is only the very starting point on what could be done. And it is not only showing with evidence that people are already doing things. It is allowing those people to share best practices. To share worse practices. What they could do together and what they could do to make things together better. So I really appreciated a lot all the interactions. And you're all kindly invited to the Dynamic Coalition session on Wednesday morning and also workshop we will have on Wednesday afternoon. It is not to obsesses you with the community network. But that there is a huge amount of people that have been doing a lot of very cool things. So they deserve to speak and to be heard.
And now we will have the last segment with community network declaration. Do we have the printed? Yes. Excellent.
We have had two outputs that we had started producing this year. As you know, starting from last year, the IGF evidence‑based policy encourages the Dynamic Coalition to produce output that could be presented. The two main output we have produced is this report that well present on Wednesday and the declaration on community connectivity. We have spoken a lot about policies different kind of policies with the IRRs but also local policies, regulation, policies that could be adopted by government. All this could be done but to make it interoperable, to make all those policies interoperable, it is quite ‑‑ to have a common set of principles that allowed you to have shared definition that everyone is on the same page so that it is not only the community that can interoperate but ‑‑ that can interoperate.
We have this declaration. You find it in the copies we are distributing. There is also survey. An online survey where you can say if you agree or not with the various points and you can also leave comments. That is very important because comments, I speak from experience from last year, we did the Dynamic Coalition, comments were very useful to understand also what was the feedback of the IGF community.
So please take the survey. Tell us what could be changed. And if you want to also do it now while we discuss the text, you are mostly welcome.
I don't know if there are copies for everyone. We have foreseen 40. But I think there are many people. So in the spirit of community and cooperation, I think we can share the copies.
[Laughter]
I think we can have small groups or two or three people reading the declaration and checking what could be changed or not. Maybe we can start with the preamble.
>> Does everyone have one?
>> Luca? They can also do it at the DC booth.
>> LUCA BELLI: You can also take this survey at the Dynamic Coalition booth that is at the entrance.
>> Luca? Luca? Luca, don't we have this on the website? Do we have them on the website?
>> LUCA BELLI: Okay. So you also find this, we have a website that is commconnectivity.org. You also find this on the IGF website if you go and browse through the outputs. The 1016 outputs of the dynamic coalition, you will arrive not really easily but you will arrive at the Dynamic Coalition community. You click on it you have the declaration and also the outlook of the report. So that you can read it more easily.
It is not a final text. We still have room for improvement. And then we will consolidate all the objects. So we can have a more refined version.
>> JANE COFFIN: Does anyone need another copy because we have it.
>> LUCA BELLI: Actually, if you want to directly add your comments on the pads that we have been using to construct the declaration, you can go on ‑‑ so if you have a computer, you can easily go to (website).
So we decided not to focus on the preamble because it is rather an introduction. The main points that we would like to discuss here are the definition of connectivity, community networks, community network participants and policy that affect connectivity and community networks.
So unfortunately in the copies that you have printed, there is no definition of connectivity. You only find it on that pad that we can actually if we expand a little bit, maybe you can all easily ‑‑ you can also find it using bit.do/dc3.
So before we start with this, I know that Raul was waiting since the last segment to say something. So, Raul, please, the mic is yours.
>> Raul: Thank you. My name is Raul plumber working for the frontier of Finland. I want to answer the discussion ahead that community connectivity is not only about getting the unconnected people on the Internet but also for the people of developed countries, urban areas where community networks can be built to circumvent censorship and give people back their privacy that has been lost on o the commercial networks because of their centralised nature.
I think decentralised community‑driven networks are the paradigm shift that we've been waiting for and it's going to benefit all of us.
>> LUCA BELLI: Thanks a lot for this encouraging perspective.
So let's start with the analysis of the community connectivity declaration. The first point is about connectivity. And we have worked on defining it as the ability to reach all end points connected to the Internet without any form of restriction on the data packets exchanged enabling end user to run any application and use any type of service via any device as long as this does not harm the rights of others. Connectivity is the goal of the Internet, which for those who like request for comments, they will remind that request for comments 1958 with the architecture principle explicitly states that connectivity is the goal of the Internet.
