The following are the outputs of the real-time captioning taken during the virtual Fifteenth Annual Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), from 2 to 17 November 2020. 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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>> Whenever you want, we can start if you want.
>> You can start sharing your screen at the moment.
>> Good morning, good afternoon to everyone. Welcome to all the people that has joined us in this very important session about inclusion. My name is Karim Attoumani, PMO and regulatory project manager at a company of action group and Vice President of ISO chapter. In this session, committed actions for connecting and enabling the remaining billions together with our panelists who have a opportunity to analyze and comment about reductions that can be taken from the different perspective in order to achieve meaningful Internet connection for all. Today we have a fantastic panel as you can see with people that you already know very well because of their contributions to shape the Internet, representing different sectors and regions all around the world. Let me introduce them. I would like to start with Sylvia Cadena, head of program at APNIC, the Asia and Pacific region coordinator for Information Society innovation fund, and MAG member. We also have Sonia Jorge, Executive Director of Alliance for Affordable Internet. We have in this panel one of the creator of the very first protocols that were part of the Internet from the beginning and continue using today, Mr. Vint Cerf, Google Vice President and Internet evangelist. We have our colleague, Christian O'Flaherty, Internet society Vice President for Latin America and Caribbean regions. Then coming from Orange, we have senior Vice President of Internet and sustainable energy governance, Mongi Marzoug, and Moctar Yedaly, head of Information Society division for African Union Commission. They all have remarkable contribution in their respective fields. You might know more about them visiting the IGF portal, we thank them to accept to join us as speakers. I also introduce Roberto Zambrana, President of Internet Society Bolivia chapter and La Paz City Hall, Roberto will be facilitating the session. All participants, you are encouraged to write any question in the Q&A section or comments in the chat. I will be reading them in their corresponding action section of session.
We might start the session now, Roberto, go ahead, please take the floor.
>> ROBERTO ZAMBRANA: Thank you very much, Karim and thank you to our appreciated panelists for accepting to be part in this session. As you know during the last, the previous week from the beginning of this one, in most of our, most of those were great sessions, and first to be part of in a very first virtual IGF, and with listening repeatedly a couple of concepts. One of those was related to the COVID pandemic that forced us to face a global lockdown that we had to follow in the most of our countries. This situation made all of humanity to react, think and plan in different ways about how to overcome this crisis, trying to continue with our lives, during this IGF many speakers shared their experiences and fantastic stories about how to bring normality to our way of living, having Internet as the main resource to succeed in this. For sure, those are great lessons for resilience. Sadly, this wasn't the case for most of humanity, and I say most because despite the encouraging statistics about Internet penetration, the reality showed us different situations in which there is still so much to do in order to really achieve meaningful connectivity for everyone.
This was the second concept that was present in many of the previous sessions. But among other things, this is relevant matter that had a main attention from the UN Secretary‑General and not only was included as a key theme in analysis of High Level Panel on Digital Cooperation convened by His Excellency Mr. Antonio Guterres, but it's present as the first set of recommendations in the role for digital cooperation that international community must work together in the near future.
Today in this session, we will discuss about what are the actions that actually made this dream come true, made all the countries, all the people finally to achieve this meaningful connectivity for all. We have some questions, some policy questions that we would like to discuss with the panel, and after that, we will have three rounds of discussions with this policy questions, and after that we will listen in to the people that is attending to this session.
Beginning with Sylvia, please, and we are going to go through three or four of our panelists going to one first question and then we are changing idea with the other panelists. Sylvia, what are obstacles to achieving affordable access to Internet in recent years despite significant expansion of mobile infrastructure deploying around the world, what are your thoughts about it? And welcome again to the session.
