The following are the outputs of the real-time captioning taken during the Twelfth Annual Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Geneva, Switzerland, from 17 to 21 December 2017. 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.
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MODERATOR I'll be channelling John Garron. Thank you all very much. We're hoping to be joined by one other panelist. We'd like to run this session is we're going to break it up into three sections which would sort of planning if you would like to start some lively discussion. And the three sections we're going to break it up into is devices, content and services, where Sheila will talk about her work, and access infrastructure where Michael will talk as well. So I think we'll start. And if I could invite to start with the discussion of devices. And not even time, five minutes each. If you can do it in less than five‑minute, that would be great. Republican yes, that would be fine. Thank you.
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MICHAEL GINFULD: So it was a long road to get to the point of developing this specific device. We believe started working with community networks around 15 years ago in Buenos Aires. At that time, we used regular computers and big cases to create our network nodes. And we had as many wireless boards as we needed and we were just casting on the casting ‑‑ but then of course technology evolved and more sudden aversions of the hard work started being divided and more artistic. We started using routers which we would modify mostly in the software but also hardware modifications so we could solve the needs of the community network for which those routers were not designed. No, of course the router you buy in a shop is not designed for you to build a community network. It's designed for wi‑fi in your house, and that's it. So we worked a lot in software development. Our main focus has been to develop software for communities. ‑‑ small communities were the population tends to zero. So it's important to have solutions that can be deployed easily, that can be deployed without people having to attend months course to learn a bit about networking. So we deployed a lot of different companies of software that helped us achieve this goal and we have been deploying such networks in Argentina for a while now for some year. But then we started to heat a wall devices with the devices we had available. A couple of years ago, the FCC had a new regulation that ended with the decision of manufacturers to block the devices to third party modifications so you would buy a router that couldn't do much networking and you couldn't modify it easily to solve the problem.
So at that time we said well this is actually killing the model of community networks we have been developing for so long. So we decided to build our own hardware because the FCC regulates in the United States so why south the always affected by FCC regulation when it's obviously not always good for everyone. And so we decided to build a router that would not be limited by these possibility of changing the sub and so we decided this router would be designed by the community networks or the community networks. ‑‑ and this is really important because who here knows ‑‑ or doesn't know what a mesh network is. Raise your hands. Great. So mesh networks, the difference with the ‑‑ sorry, how many minutes? Sorry. So the mesh networks are unstructured networks where every node has the same roll as every other, instead of hiring Archial network. And for these networks, you need to have multiple radios for the operation to be perfect. Devices, really cheap devices that we have for this feature until this little piece of hardware that we have during this year.
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SPEAKER: Thank you. So one of the nice things of the way of controlling that there is hardware and we have control over the sign is that we don't have any model our way. So it comes with the possibility of extending it to increase the use of it, right? So for instance there were too many important needs that we wanted to cover with this, that is the lack of electricity and the importance of voice. So for the lack of electricity, we have developed maximum power point tracker to make what nickel was saying, a plug and play hardware and software so people without notice would be able to deploy these, the same with for the solar, right? So you can put the solar panel, the design of the batteries, everything is out.
You can actually power the liberal out as well. So that's one good thing I've been working on. Another component we've been working on is Bluetooth automobile that lacks and it can be used for IOP that other people might be interested. But for us, it was to allow the possibility to turn on and off the router, whatever is infused. So the router would be able to turn off automatically. And then the Bluetooth allows you to ‑‑ that consumes power so it's always on. And then with the Bluetooth, you then hold the router. And it's through Laura, it actually turns on the rest of the mesh. So you are saving power and you can tell me in case of an emergency. And then on the ‑‑ voice communication is critical ‑‑ and is probably ‑‑ so we've been working on the ‑‑ a voice solution that allows the community ‑‑ to that to have applications that again ‑‑ thank you.
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MODERATOR: Thank you very much and thanks for sticking to the time. I've neglected to mention we have one presenter online and he's ‑‑ University in the Philippines. So I think if you can hear me, we'd like to invite you to give your remarks please on your work and abilities please go ahead.
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SPEAKER: All right. (Static for audio.)
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MODERATOR: Okay, so if you can hear me, I think we need to pause.
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SPEAKER: Sure.
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MODERATOR: If you can hear me, we'll move on to the next speaker and come back to you. As you can see, we were just joined by two dish speakers. I'd like to invite Jennifer to briefly introduce themselves as well please.
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JENNIFER CHUNG: Okay. Hi, everyone. My name is Jennifer Chung. I work for an organization called Dot Asia and I'm the director of corporate knowledge for them.
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SPEAKER: Hi. I'm the senior global policy manager at Zillow.
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MODERATOR: Thanks very much. We're going to move on to the next session. As I mentioned earlier, it's content and services. Jennifer, if you could give your remarks now. Five minutes, please.