I propose that we analyze one point together. So we start with this. So if there is any comment, please, Bob, I see that you are already having a comment.
>> BOB FRANKSTON: To what you've been saying, I think we're not tied to formal definitions. Emphasize local connectivity first. And then say ‑‑ the rest of the world is a nice capability, but it's not as fundamental as local connectivity. Still useful locally.
>> LUCA BELLI: Yeah, Steve, please.
>> Steve: So just before we get to the actual analysis of the text, I think there's an unlimited number of statements we could make and probably agree on. We're in a lot of common cause among us. But the sort of precursor question for me is what is the purpose of this declaration? What are we going to use it for? I mean, IGF has declarations every year. I've never read them, I confess.
>> LUCA BELLI: If I can correct. This is only the second IGF committee to do so.
>> Steve: So allow me to retract my comment. But it's very easy to make statements.
So as the instigator of this, I had a specific purpose in mind. And the purpose I had in mind was providing community networks with a tool to take to your regulators and say this is what we want. And we all agree that this is what we want. So I think with that in mind in terms of shaping the text, to clarify the message as of as we can to focus on the elements that we want to change within the regulatory frameworks to enable community networks.
>> LUCA BELLI: Can I provide a piece of advice on this? I would really strongly suggest that we, as this is the first time that we are meeting all together trying to define some common principles to have a common ground, maybe be a little bit less ambitious and try to set some basic principles on which we can all agree so that then we can build on this and create absolutely those guidelines, those models, those policy suggestions that are badly needed but building on someone on which we already agreed. Because if we go into the details starting from the starting point, we risk that we will not get something on which with e can build.
So I perfectly understand your frustration. I mean your yes or no so something you could bring to ‑‑ yearn a policy maker and say build this. I think that's where we arrive. But I would suggest not to be too hasteful and start with common principles on which we all agree so that then we can build together some work that is interoperable. Roger?
>> Roger: Three comments. The first is I agree with you. At least we will use this declaration if it's approved locally to push our public administration. Secondly, it will help our self‑to clarify and have a common understanding. I have heard people claiming community networks like saying then it's me who is not doing community networks. Otherwise we are incompatible. And third maybe even internally here could also help in the Internet Governance Forum because I skip some part of the discussion because I went to Manu to ask for advice because one of the problems we are facing now is funding, for instance, huh? Not in the form of grants but in the form of loans. We want to prove that ‑‑ or we have proved in our opinion that we're sustainable, so we can repay. So here he point me to World Bank member. And the conversation was pretty fast. So if you cannot commit $10 million, we have nothing else to discuss.
Well, if we approve this here as part of the IGF, maybe next time we can claim that this should also be addressed by other participants. That's my opinion.
>> Sorry, I also wanted to add something about this, Steve. I have participated of many tries at such a document. We actually had the manifest of community networks of South America six years ago Electra was there from Frifunk. I think that just having a document of common understanding from networks that are actually from many different continents and many different perspectives, just that is valuable for the rest of the work and just to be able to say to a government official when they ask but what's a community network? Because they usually don't know what's a community network. So you can point to a document that has this and output from the IGF. It validates the position to ask them to consider, to just consider community networks. Without even asking for something specific, this has happened to me many times if relation to the government of telling them you consider ISPs, you consider the state you consider cooperatives, even. But you don't consider small community networks. And they ask what is that? So that's, I think ‑‑ we need just for now this is a lot.
>> LUCA BELLI: Just a piece of clarification. Just to make things very clear, we are not going to do a binding document here. We are going to suggest some policy principles. And the legitimacy of this suggestion is due to not only institutional, the IGF is a UN body, so the mandate of the IGF is also to suggest solutions to common problems, articles 22‑point G of the Tunis Agenda. But the legitimacy here is not only the Coalition that has crafted this together, it is all you guys and all the people that are participating here that have the possibility to provide feedback and to participate to this. So it's really a popular legitimacy by the community that is directly interested to this. So we have a real great opportunity to do something meaningful. It is not going to be a binding treaty, but it's going to be something on which we all agree and we can build things together. So please, sorry, Carlos.