>> SYLVIA CADENA: Thank you very much. My name is Sylvia Cadena, head of programs of the foundation. Good morning, the sun is coming up. My apologies if coffee did not kick in yet. I would like to thank you for the invitation to join the panel, as outgoing of the MAG it took many months of preparation. I'm looking forward to the discussion. The focus of the session is particularly relevant to me as we look into the future. The current situation has highlighted disparities between urban and rural cities, not only in developing countries, and the challenges to maximize the benefits of Internet use adoption. The Asia Pacific region a vast, culturally and linguistically diverse and diversity are reflected across the regulatory frameworks that are in place, the ways businesses are managed which are not western like, and how Internet infrastructure is operated. To give you a personal example, I live less than ten kilometers from four hospitals, I can literally walk to the hospital. But our family doctor was not ready to offer telehealth services during isolation, even though his practice has access to excellent Internet connectivity. Australians live in more than 1500 kilometers away without leaving Queensland, are picked up by the royal flying doctor service to reach the same hospital that I can walk to, but they have years of experience providing and accessing telehealth services. As same as my personal experience differs from that of a fellow Australian living around the corner, meaningful affordable Internet access experiences are different, depending on your needs, which may be different depending on where you are. The question around meaningful access needs in my personal opinion to be rooted in a deeper understanding of the local context, to have meaningful access every individual, every community should find on the Internet a way to solve a existing problem, Internet service providers, operators are looking at innovative granular approaches to deploy their network and serve their customers. They are open to explore in majority of cases hybrid business models, because they have realized they alone cannot do it and are looking for collaboration while regulators are looking at the barriers to entering the market. Others are exploring community driven business models. In terms of affordability, I would highlight three elements important in the context of Asia Pacific. As the part of the world more prone to be affected by natural disasters, such as bush fires in Australia earlier this year, earthquakes and cyclones to name a few, the cost associated with preparedness and recovery has a direct impact on affordability. The distances, equipment and technicians and distribution chains for equipment not manufactured in the region, to have it available after a disasters requires investments that can vanish in the wind. The second is about compliance with regulatory requirements in light of concerns around online safety and security, which leads me to my third and final point, which is the need to build technical capacity locally to manage threats, plan, deploy, operate and maintain the infrastructure. Thank you, Roberto.
>> ROBERTO ZAMBRANA: Thank you, Sylvia, interesting about this region of the world. Now welcoming Vint Cerf to the panel, you have the floor.
>> VINT CERF: Thank you, Roberto. I want to thank Sylvia for being so crisp in her characterization of the problem. I think her perspective applies almost everywhere, let me give you an example, in the United States, we do not have uniform access to the Internet, either. We are particularly poorly served in the rural parts of the country, most especially in Native‑American reservations but also we find problems even in the core cities. Some of the problems are physical equipment and availability, but in other cases, it's affordable, and this is a extremely important component of the utility of the Internet, if you can't afford it, you are not going to be able to use it. I love very much Sylvia's point about Internet being a enabling experience, so if we think more broadly about what it means to be inclusive with regard to Internet access and use, not only do we have to worry about physical facilities and their ability to be operated sustainably, and affordably, but we have to worry about whether the Internet is useful, and that of course implies whether or not it has content which is locally useful, whether or not it provides services that are needed, very good example of that arising out of the pandemic and related to Sylvia's points, remote medicine has turned out to be very important all of a sudden, here in the U.S. even if I could walk to my hospital, which I sort of could if I were really, well, I don't know if I were really sick and couldn't make it to the hospital, that is several miles away, I don't know if I could walk or not. The problem here is that they don't want you here, the doctors say don't come into the office, I'm worried about COVID‑19, we don't have adequate protective equipment, please call me or have a video call and of course my reaction is what kind of medicine is that? You didn't take my temperature, my blood pressure, my weight and height and other physical things that make me feel like you are paying attention to the state of my body.
The implications of this in the Internet context are that more and more devices are going to be both needed and invented in order to capture our state of health so that remote medicine is possible, and that is going to be true whether you are in the middle of the city or whether you are off in some very distant and rural location. We can anticipate over the course of the next several years that remote medicine will become more relevant than it ever has been before, to more people.
Last point is new technologies and we are starting to see the emergence not only of a increasing amount of mobile capability but also increasing speeds as we have heard and seen from 4G, now 5G and there is rumors of 6G. There are the low earth orbiting satellite assets going up including those from SpaceX which are in beta test. Recently several of my colleagues and I participated in a test of a solar powered aircraft which is flying at 65,000 feet and loitering over a area providing LTE service, in analog, to another alphabet company, holding company of Google, Loon, which has balloons at 65,000 feet that are circulating in a given part of latitude, circulating in a given latitude, and being managed by headwinds and tailwinds by going up and down in altitude.