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JENNIFER CHUNG: Hi, everyone. Thank you for the introduction. I do work for an organization called Dot Asia. Dot Asia is a registry, and it is the policy. We do the policy for the ‑‑ domain Dot Asia. We are an organization that is a nonprofit. So a lot of the works that we do is community driven and community related. Talking a little about local content, I'd like to really highlight two flagship initiatives that we do support very much and then also mention three other newer supporting initiatives that we do support in the Asia region. The first one I want to talk about, I did talk about before, in IGF last year is Dot Asia. So why are we supporting it? It's an initiative that we're partnering with WWF, the world wildlife fund in Asia and it's to do with a state of development and also bringing the plight of tigers to the forefront and why people should know and care about it.
And a lot of people don't know the biggest threats that faces a lot of endangered species is actually the internet, whether it is illegal wildlife online trade or poachers using your Q ten locations when you go on holiday, you think about, you know, taking snaps of these endangered species and you don't know people actually use this data. What we're doing is trying to promote not only from the level of school children all the way up to I guess you and me and the people beyond, people's businesses, to actually know that if you care about sustainable development, you need to care about the tigers as well. On our website, you'll see a lot of information to do with the actual species and where they're located. They're located in the in the 13 different tiger nations in Asia. Also, there are educational modules we've developed that we've deployed in Hong Kong in over 500 local primary schools. The feedback we've gotten from the children as well as the parents have been very, very positive. So we're really very proud to help with this initiative.
Because the tiger itself is a very much a symbol of Asia, you hear of people commenting on tiger economies. Tiger as the animal is very much a timbal of Asia. Not only is it something that we want to push very much for sustainable development. It's also part of our organization's figurehead. So he's a little bit of a a mascot. So if you want to learn more about this initiative, I really do want to push for you guys to take a look at the booth upstairs to see a little more about Dot Asia. The second one I wanted to talk about is really new for us.
It's called Tech Women Dot Asia. There's a lot of talk about needing more women, more girls in this industry, to be in stem education. And this is a very worthwhile initiative that is being deployed in central Asia. They're going to be spreading to south Asia and also the pacific. So the networks are for Tech Women Dot Asia is growing in the region. It's trying to play a very crucial role in empowering women in this field. The first employment is in Afghanistan, and the mission really is to increase the number of women and girls enrolled in stem, science, technology, engineering math, and also increase their prominence in business and civil society and give them access to education, collaboration, with like‑minded networks.
I think for this, I think the very first Tech Women Dot Asia conference ‑‑ thank you very much for the time ‑‑ happened earlier this year so I do also encourage everyone to take a look at Tech Women Dot Asia. And lastly, I want to touch a little PT capacity building initiatives that we do.
It is tied to local connectivity, as well. We do deploy a lot of youth ambassadors who create a lot of apps for local Hong Kong youth for them to learn about internet governance, which at the IGF taught me about. So I'll complete my remarks here.
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MODERATOR: Okay. You're next, please.
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SPEAKER: Thank you. Again, I will talk on behalf of my previous organizations. What I would like to share with you is that the technology content and surfaces how their response to the local needs is continuously shifting and being in shape, and it's not only in the matter of only one element that we meet the definitions. So I would like to share with you based o timeline. The first one is in 2016, 2006 and I would like to mention 2006 where my organization, he was at that time make a survey towards our partners.
Most of the working in Asia of gender, human rights, and culture and HIV and AIDS. We were asking about what kind of technology that they are being used. At that time we were also making a lot of sophisticated tools. A lot of technology organizations in which after the survey it reveals that most of our partners, especially in the south, is using the usual technology like e‑mails, website, and ‑‑ then back to six years after, there was a corporation between ‑‑ in 2011. We want to learn how civil society organization using specifically internet and social media. So it's not technology, but ‑‑ social media, it was trending in Indonesia at that time.
From the research, we found a lot of successful examples but anecdotals were not successful with the internet being changed with the risky highlights. The first highlight is that groups and community ‑‑ internet and social media to multiple. If it's in groups, it would be via corporations. If it is groups and ‑‑ it would be engagement. The second is that we also found out that when online engagement meet with off line, the idea of creating a semi‑regulated ‑‑ can provide opportunities for the to prepare the public for a full blown investigation. The third one we would like to see, we feel it is so naive if you focus on the internet and social media ‑‑ because agencies, humans are really matters.
We can also see the strategy use of the internet, like networking, competent be seen, just a data ‑‑ of use and technology. But technology and its use is actually continues shifting and in shape. And other creation of the internet and social media ‑‑ more about the process rather than the outcome. So those are in my second. The third one would be about the ‑‑ these are the most recent issues we are dealing with in Indonesia and the Philippines when I know. It took time for the countries to get indifferent ‑‑ of open data. In the beginning, we have learned that open data is not open unsafe. So what we are preparing now is reliable and good data within ourself. And after that being used that the data is not necessarily open and if we are lucky, we can have invasions. What I would like to share from you is actually from the three stories that I would like to mention. This is a process, yeah. The shaping of the content and services to responding to local needs are really a continuing process in which every elements needs to be ‑‑ sometimes technology, sometimes the content, sometimes the services, sometimes the agents. So it depends on what kind of issues you would like to tackle. But this is not linear and not just one time processes. Thank you.