>> Carlos: One just to add on trying to convince you, I think that something that at least for me and the experiences that I have had engaging apart from the definition per se is the number of people and community networks that might be behind. If you take this to a government official endorsed by, I don't know, 200 community members in the world, it is not me alone here that is claiming. No, no, we are like 200 or 100 at least community networks around the world that are behind this movement. And you know, take us a bit more serious than just Carlos.
>> LUCA BELLI: I accept your points and I think they are perfectly valid.
I think it does ‑‑ I think it sounds to me from what I'm hearing is that there are two different things. One is defining a movement. And defining who we are as a movement. But the other one is being clear on what we're asking for. In some degree we're mixing the two on this document. And it might be worth making that distinction. Because when we get to the bit where we're asking for, I mean that messaging needs to be very, very sharp and targeted.
So we do not have a lot of time. And we've ‑‑ everyone has a possibility to obtain the survey and to leave comments. I think the wisest thing would be to read through all the declaration point by point. Take some comments. And then leave all of you guys the possibility to take the survey, leave your comments so that they are also there on paper. And we can consolidate them all the more easily.
Also because this declaration is not only about connectivity, but it is also about the element of community networks, what defines community network participants and what are the policies that can have an impact on community networks? So that is I think the basic understanding we should try to have.
Jane, would you like to read the community networks definition so that we collectively share this responsibility?
>> JANE COFFIN: Sure. It's number 2, yes?
>> LUCA BELLI: Yes.
>> JANE COFFIN: So what I see in front of me, we had it on the screen, community networks are structured to be open, free and neutral. Such networks rely on the active participation of local communities in the design, development, deployment and management of the shared infrastructure as a common resource, owned by the community and operated in a democratic fashion. Community networks can be operationalized, wholly or partly through local stakeholders, NGOs, private sector entities and/or public administrations and are characterized by the following points. A) collective ownership. The network infrastructure is owned by the community where it is deployed.
B) social management. The management infrastructure is governed and operated by the community.
C) open design. The network implementation details are public and accessible to everyone.
D).
Open participation. Anyone is allowed to extend the network as long as they abide the network principles and design.
E) Free peering in transit. Community networks offer free peering agreements to every network offering reciprocity and allow their free peering partners free transit to destination networks to which they have free peering agreements.
F) security and privacy concerns while designing and operating the network.
>> LUCA BELLI: We can take a couple of comments on this before we pass to the next point. Yeah, Michael?
>> My name is Mica Ogia. The First, I would say the language overall is very good. I just recommend we translate this into at least two other three languages if possible, French Arabic if possible. I know Portuguese obviously and Spanish. So that's my biggest point on the document overall.
>> LUCA BELLI: Do we have other comments on this specific point?
>> I just have one question about F, consideration of security and privacy concerns while designing and operating the network. It doesn't actually say what that is supposed to mean. What are the considerations? The conclusions could be anything.
>> LUCA BELLI: The meaning was that ‑‑
>> No, I can guess at the meaning myself. I'm saying it doesn't actually.
>> LUCA BELLI: I will let Christian explain it. Because he was at the origin.
>> I can guess the meaning about it but it's not explicit is the point that I'm making.
[Silence.]
>> Christian: Actually we discussed that on the list. We included something that was more explicit, yes. And actually what we would like to reflect there is that the networks are ‑‑ the users' privacy is a concern while creating a network. And it's not imposed. It's not something that we require or the goals are required to include as a design principle. Something that it's only part, but the operation. Community networks are concerned on users' privacy.
>> I think it should say that. [Inaudible] (off mic comments).
>> Another point is that as Christian was mentioning, this text is something that we have been trying to craft over the past three months on the mailing list.