Those are also delivering 4G kinds of services to the ground. You don't need any special equipment other than a mobile in order to take advantage of that kind of service. We also are starting to see the use of free space lasers in order to extend, for example, underlying, either undersea or surface fiber capacity, if it doesn't make sense to put fiber on poles because of the expense or to trench, sometimes straight laser shots will help you extend access to the Internet.
My sense right now is that we have a lot of angles that we need to attend to in order to make the Internet useful, most importantly now, content, which is enabling, so people can solve the kinds of problems that Sylvia alluded to. I'll stop there, but thank you so much for allowing this intervention.
>> ROBERTO ZAMBRANA: Thank you very much. You mention one important factor about all the emerging technologies that are relating mobile like 5G or 6G as you said, but perhaps most of the population right now will be grateful having 4G deployed around the world. That lead us to, I want to welcome again to Mongi to share with us of his view, can inform a important mobile company in the world, what were the actions, what can we say about the first topic that we are discussing with. You have the floor.
>> MONGI MARZOUG: Thank you very much. Good afternoon and good morning, for all attendees, I'm happy to be with you today, and happy to discuss with you a very important topic regarding digital inclusion, all of us, in my first introduction I will highlight the impetus of digital inclusion, what are the main gap in digital skills, for ability of access, and the local usage. In the end of the first introduction, I will speak about many programs launched by international and national and local operators, tech companies, in order to contribute to and improve digital inclusion. As you know, digital technology, Sustainable Development and global inclusion and during COVID‑19 pandemic it's frequently stated that the world really, the Internet never has been greater and connectivity has never been more important to secure basic needs, to continue social relationships, and to entail many economic activities. As confirmed by many statistics and studies, the Internet access is far from being a coverage issue. Approximately we have 3.4 billion people who live in area covered by a mobile broadband network, 3G and more, and don't use mobile Internet.
However, we have around 600 million who live in area without network coverage, so compare 600 million to 3.4 billion. The fact that coverage is not the top barrier is confirmed as to, by many figures reported by ITU last year, by the end of last year in the document regional digital developments, when we see that almost the entire world population, 97 percent lives within reach of mobile coverage and 93 percent of the world population lives within reach of mobile broadband, 3G and more. However, only 53 percent are actually using Internet. We have some important gap between developing countries where close to 87 percent are using Internet, however in least developed countries, 90 percent are online. What are the top reasons. The Chairman of Orange, sorry, Chairman of GSMA, the association of mobile network operators, presented three reasons for why most African are not on the Internet, and how to connect them. The first one is affordability, the cost of headsets, energy, or many African countries and as to the cost of data are still too high. Also the UN commission for Sustainable Development said in 2018 as a target for 2055 that should be less than 2 percent of gross national income. In 2019 the commission reported that in 61 countries a subscription include five gigabyte of data cost less than 2 percent and 89 countries, including four low developed countries, mobile subscription with one to five gigabyte data cost less than, but considerable progress has been made in recent years, affordable remain a challenge in many countries especially in not developed countries.
The first barrier is affordability. The second is lack of digital skills and literacy. This one is the top barrier to mobile Internet use in low and middle income countries, as well as issue in developed countries. The third presented the lack of content in local language represents a major issue outside of U.S., Europe and China, contents must be relevant to citizens and meet their needs. Since 2015 IGF community has identified five main dimensions and policy options for increasing connectivity, for the future usability and local content, enable users, digital citizenship, affordability and creating enabling environment, at the national and local institution organized, relevant companies are aware of the aspects of Internet access, as many of them are working to address those gaps. For example, GSMA's worldwide association of mobile network operators has launched connected society program and platform GSMA thrive Africa platform, toward mobile industry technology companies, development community, to address adoption of mobile Internet focusing on underserved population, groups in developing markets. This program activity include cooperating and disseminating sites and learning on the mobile Internet coverage and usage, supporting mobile operators to extend coverage and advocacy and policy work to ensure mobile operators afford to achieve greater digital inclusion, being actively supported by Government, international community and other stakeholders. I thank you.
