If the ETNO and related African group proposals to charge the networks sending information to Africa go through, those who will suffer will be users in Africa, particularly those with limited budgets and no internationally accepted credit cards. The European Telecommunications Network Operators’ Association (ETNO), representing European telecommunication companies, is proposing that the “sending party network pays” principle be written into an international treaty. This proposal would force content providers to pay local telecom operators for the delivery of user-requested data. Users from countries not seen as having large revenue potential could even find themselves cut off from some content. Alternatively, attractive content may have to be moved behind paywalls, making them inaccessible for those without credit cards.
The spectrum refarming process is picking up speed in the US. The auction process will have three parts. In the first, the F.C.C.
We’re celebrating 25 years of the Montreal Protocol. I was in Ohio when the Treaty was signed and I wasn’t too hopeful it would work. The whole thing had started with a research paper published in 1974, just 13 years before the treaty. It’s very hard to get an international treaty. Even harder to make one that actually work.
Ghana’s Communication Minister Mr. Haruna Iddrisu said his government “will not allow any economic cost or value to the internet that will limit access” and ubiquitous access to Internet is a “nonnegotiable” issue. In a stakeholder meeting Idrisu also said, “One ingredient that had helped Ghana to enjoy the stable and peaceful economy was access and use of ICT and that the Government would not interfere in what its Constitution has guaranteed.” The government’s statement came within few days after Ghana News Agency ran a story based on LIRNEasia CEO Rohan Samarajiva’s article, “A Giant Step Backward or the Way Forward? An Analysis of Some Proposals before the WCIT.
For two days, I’ve been immersed in debates around WCIT, here in Accra at the African preparatory meeting. The delegate from Egypt, who had control of the text, was the most committed advocate of imposing a form of accounting-rate regime on data flows. According to him, the data are a burden on the network, they cause harm to the network, and the access network operators are subsidizing them. His views extend to content: he believes that the content is in some cases inappropriate. I could understand this attitude from an executive of an old style unreformed voice telephony company, longing for the good old monopoly days when the network was operated for the benefit of the managers and employees and the customers were an annoyance to be tolerated.
When I was asked by LMD about barriers to growth in the ICT sector, I mentioned parents who are not open to their children becoming entrepreneurs. Here is a supportive story from India. In Bangalore, a city at the forefront of many social changes in India, the young are leading a vibrant start-up culture that has taken root over the past few years, much to the dismay of a generation of parents. According to these elders, respectfully called “Aunty” and “Uncle” in India by the younger generation, the natural progression after college is to work for a short time, to get an M.B.
Earlier this month I was asked by a panel moderator what the most critical factor was in accelerating broadband use. My answer was mobile apps. If people have interesting things to do with their devices, they will upgrade to smartphones, they will pay the usage charges, etc. This is also why I decided to put some effort into beating back ETNO’s misguided effort to squeeze the Internet into a dysfunctional accounting-rate regime. So where are these apps coming from?
Ghana News Agency has given an in-depth coverage of Rohan’s article, “A Giant Step Backward or the Way Forward? An Analysis of Some Proposals before the WCIT.” GNA said: Analyzing the proposals, which were from member states in Africa and the European Telecommunications Network Operators Association (ETNO), Dr. Rohan Samarajiva, former Sri Lankan Telecommunication regulator, said they could artificially raise the cost of network interconnection, content delivery, and quality of service, and that these costs would ultimately be passed along to those least able to afford them or would result in exclusion from the Internet economy. Here is the full report.
Starting with a comparison between 40 year old TPRC, 25+ EuroCPR and 7 year old CPRsouth, I presented data from CPRsouth developed by the Human Capital Research team headed by Sujata Gamage to an engaged audience (they had to be, given it was the last session on the last day of the conference). The majority of the discussion focused on my claim that we did not focus on face-to-face interactions between scholars, government people and industry representatives, given we were a multi-country network lacking a geographical focus like Washington DC and Brussels. The presentation is here.
Sitting at a session in TPRC40 listening to LIRNEasia Research Fellow Faheem Hussain presenting his paper. Impressed that this kind of study, analyzing an issue that is not of great relevance to US telecom policy scholars, is accommodated at TPRC. The challenge, of course, is to pull back from the temptation to give too much detail on the exotica of a particular developing country and to present the abstract high level findings that may be of interest to a broader audience.