Another point is that this mailing list is open. So if you search on the website, the main list, you can already join it. There are more than 100 participants. This kind of input is extremely valuable. And, again, if this comment is very good and you could add it directly on the surveys that is registered.
I think Roger had a comment? Okay. One there and then Roger.
>> Okay. So I think that sentence should read "the security and privacy of users will be protected in the design and operation of the network." That could be one thing.
I wanted to ask about E, the free peering and transit. Okay, that's fine.
And on the free peering and transit, is that not too specific? Is that going to be possible? There's so many different varieties of models of community networks. Is there not perhaps a way of conveying that at a more general principle level? Maybe the promotion of free peering and transit?
>> Whenever possible.
>> Sorry. I first just wanted to clarify about point F. The discussion went runed this exactly that when Christian proposed the text, it was mostly what you just said. It was I who said this is a good intention. I, for example, would love that to be the case. But I know it is not. Yes? I know many networks, including ours that don't have specific privacy and security policies even though we do education at the community level but the network itself is not designed specifically with security in mind. So we would be lying. The idea of this is that we are describing what we are and not what we would like to be. So your other concern, the point, I added point E, balls it's our view and it's our practice. And that of most networks we know of. But in case there are networks that consider this is a restraint or this is a barrier that they cannot agree on this because they cannot actually do this, then we should remove it or make it like Luca said, like we promote this. Okay, sorry. Eric.
>> Eric. Have also I think it would be the same for our case. Like probably when possible because of the architecture of our network in the case of communications, we might be able to do this free peering. But, for example, if a big operator says we're going to do free peering but you have to put a set of stuff in our network so that we could do peering agreements, that would maybe get difficult for us to do it. It's just a question of architecture. I agree that should be when possible and something like that.
>> I think work with Roger and Lee and then we can pass to the next point. Roger, Bob and the lady there very quickly please.
>> Roger: This is about point F. Just about point F?
>> LUCA BELLI: Whatever point you want.
>> Roger: Point F, I have a lot of concerns and I would propose even to remove it because we could even face problems with net neutrality or at least openness and these kind of things. At least I wouldn't go any further.
And regarding point E free peering and transit. Here I have to be a bit evil. Yes, we are doing community networks. But we want to be sustainable. And we want to avoid the tragedy of the comments. This point is promoting or at least is pushing towards this. Took us a lot of time to realise and formalise these concepts. I would propose to say that it will be cost‑oriented. At least this is how we do it internally.
>> Sorry. Just a small comment. That point is really long because it tries to convey a very specific idea that is that you don't give transit to networks that are a cost to you.
>> Roger: I didn't say this.
>> So we can of course keep talking about this, but the idea is exactly that, that you shouldn't have a higher cost of operation of your network for giving transfer to networks. You have free peering agreement. You are not giving me transit to Internet, to "the" Internet.
>> LUCA BELLI: Can.
>> Can I just add a promote in both points? Promote free peering and promote the consideration of security and privacy? Because those seem to be the most controversial points if we put promote is an aspiration not really a characteristic. And you cannot ‑‑ if you don't want to promote, don't do it.
So, Bob, very quickly and then the lady there.
>> BOB FRANKSTON: I'm letting a lot slide here because there's a mismatch between the best physical infrastructure and traditional telecom considerations. How do you reflect cost back to applications? And it's going to be a lot more work to try some sort of explain that to say we have some principles. Mike, you shouldn't be spying on you were users even though the network architecture, that's not a property of the network.
So I think I would go, you know, overly wordsmithing something where there's a fundamental mismatch between two words I think is a problem.
>> LUCA BELLI: The lady, close, Nathalia?
>> Cost oriented, what do you mean by cost?
>> Fernando from American University. This is a very powerful document. And this is amazing. Congratulations for doing it.