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MODERATOR: Thank you very much. I think that's a very good sort of ‑‑ you have a whole range of different ideas around content and services. Now, before we get to the infrastructure part, just if we can, we'll try again with ben in the Philippines. If you can hear me, please go ahead with your remarks.
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SPEAKER: (Audio muffled).
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MODERATOR: You're really breaking up really badly. We'll stop there. We might try one last time with the next series of presentations. Thanks. Let's move on to the infrastructure discussion. We have three very good sets of speakers here. So let me invite Michael from HRV to begin.
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MICHAEL GINGULD: Yeah, good afternoon by now. So slightly different than the previous two sections. I understood our writs to be talking about innovative business model, so I'll try within five minutes. So just a few words ‑‑ as I said in the introduction, we're an Indian based company. We've been in existence for ten years. We have networks in eight Indian states, north and east to south and center west of India. We cover about 30,000 square kilometers. We have about 230,000 client and three segments. Fixed wireless private clients, fixed wireless business client, institutional clients, and a very large chunk of public hot spots. Which is an up and coming thing in India. These are all in rural areas. We do it partially on our own and partially in partnership with companies such as ‑‑
So when I think about innovation or innovative business models. Honestly, I don't know what innovation in this context really means. I'm a great believer in being you ‑‑ much more than it's been about a new idea, system, router, what have you. But we dabble with all of those. But if I am sort of put in the corner and asked ‑‑ a couple of pointers that I'd like to share. We're dealing with a situation in rural areas where the costs are higher than in an urban environment and you need to serve a population that's more diverse. So it's almost a nonstarter unless you start to think about reducing the costs and increasing the demand.
So a few pointers there. First of all, groups train. We figured out early on we could not afford the technology college graduates from the cities or even the towns. So we gave people a one‑month course and moved them on. And then they have other courses coming on. 90 percent of our 130 work force is locally recruited and changed.
Second of all, is it an overkill or underachievement? Is the router I'm using a great machine but too expensive? Or is it a piece of junk that's made of plastic and melts in the sun? The source has to be ‑‑
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SPEAKER: The energy is sourced locally. Some of the smart aren't, but you really need to be judicious about the use of expensive technology.
Paying people way, although it's cheap to recruit locally, it's very expensive to ‑‑ you've got to be extremely myself about giving people not only a living salary, but a salary that encourages them to live with you.
Scale. Scale is extremely important. I'm sometimes thinking about giving a course in technology archeology where you go across projects that have died and figure out why. You need to grow, and we've pin at it from day one, wanting to scale up. You've got to grow and you've deposit to grow sensibly. Don't overreach. Don't step on your shoelaces.
Make money. You've got to do this. We're dealing with a commodity. On a good day, I like to think we're doing great things for the world. But we're selling a product. This is not an HIV initiative. We're selling band width.
Stay ahead on innovation. We're not technology developers. I have great respect for technology developers. I deploy. We time or money to develop. We need to deploy.
And the last thing, keep on believing. Some days are amazing. Other days are days of desperation, but persistence is important. Thanks.
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MODERATOR: Just a small note. Can you just look at the microphones in front of you. If the red light is on the microphone, please turn it off. That might be the interference we're getting with the external speaker. Thanks. Steve, the floor is yours. Please go ahead.
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STEVE SONG: Thanks. Briefly, just take a step back for a second in terms of when we think about connecting the rest of the world, it's important to recognize that the dominant narrative, up until very recently has been mobile networks, that mobile networks have performed a miracle in the networks, the number of people they have connected. But the reality is that mobile growth is slowing and that the current mobile network models are not driving into as far as the populated rural areas and that's why you see the people you see on this panel is because innovation is required in business models and technology and in regulation in order to develop networks that will serve everybody.
And I think ‑‑ so my observations in studying the growth of these alternative models are three things, I think.
One is I think there's a creative tension that you'll likely see on this panel between community based and commercial approaches to access. And you'll see, you know, almost two different narratives there coming from, for instance, a strictly, you know, we need smart business models that can affordably serve the poor, and it's all about how can we make it cheap not for everyone to access the internet. And community based models that are more about inclusion and more about thinking about, well, what does the internet mean to the communities that it connect? And I think we all know. Certainly, the last few years have shown us the internet is not strictly a benign incident. We know it brings good, but it also brings dangerous. We heard about how it affects tigers. We know that social media platforms are used to sway public opinion. But the internet needs to be ‑‑ we need to think about how to make a better internet and a community can bring a lot of that thinking with them as they try and design an inclusive network to connect people.