I just completed a paper that summarizes the key arguments I have been making against the ETNO proposals to impose sending party network pays principle on the Internet. Here is an excerpt from the paper: ETNO wants the ITU to designate Internet content providers as “call originators” and subject them to a “sending party network pays” rule that would allow telecommunications operators to charge them rates they believe are commensurate with the bandwidth their content consumes. Such a change would have enormous implications for the expansion of the digital economy in the developing world. • Access to content would become more expensive if content providers must pass along costs. • Content providers may respond by terminating connections with operators, especially in countries with populations that have limited buying power and access to payment mechanisms.
The United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) has invited me to speak at “Regional Expert Consultation on Connecting Asia-Pacific’s Digital Society for Resilient Development” in Colombo during 5-6 September. There I presented that Asia’s wholesale prices of Internet bandwidth remains six-times expensive compared to the Europe and USA. Participating experts have overwhelmingly endorsed my proposal of laying fiber along Asian Highway to build an open-access transcontinental terrestrial network. It has been captured in the outcome document of the conference stating: Experts recommended that various bilateral, regional and transcontinental initiatives continue to be pursued, while also exploring new ways to reduce infrastructure costs by synchronizing the roll-out of terrestrial fibre optic cables with other infrastructure development, notably highway construction, for example, using regional connectivity offered by ESCAP’s intergovernmental agreement on the Asian Highway. Experts also noted that open access principles are a key requirement in bringing down costs for universal access to broadband connectivity, as proposed in LIRNEasia’s Longest International Open access Network (LION).
Having voted on behalf of the government at ITU forums, I can imagine the discomfiture of Indian officials when their decisions to go along with proposals to bring the Internet under the authority of the ITU are questioned by powerful domestic stakeholders. Opposing the government’s decision of having a global body to regulate Internet content, India Inc as well civil society groups today said that India should withdraw its consent to such a proposal. Besides, they argued that the government had taken a unilateral decision on Internet governance, without discussing it with the civil society members, industry or academicians. India had favoured an international proposal to regulate Internet content through a United Nations Committee on Internet Related Policies (CIRP) comprising 50 bureaucrats from the UN Member countries. India concurred with the CIRP on October 26, 2011 by making a statement at the 66th Session of the UN General Assembly in New York.
The first publication from LIRNEasia’s Human Capital Research Program is in bookstores in Colombo and at the International Book Exhibition opening at the BMICH on September 18th (CG Associates University Bookstore D-206 and D-207). It is a directory that provides comprehensive and authoritative information about the choices facing school leavers who wish to enter degree programs. The choices outside the University Grants Commission bottleneck are wider than thought. The HCR program plans to follow up with directories on professional qualifications, etc.
In July, I wrote that Myanmar was about to adopt a flawed telecom law, which had the support of the Bangkok Office of the ITU. Appears that saner counsel had prevailed: Two other sources with close knowledge said the government realized its mistakes this July, when a revised law sent to President Thein Sein was quietly recalled because it was “deeply flawed”. A senior government official said Thein Sein wants to implement reforms fast, aware of the proven links between telecoms expansion and GDP growth and the urgent need for transparency in a crucial sector. Expansion and liberalization would not only create thousands of jobs in a country with chronic unemployment, but it would also allow for mobile money services, like transferring cash that could be collected by a relative in rural areas by showing a simple text message. “It’s not just phones, it’s other cross-cutting factors.
Mr Luigi Gambardella of ETNO responded to one of my tweets and asked me to relook at their proposal. I did (CWG-WCIT12/C-109 of 6 June 2012). On the face, it appears that they are concerned about broadband quality of service, a real problem that we have been working on since 2007. But then they go off the rails. The solution to QoS is supposedly treaty-level language mandating that “Member States shall facilitate the development of international IP interconnections providing both best effort delivery and end to end quality of service delivery,” and that “Operating Agencies shall endeavour to provide sufficient telecommunications facilities to meet requirements of and demand for international telecommunication services.