I also understand that this needs to be very concise for the purpose that it went to. I recognize that. What is my concern here? And this comes from some contact that I have had with coastal communities and also indigenous communities. Real communities that want to have Internet there, territories. The thing is that we've ‑‑ when the project is start in these places, we have some time people going to the name of the community. Let's go and build this network here so we know that there is an inequality in the use of the technology when in thinking in terms of gender and also in terms of class. Here I think that this is a kind of social class focus. We know that from what we have seen on this kind of project. But we should also think in terms of gender and how we could add something in this first part, considering that this is not reproduce the inequality that we already have in these communities. And instead of only lover of this kind of product, we should also try to fight against this inequality. So we should think about how it could include the idea that starting the kind of project should also consider that we should be part of this community network's development and they are able to, right, because this should be included, this should be open to participation?
>> LUCA BELLI: Just one remark. So far the declaration is very gender neutral. So it's not really taking one side or another in promoting which kind of gender should be the community network participant.
But the next point is precisely about community network participants. So I suggest maybe we can add a small point there saying something like community participants should be representative of both genders or something, something along these lines. Can we discuss this in the next point? Which is exactly on this. So, Mike, would you be so kind to read this?
>> MIKE JENSEN: Thanks, Luca. This is on community network participants. Community network members have to be considered active participants and as all Internet users have to be considered as both producers and consumers of content, applications and services. Notably, community network participants, A: Have the freedom to use the network for any purpose as long as they do not harm the operation of the network itself, the rights of other participants, or the principles of net neutrality that How content and services to flow without deliberate interference. B) have the right to understand the network and its components and to share knowledge of its mechanisms and principles. C) have the right to offer services and content to the network while establishing their own terms. And D) have the right to join the network and the obligation to extend the set of rights to anyone cording to these same terms.
>> LUCA BELLI: Thanks a lot. Small modifications I would like to propose is to better allow content and services to flow without deliberate interference to modify a little bit. Content applications and services to flow without deliberate interference. I don't think there will be any opposition on this. Do we have any ‑‑ we have already considered the gender balance promotion. Is there any other ‑‑ I mean, we will not be able to have maybe a final wording here, but we can discuss this on the mailing list in the next weeks.
Leandro has a comment.
>> LEANDRO NAVARRO: Also the comment and discussion about the mailing list. Number 2 and 3 we tried to discuss what characteristic of community networks which is different than what opportunities, how we can share a community network. So for instance if we talk about gender balance, I think the characteristic of community networks is in balance. And then we can have another section where we talk about what things we want to develop, we want to achieve, how community networks can open opportunities. But we are trying here to provide a definition. Let's say that is better than the one you could find on the Wikipedia. Don't try.
>> I just wanted to say in our case, the imbalances, we usually have more women in community, in our community networks.
>> Sorry. I wasn't part of the drafting so I don't know what the thinking is but I'm wondering if this is not too detailed. You know, I would end it at the end of the first paragraph, the preambular paragraph.
It just feels to me that it might become ‑‑ it sounds a little bit prescriptive to me. Community networks are the community networks running the network. And I think it sounds a little bit doctrinaire and prescriptive like very 1970s. I'm an old Marxist. I'm used to this language. And I'm aware of its limitations. That's my concern. I think we want to encourage more creativity, more sort of dynamic design and local ownership.
>> LUCA BELLI: Again, just about the feature that we can all agree on at this moment because we know that they already exist. Though nothing impedes to add something more. And exactly ‑‑ I mean I really see this kind of document as ITF requests for comments. Nothing impedes that you up update it with a new one in a couple of years when things will have evolved. I can this as policy standards.
So if we try to agree on this, and then when we will know that something different has changed, we will update it. And at least will always be there and the community will always be there. So I think Roger has another comment on this.
>> Roger: It can be.
>> Roger: I strongly recommend to be prescriptive otherwise you can start with good willing but things can divert into and this is part or looks like or resembles to the license.
>> LUCA BELLI: One comment from Carlos and then pass to the last point.
>> Carlos: I like the idea of the simplification on the one hand; but on the other hand, I also agree with Roger. I think it's become obvious with time that if we want to be talking about the same thing, we need to be a little bit prescriptive. Because then in South Africa, you have the wireless ISPs that are not community‑owned that are providing network in the community and then they find themselves as community networks.