At the same time, communities also bring in discipline in terms of how do you make this a sustainable and long‑term. And I think bringing those two initiatives into closer dialogue is very healthy. And in terms of innovation and sustainability, I think the is, while technologically innovation is essential, my reflection on visiting a number of networks recently in Kenya is that the most interesting invasions are people invasions. So while there are very interesting technologies being developed, the most interesting innovation I've found in visiting a number of networks in Kenya was the agent acquisition model in that how they had developed a very sophisticated model for actually finding human talent to deploy this network. So I think it's done similar thing in terms of how they're building local capacity as part of their internal business model.
And I think the ‑‑ actually, I'll stop there.
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MODERATOR: Thanks, Steve. Right on time. And finally ‑‑ well, I shouldn't say finally. But for the next speaker, your remarks.
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SPEAKER: Steve's always a hard act to follow.
Most of you know Mozilla as the maker of Fire Fox. But what you may not know is the foundation ‑‑
I think Steve commented about slowing of global growth and I think that in that moment a few years ago, zero reading was propelled out as this opportunity, this promise, as there was something that could help to governance and regulators ‑‑ to accelerate ‑‑ in which people were connecting. I think we see in zero rating, a lot of the same anti‑competition and anti‑innovation concerns that we see more ‑‑ and so Mozilla said we can and must do better. We have to find new ways to provide affordable access. And we watched an initiative Donald ‑‑
They're free of gatekeepers and they're free of ‑‑ it doesn't really provide people ‑‑ some parts that they like and users to choose the content that they want based on the quality of that content and not on the commercial relationships of their provider.
‑‑ providing affordable access. I'm pleased to be joined by two of the finalists of that challenge here on this panel. I'll try and give perhaps a little higher level ‑‑ project projects specifically.
We had 100 submissions from 27 countries around the world, and I think within that ‑‑ I want to give some high level overview of some of the information we saw. We had five categories. First was around funding access. If you don't want to pay for access, how can you change dynamics in order to bring ‑‑ into the system. And so whether that's looking at micro financing, whether it's looking at advertising models, local and hyper local businesses with local users, wi‑fi spots. We saw a lot of innovation, not surprisingly, around building access. You know, people year round, nonprofit international fiber optic carrier, looking at innovative pieces, seeing white space. And looking at other ways of ‑‑ that are proving more cost effective. I think ‑‑ changing, who's paying for the internet where you're charging ‑‑ providers rather than users for access.
A third group around governing access and the community models we worked about, how did you work with community with when building the network?
4th, had to worry about teaching access and conserve literacy and level initiative. It helps people understand what the the internet and ‑‑ integrated with that with access in addition ‑‑ and then finally ‑‑ using access and ways to help people see and sort of create ‑‑ content and structures that hopes to see a wide issue ‑‑
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MODERATOR: Thank you very much. And we're going to give Sevilla one last try. His work on designing drones for humanitarian assistance. If you would like to put your headpieces on and keep your fingers crossed. Please go ahead and speak up as loudly and clearly as you can. Thanks.
I'm very sorry. I think we lost you completely there. I think we'll move on to the next part of the discussion, and I'd like to spark discussion amongst the panel.
As you just heard, there's a very rich array of ideas and invasions amongst all of the different activities you've murder over the last few minutes. One question I have to the panel and innovation, when you get something innovative, a new strategy and new technology, where does it come from? Within your own team? Out in the community? When you see innovation? Jennifer, starting with you. Where did that come from? Where do you pick up a new idea and spot it
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SPEAKER: I guess at Dot Asia we're really fortunate to be working with a lot of young people. We find the innovation to be coming from working with a lot of young people. For the tiger initiative, we were approached. We do a lot of community work in and around Asia pacific, and they thought that a lot of the work that we do seemed like a good fit. But definitely the tiger initiative had a very very strong response in the younger generation and kids from all the way from ‑‑ and they find it a very interesting way to learn about what the internet can do, both good and bad.
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MODERATOR: From the rest of the panel? Michael, your hand's up. Where does your innovation come from
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SPEAKER: A lot of it actually comes from our team and users. And just maybe 1 or 2 interesting cases. So we're connecting one place called ‑‑ it's a very rural area where we have video surveillance on tigers, but we can talk about that some other time.
But I didn't tell one of the only maces we've worked in India where there is zero mobile coverage. Very, very rare in many places. So we've connected with people and put public hot spots, trying to make money out of it. Actually making good money out of it, creating India's first digital footprint. There's an ambulance there with an balance, but how the hell do you call the ambulance? There's no cell coverage. So some of the guys figured out, they got the guy's phone number, got on what's up, created their own little group and they're calling the ambulance driver. This may not sound like a great innovation, but it's great. Looking at the situation, creating a very very simple app that's going to be ‑‑ it's going to have one red button and another green slip. When the green is on, you're inside a coverage area. If you press red, the ambulance driver will get your message and come to you.
A lot of the business models come from our team. People go in the field. We give them direction and smart ideas that we have about pricing or reaching out or packaging things. They come back and say, no, this doesn't work. Package it differently. Again, I don't want to take too much time, but some very very interesting anecdotes.
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SPEAKER: Two observations. One, there's no single silver bullet that's going to connect the unconnected. There's no one company or organization that's going to connect. Once we light up the fiber and and build the tower, we still have to think of local solutions that help to bring people online that speak to their experiences, and work in their community.
For us, we try to lock a bunch of engineers into an air conditional room with a mountain view and try to figure out what we're going to do and it doesn't really help. As a company, organization, we have to embrace about working with broad and diverse communities to come up with surface new ideas. Often, they're bringing a greater diversity of ideas and perspectives that we couldn't possibly ever come up with ourselves. And I think open innovation as a methodology and perspective is critical to sort of giving voice to a lot of new ideas. There really will help to find local solutions, and that's been very successful for us. We're now in our third open innovation challenge, just with the challenge subjected to the invasions.
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SPEAKER: Regarding the origin of innovation, in our case, there's a lot of interaction between what happens in the communities, whatever problems that the communities identify and how they share that with the more technically minded in their communities and from the ‑‑ it is very ‑‑ and that usually brings up interesting innovation regarding software or hardware. And another thing regarding open innovation is that I think that our type of development is one of the things that makes this interaction very fluent, the fact that usually in the open movement, we deploy earth so we have kick back very early and then we iterate over what we are innovating and I think that's ‑‑
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SPEAKER: Yes, please.
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SPEAKER: ‑‑ talking about innovation, we have a lot of ‑‑ what the innovation ‑‑ saying innovation. But one thing we learned from all the processes is that if we have so many people in different skills, adding knowledge and ‑‑ in Indonesia that I know, there's a lot of innovation coming from the government and society from the private sectors that try to really make a conversation between those sectors to really come up with an idea that can settle the issues. We have a lot of heck ton. There's a lot of process that makes things better.
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SPEAKER: Can I add to that? The role of regulation as we can see from our community, regulation is coming in many different forms. There seems to be the assumption that regulation can smother innovation. I wonder if anyone on the panel would comment on that. Steve?
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STEVE SONG: Particularly when it comes to telecommunications and access, we exist within a regulatory paradigm that was ‑‑ so telecommunications regulation was designed for national model of telecommunications network. And the fact is that the world has changed. The advent of low cost ‑‑ employ technologies and the growth of growth of wholesale generic national back hole fiber networks means that deploying a network is within the reach of communities, after entrepreneurs, of municipalities, and yet they are prohibited from doing that by ‑‑ so I think one of the biggest things we can do to enable access to the underserved is to create and have a new framework of regulation. I'm getting rid of the old one for the new one that enables small operators.
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MODERATOR: Anyone else have a comment on the role of regulation or their experience with regulation?
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SPEAKER: I try not to hog too much. Actually, you know, we're reality takers when it comes to regulation. We've win tempted many times, but you need to choose your battles ‑‑ if you look at India, this is one of the fastest changing regulatory spaces in the world. On the one hand, you have total annihilation of ‑‑ on the other hand, you have a new player that comes in writing over the policies, providing band width for free for a whole year. One year of data free. Hard to survive in an environment like this.
On the other hand, TV wide spaces coming in, going out. So for us as an ISP, each of these are challenges that we kind of role with and it forces us to end. Competition to me is not a threat. It's a chance to innovate. So I agree with Steve that one needs to have a better framework, but I don't see that it's coming in ‑‑
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MODERATOR: Thanks.
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SPEAKER: Actually very interesting. Working with what we have is actually what we have ‑‑ and that's why we've been going and try to provide wi‑fi.
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SPEAKER: Neither wi‑fi or voice over IP, they come ‑‑ for provider voice and actually the ‑‑ the framework in south Africa is on the way and the licensing supreme have been allocated. Makes impossible to have communities especially when they're not being used, to make use of that, just to be unacceptable. When we are working, people spend talking to two percent, disposable income ‑‑ in voice communications. ‑‑ if that is spectrum that this whole nationally and not used locally could be used by the communities, that 32 percent with the very same amount of minute and colds et cetera would be three percent. So yes, you need to innovate and you need to use with the harm and that's why ‑‑ and keep on providing tools are allowing the people to ‑‑ more affordably, but there are ways that the regulations are saving.
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MODERATOR: I think that's a good chance to open it up to the audience. I think straight away we've got a question. So we'll start with that question. Get your question ready. We'll be coming to the audience.