And then it's confusing, is very confusing. So trying to define at least a bit of what we are trying to achieve and differentiate ourselves from other people that might appropriate the meaning of what we are trying to do, I think if's important.
>> LUCA BELLI: There are already a lot of declarations in the agreement. But the defer may be very long. So the purpose is consolidation of the core elements that could be shared by everyone.
So let's go to the last point. Policy affecting connectivity and community networks. National policy should facilitate the community commune connectivity and networks. Notably national and international policy should take into consideration account individuals. I think this has been modified. Take into account individuals' Human Rights to freedom of expression and privacy, lower barriers that may hinder individuals and communities' capability to create connectivity, allow the exploitation of existing unlicensed spectrum bans or dynamically assigned secondary use of public interest purposes and consider the growth in use of unlicensed spectrum bans and special licenses which address the needs of community connectivity. And last incentivize the development and the of adoption of based on open standards, free software and open hardware to improve the replicability of community networks. This point slightly defers to what you will find in the survey. If you have comment on this I think the best way would be to share them on the mailing list to add them on the survey if you want but it is a previous one that has not been updated yet so please go ahead with your comments. Steve then gentleman there.
>> I would promos removing the segment from the document and putting it in a different document. I think for one very simple reason is that there are many, many potential allies in advocacy from the regulator from small wireless ISPs to the telecom infraproduct at Facebook. There are lots of organizations who will share that common cause in the decentralization of access regulation and I think you can build a bigger movement in the regulatory frame while maintaining community networks simply by separating the two documents.
>> LUCA BELLI: Very good point.
>> Sorry, I'm not sure the version that you read.
>> LUCA BELLI: We are reading the one online because it is most updated.
>> Contains dynamically the word dynamically.
>> LUCA BELLI: So I think dynamically assign spectrum is one of the ways that secondary use could be. So to say just one way of use of secondary spectrum wouldn't be good. So probably I don't know if just eliminate the word by dynamically or we say dynamically or other ways of secondary use of the spectrum. But not to restrain to that point.
>> Just a potential solution on this not to get stuck on this would be to leave the point number 4 ending at the first sentence. Only national and as well as international policy connectivity and deployment of community networks, period. So that the rest, it's further level of complexity is something on which we can have a more detailed and insightful discussion over the past month maybe with document.
>> Can you repeat?
>> LUCA BELLI: I see there is not too much agreement on everything is that after the first sentence. Sorry, I will speak slowly. So what I was proposing was to keep only the first sentence of the last paragraph meaning national should facilitate the community connectivity and the deployment of community networks. The rest is something I don't believe we have agreement here. I believe it is very important but I'm not sure we will find a solution in the next three minutes.
>> I think Steve's idea is really good. That motion, I second your motion. And I think we can develop this part of in another document and invite other actors. I think that's very good.
>> This is my idea. This is a Forum. We cannot force the government to do it. But at least we can have our voice as a community network. So why not put something like raise collective voice to ask the government to use the universal service fund to have the network like this, something like this. If you think so.
>> LUCA BELLI: This is something that we can discuss at the dynamic ‑‑ on Wednesday. This is something that deserves to be further thought. I would invite all the participants to focus on this point over the past two minutes I notice the comment. Very good point. It is surprising to find it to me. It is not relating to the rest of the we are defining, defining, defining, the point 4 is recommending. I wouldn't even take your suggestion of keeping the first sentence. If we are defining, we are defining. If we are recommending, we are recommending.
>> LUCA BELLI: Very potential outcome is that we don't agree of something. And the thing on which we don't agree we can perfectly remove them and further work on them. That is purpose. Agree on something, not on everything.
>> Sorry. Can I ask clarification? I'm just asking clarification. Steve is suggesting we take the policy recommendations out of this document at this time and do what exactly with it?
>> LUCA BELLI: Sorry. To clarify. This declaration has several points. We start with the preamble. We have definition of connectivity. Community networks. And what are the characteristics of the participants of community networks?