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SPEAKER: Yes, there's a question from ‑‑ it's to the speakers. How do the speakers suggest that the cooperation from Allstate quarters can happen? What other barriers for that collaboration flourish? How do your organization find the fronts and time to work on collaborating.
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SPEAKER: A couple of questions there. Who would like to Answer two? Maybe we can repeat the first question.
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MODERATOR: I'll just repeat those very easy questions.
So I want to ask, how do the speakers such as that needed collaboration from all stakeholders can happen.
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SPEAKER: The easiest one is to collaborate around somebody that everybody doesn't like. That's the easiest one. And the challenge again is taking to a rural setting is can you do something that the government is interested in, a rural community finds interesting ‑‑ and if you hit these and a couple more, you're on the right way. So it's about framing what you want to do.
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SPEAKER: We have this project that is one of the key main outcome of the research is that in Indonesia, you would like to make access to a project. You have to have a political feel as leadership for the government. So in my observations, how did we spark develop operation in the country like Indonesia and Philippines, where when we do introduce an open government back at 11, that really sparks the operations? So there are some leaderships needed, but then when it comes to the detailed and how to do a better job and/or how to really do all this together, then we have to really ‑‑ the others. But the leadership should come from ‑‑ also, has issues of regulations as well and because the innovation might not be that innovate if we have to work with so many people and as stated.
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SPEAKER: Can I ask maybe we go to the other part of the question, how do you fund innovation ‑‑ collaborations?
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SPEAKER: I just want to build on the issue. Transparency, I think one way to actually kick start collaboration is to simply have more transparency in the telecommunications sector. So for instance Carlos was talking about access to GSM spectrum. The majority of companies, has been a science spectrum on one term for how many years, it's not public information and it should be. And some companies are fantastic examples. Kenya, Nigeria, they do a great job of information but they're in a tiny minority of countries that make detailed spectrum information public. Tower information. The fiber networks information. You should know where fiber networks are so we can spot an opportunity to tap into them.
All this information is often treated as confidential information, whether for commercial purposes or government purposes. There needs to be a movement towards that.
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JONATHAN: Thanks. Jonathan from the Innovative Network Foundation. I work a lot on the future of work issues and I just came out of a future of work panel and I'm reminded of the old adage, if all you have is a hammer, every problem becomes a nail. There seems to be this notion to your question, because we have a existing regulatory framework, we end up doing everything we can to classify new economy businesses and find a way to categorize them as old economy businesses or get them to change their practices to have like old economy businesses to ‑‑ obviously it's a chance for innovation, but it feels wrong‑headed that sometimes it might make sense to look from scratch about how to solve the same kinds of problems those frameworks were put in place to solve with a blank slate. Otherwise, businesses are constantly modifying their business model into the fit regulations, sources of funding, et cetera, and that seems like it's a disruptive force in economic development.
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SPEAKER: Hi. I'm trying to get engaged with young people in Europe around the topic of copyright forum which is quite pertinent on the level of such a thing going on. And you can check out the complaint of copywriters.u. I'm not going to go into details with that. I'm just saying with the question content wise. How does the copyright systems in Europe or regions of the planet affect your work and have you been effectively working on these issues? Especially young people are very affected in three systems and their inability to ‑‑ you have formulated your own positions on the internet, but our ‑‑ trying to hold those models and keep on participating.
>> SPEAKER: I think that in community networks, they'll say a lot of work regarding ‑‑ content, services, and new what comment to find some initiative, it's discarded from the beginning because there is a possibility that it will be targeted as a ‑‑ no? I think this is sort of the one of the things that is going on with copyright and content sharing because at least when I talk with my community, maybe it will ‑‑ the community wouldn't mind they are sharing copyrighted material from Hollywood or whatever. They would like to share. And I think there is a niche that we need to explore much more and we need to reach for regulation and gun regulation. I always say that we have a word internet property organization, and we don't have a word access to cultural organization. So I think we should try to have the ‑‑ to discuss these issues because it's ‑‑ it doesn't make sense to destroy innovation for the sake of country.
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SPEAKER: I think this is a really interesting point when you talk about innovation. A lot of young people are facing an up hill battle. If you want to create content that's pertinent to your peers and your target audience, I'm sure a lot of people in this room have heard of it ‑‑ is actually on a creative comments license. So I think in that sense there's a certain movement towards going to a different kind of licensing model or more openly collaborative innovation model where your works can be used, derived, in ways that encourage further transformation and innovation of your work.
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SPEAKER: Yes.
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LOUIS MARTINEZ: Hello. Hi, this is Louis Martinez from Mexico. When we get into community networks, we start to look that people, let's say the organizations are gaining interest in community networks let's say in the current state, operators, they still feel there's no market in this small communities because they think they are few and poor. So there is not a market of interest. Governments, they feel they are being covered in the needs of many necessities, but these people are usually far away from the last mild plans. And international organizations, a society to you. They're starting to get an interest in community networks. So I would like to ask the panel, what do you think about the compliance of technical standards in community networks? People working in these engineers and organizations should enforce the compliance of technical standards or still there is some period where the most important is to develop the engineering of the network and the social effect of the network rather than the compliance of the full standards. So you would like to respond.
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SPEAKER: Yes, please.
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SPEAKER: I can talk about something that happens with our solutions is that we're used to working usually at the edge of development, and it's quite hard to get the hackers to standardize in ways that the standard bodies expect. We have been trying to push for some of this, and we are currently trying with some sort of routing software, also with the wide spaces, database. But it's quite difficult to make it match the open source gig community with the standardization process.
I think it would be good to standardize. We still haven't had much success, although there is of course some developments that are completely standard.
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MODERATOR: Yeah, Steve.
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STEVE SONG: The only thing I would add to that, is I think it depends on what standards and it's very contactual. ‑‑ and he broke had the rules in connecting schools and hospitals in unserved areas. And by breaking the rules, he was able to kind of normalize change. On the other hand, you've got situations where the wireless ISPs in crowded areas break the rules by turning the power up too high on their devices and everybody suffers. So I think the Answer two is that it's extremely contextual sometimes. It's the right thing, but not always.
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SPEAKER: I agree that it's context actual, but in‑‑ I sincerely believe that we engineers must set us a limit on how far we can get just because we're making the internet. We're building internet from scratch. So that's a chance to start with the standards rather than from real scratch. Thanks.
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MODERATOR: Any other questions from the audience? Yes, the guy in the back, thank you. Microphone, please, so the moderator can see us.
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SPEAKER: Hello. I want to ask question to alter man Deko. I know some guys from there, and that's very nice. It's interesting from me how you develop your own community. So we are ‑‑ I'm from pillars and we have community of geeks. We have call ourselves Philancer Community. We work with different network issues. So I didn't tell just in how do you engage more people, collaborate, and that's it
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SPEAKER: We have been like working a lot for many years on building communication among different community networks group. So if you're working, we need to talk more, maybe the other. But one thing is to get good relations between the development community which is quite well expected and there are events where we all meet yearly and different forums, et cetera, where we all participate or lots of the geek community participate. But then it's all different to actually connect the community networks, like the people in the community, no? I think that is still more of a challenge for us, at least. Like we had ‑‑ or almost tornado yesterday where I live. Have the communities off hine and they're all talking among themselves. They have not started talking with the rest of the community networks that are around them to try to solve the issue collectively. So that for me is still a challenge, that communities tend to naturally connect more with the rest of the communities around.
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MODERATOR: Any other comments from the panel on that? One of the things that we find interesting, which I know is not a community of geeks is more the commercial ‑‑ and I think the other registries, the network operating groups, that knocks around the region and certainly in the Asian pacific in the developing economies in the region. By supporting and sponsoring network groups that come together with the engineers and getting to know each other and collaborate, getting to know the community. I know it's slightly different a model, but it's a great example from our point of view. From the very large obviously like in Japan or Australia, to very tiny ones in some of the southeast Asian countries. It's another example of how different communities can come together if you're not aware of the ‑‑
But I also agree with the point that the development community, very active in this area, comes together and collaborates a lot, does not have in some ways an awareness of our technical community. ‑‑ I find that quite interesting as well.
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ANNA: My name is Anna. I'm a member of ICA. I have a question concerning innovation. When you're innovating, you're creating a new service, new products that doesn't exist, so I guess judges or lawyers, they don't know what it is. And when you are developing, you have to consider that you have an ecology, ethics, and you have as well ‑‑ a preview, technology that used to be used for that proper for that need. So how do you work with regulators? So you have someone in your team and in your work, hand by hand, we go see New York, only structure to, you know, elevate those lawyers and create your own regulation because you have to get higher as well as innovating the product, innovating the ‑‑ as well. And innovating to when you grow up. You continue abating this with your lawyers ‑‑ debating this with your lawyers or simply just develop and wait and see.
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SPEAKER: ‑‑ in our case, I didn't tell not that we have a lawyer on our team, but there are some experts, some telecommunication lawyers that are pro bono as far as what we do with the environment. And also trying to acquire or open up this place where he is inspected for communities and also in the licensing framework and also in the value in case of the ‑‑ there is a regulation in to be met for the device to open country. So all those processes can assist. ‑‑ framework as well. So it's true we build a new ‑‑ something that doesn't exist and needs to be looked at differently, and I would not ‑‑ but at the same time to do it closely, to work ‑‑ exist opens door and opens ‑‑ trying to not be disruptive in that sense or trying to be disruptive but being careful of the language.