Then the last point was about policy that facilitated community networks. What emerged over the past minutes is that we do not have a lot of consensus on the policy, but we have a lot of consensus on the previous parts. So the declaration could simply be try to define what do we mean by connectivity, community networks and community network participants.
The work on the policy is something that we can perfectly do with a partner document that could be some policy suggestions, for instance, on community networks. And we have a lot of time to do it and maybe that could be an objective for next year with the Dynamic Coalition. Or as Jane was also suggesting, maybe we can do it in partnership with the best practice for an. There are a lot of options on the table, but it could be better here to agree on something.
And as we have a lot of agreement on the first points and not on the last one, I think it may be better to remove the last one to further consider.
>> And we actually, when we create this document or maybe even we will have other documents to add we will just refer to this base document we have agreed on. I think that's very important. Really we have to highlight it. People are working maybe 15, 20 years. This is the first time we have some not all people agreeing on the same room. So we agree on what is community network participants that is already quite extraordinary.
The next ‑‑ well, so far I think we had reached an agreement on the first points. What we can do next is something we should discuss together on the Dynamic Coalition meeting at Wednesday half past 10 we will have the presentation of the report and we can keep good 15 minutes at the end to discuss the very good suggestion of trying to jointly raise our voice to have community networks define the agenda and what could we do next as far as policy recommendations on this point. We can take two final comments and then we will close.
>> The thing is that probably I missed part of the picture, but I didn't understand that it was a big issue within these four points of policy. Really the thing that just said was minimal. It's just one of the staff is not really I don't think this agreement on these points and we have all the previous like regulation and policy wide and important issues. Just didn't take a part of that and leave it for later.
>> So as we were saying, we will consolidate all the received feedback right after IGF. So in the weeks after IGF, we are not issuing a document that is cast in stone on Friday. We are collecting feedback until Friday. Or maybe even more. And then try to consolidate it to do something better. So comment there and then Christian you had a comment.
>> Yeah, thank you. Well, I don't know if I will be able to be in the next meeting, so I'd like to have like your consideration on the gender issue. Because I don't know if I will be able to be in the next meeting. I'm so sorry. If you could include the gender aspect here in this document.
>> LUCA BELLI: It is already clear here as a note.
>> Yeah. My question here regarding the where we are putting it is that after reading more carefully, I'd say that I'm not talking here about having a representative group of people using the network. This is one thing that is also important. I'm talking here about having a gender balance in the construction of this network, which means that for me, it's to the same level of the principles of open design, of collective ownership. So I'm talking about having a collective ownership that includes the concern with gender. I'm talking about social management, having this concern because if we don't address that I'd say that all this is normative. I'm not talking about one point that is normative. Almost this is normative. So if you don't address that, I'd say that when in the field work, when on the ground, this can be not considered because there is no neutral gender now in technology. If it is neutral, we are talking about men. This is the only point.
So if we could not include in the second section but instead in the first one, yeah, I'd really appreciate.
>> LUCA BELLI: Okay. Thanks for this. Last comment by Christian.
>> Christian: I had the comment on number 4 but I am going to follow your advice so that we will be discussing this. It is going to know to be on the mailing list during the week. If it is not the case, I would encourage everybody to join the mailing list. You can probably add your comments on the mailing list. You will contribute as I am going to do on number 4.
>> LUCA BELLI: Well, we can share it. Everyone is invited to join the mailing list. Everyone especially those working community networks are invited to the Dynamic Coalition meeting on Wednesday half past some. Check the room on the shed. And we can share it on the mailing list, but I'm not sure that people that are going around for sessions during the week will have also have time to carefully consider the tweaks on the mailing list. So we can obviously share it on the mailing list, but I would suggest to take a little bit of time, maybe the week or the couple of weeks after the IGF to do this carefully and in the most well done fashion possible.
Having said that, I hope you will be all at the meeting on Wednesday. Thanks for participation. And apologies for being 15 minutes delay. Thank you. Bye‑bye.
(end of session)