We're trying for instance now something that doesn't exist, discuss our innovation and our models and planning the first ‑‑ it's a wayward situation for all the ‑‑ in the network. But it takes ‑‑ doing or implementing the ‑‑ is not possible. And it's very difficult to actually do it. So we need to create ‑‑ try to we are working with our lawyers to try to ‑‑ so I guess ‑‑ lawyers and ‑‑
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SPEAKER: Yes.
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SPEAKER: So innovation happens where it can. You look at the huge success of wi‑fi, it is because it is the only portion with vast amount of wireless spectrum which doesn't require a license. It's not unregulated to use this point. But it is unlicensed, and that's why we see it in every single device at huge networks. You know, we leap from wi‑fi network to wi‑fi network. But it's not enough. And in order to reach everyone needing more than just one wi‑fi, and in order to do that ‑‑ make more spectrum available. And in order to do that, we need wireless. We need telecom lawyers for good. There is this gigantic gap. Telecom lawyers, they've had worked ‑‑ there is incredible public interest, lawyers working on regulatory policy. So this is something that there's a critical ‑‑
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SPEAKER: Thank you.
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SPEAKER: Choose your partners wisely. One of the partners in here is actually a lawyer.
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SPEAKER: Yes.
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SPEAKER: As a policy person, not a lawyer, I would say that you should talk to us too. I was talking to a member the other day and it was a relatively sure company ‑‑ interdisciplinary ‑‑ all coming together. ‑‑ oh, let's see you know how that wall shakes out, how they start enforcing it in a year and we figure out how it's going to work. We can integrate now before it's written. I think there are a lot of work about policy. ‑‑ so I think the access projects here at the audience around the world, and I think there are a lot of those who are actually ‑‑ collaborate on this point and who are pushing progressive and ‑‑ in the allies.
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SPEAKER: Yes, I would like to ‑‑ because in Indonesia as was mentioning above ‑‑ having a wi‑fi open in Indonesia is actually big into laws. And I come also from ‑‑ that we have this law since 2004 but as of 2016, we don't have license. The key thing is the dialogue, the policy makers and ‑‑ may not be totally correct in terms of regulations and laws, but it could suffice. So I would like to ask you whether also the options related to the invasions that get bigger and might not be totally correct in some ‑‑ we can make that dialogue process as one of the ‑‑ give more open ‑‑
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SPEAKER: Just a more serious ‑‑ regulations.
Regulations are made by ‑‑ one of the most important things ‑‑ where they're coming from and where they're going to. Without getting into ‑‑ I would encourage people to look at things like TV white spaces and to see who's supporting it, who's against it. And why maxes are very interesting cases. It wasn't a problematic technology. It was a technology that some people were against. So extremely important in regulations, not just spite to change the policy, but understanding who you're with and who is on the other side of you.
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SPEAKER: Just a couple more.
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SPEAKER: Okay, I take advantage. I would like to ‑‑ because we're coming from different countries and develop different product and services, if you could each one of you tell me one word that would mean that I feel condition to innovate, what do you need to innovate? What is essential for you
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MODERATOR: I think that's a great question, and I'm going to make that the last question before we wrap up. So yes, the panel, one word from each of you on what's the most important thing for innovation. Let's start with Jennifer and go down. 1 or 2 words on what concept.
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SPEAKER: Openness. For us, it's openness.
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SPEAKER: Openness of who?
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SPEAKER: Openness of communication channels, ideas, in terms of transparency of the entire process. I think that's really important innovation. Otherwise, it can be stifled.
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SPEAKER: I think multidiscipline between sectors and stakeholders can be very important.
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SPEAKER: I would say it's flexibility, especially from the other side of things. Be flexible. Innovation is ‑‑ something that you said at the beginning ‑‑
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SPEAKER: I would say collaboration, at least for what we do.
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SPEAKER: I'm thinking purpose. All too often, we have wonderful answers looking for a good question. When it comes to innovation, the thing that I'm always concerned about is what are you innovating for? If it's something we're trying to do, then it's ‑‑
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SPEAKER: I think innovation comes from other people. Community. And being connected.
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SPEAKER: ‑‑ I think both in terms of different perspectives and different experiences and conditions you're innovating for as well as ensuring acts of diversity ‑‑ north star or ‑‑ efforts that we work together to bring all the ‑‑
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MODERATOR: Thank you. I think there's a great example of the creativity of the panel.
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SPEAKER: Thank you very much.
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MODERATOR: A great example of the creativity of the panel. Not one person has the same example. Again, a great example of what it takes to be innovative.
On a personal level, I found it really inspiring to hear all the different types of innovation and ideas and strategies and activities that each of the people on the panel have represented. And then a really fruitful discussion around what it takes to encourage it and how it's connected and how it will all work. So please join me in thanking the panel for today's contributions.
I also want to ask you to thank the organizers of the panel which is Silvia, Coralina, and Gremalda.
[APPLAUSE]
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MODERATOR: Thank you all very much for attending. This brings to an end the session. Thank you for listening and thank you for participating.