>> ROBERTO ZAMBRANA: Thank you, Mongi. There is a nice conversation among the chat. I encourage you all participants to exchange ideas. There are some actually regarding one of the statistics that Mongi mentioned before, and that leads us to, first again, welcome Sonia, and we know that in your institution you produce a lot of information, statistics about this affordability issue. We would love to know about your thoughts regarding this first subject.
>> SONIA JORGE: Thank you for the opportunity to be here with you today. This discussion has been interesting just listening to all of you, especially reading the comments from the chat. Many of you made clear starting with Sylvia from what it means to be meaningfully connected, but also what it means to have affordable and meaningful access, it's absolutely core and center stage for us at the Alliance for Affordable Internet, as you know. This is precisely why we actually, developed the concept, with many of you and our partners, of what we believe Internet access should look like, and how should we measure Internet access around the world, from this perspective of affordable and meaningful access.
I wanted to cover two items in response to this first question that you pose, Roberto. One is in response to what others already are asking. For us, affordable and meaningful access means that everyone has access to the Internet every day, with enough data, with a fast connection and with appropriate device. If you don't have that, what you have is never going to be meaningful connectivity, because you will not be able to have or to benefit from the kinds of opportunities, services and needs that Sylvia, Vint and others have already mentioned on the chat.
What do we mean by that precisely, when we are talking about the right speed, we are talking about at a minimum a 4G equivalent type of connection with sufficient data ideally unlimited data, and appropriate device that needs to start at the level of the functionality of a smart phone, and anything less than that, unless it provides functionality, is not something that we should accept.
Most importantly, people should be able to have access to information, to services, be innovative, creative and conduct themselves and their family every day however they decide. Unless we collectively are not thinking about affordable and meaningful connectivity from that perspective, that brings all of those critical elements together, we are shortchanging the world, and very much contributing to further inequality and exclusion in the world, instead of making sure that the investment that is required, the policy and regulatory frameworks that we need to think of and support are such the supported environment where affordable and meaningful connectivity is reality.
With that in mind, I want to challenge some of the assertions that were made, and I apologize, Mongi, as you know, operators are wonderful partners, but often they have a different understanding of what we need in our sector for true digital development to be a reality. I'll start by mentioning something that actually someone on the chat mentioned which is about coverage, and you too, Roberto. To me, it starts with that, when someone tells me that 85 percent of the world is covered by mobile networks, I start cringing and getting very uncomfortable, because the reality is that that is not true. A large percentage of the population of the world is covered by networks that are unreliable, lack quality, and do not provide affordable and meaningful connectivity of the kind that many of my colleague panelists have already outlined.
That kind of coverage has been a wonderful progress, and it's been a good contribution to a sector that now we know it's more urgent and more important than ever in the concept, in our wider ecosystem of development. We cannot think of digital access and meaningful connectivity as an add on, as a luxury, as something that people may have if it's possible. It is a necessity. It is a public good. It is a basic right. Anything less than that is not acceptable for the world.
What I would say is that I want to hear the numbers of coverage, when that coverage is about everyone being covered by 4G connections, everywhere, not just in urban areas, not just in groups of population that are high revenue generating customers but everyone. No one should be shortchanged by different policies, we should not discriminate, should not contribute to further exclusion and inequality. We collectively have a responsibility to change mindsets, not just in terms of the investment, in terms of our objectives for the digital development, and most importantly, to make sure that our policy and regulatory frameworks everywhere in the world, at the global level, at the regional level, and at the national level respond to these needs, respond to these reality, and in fact support not only growth that we want to see in the sector, including with really smart investments by the private sector, but also very smart investments from the public sector, in partnership with multilateral development organizations, by governments, and most importantly, here we are at IGF, you need to listen to what Civil Society wants from digital development. If we don't hear what people want, if we don't have a clear understanding of how people want to engage with technology, then we are not serving people and we are not serving the public.
So our role is to change the mind‑set to focus on the public interest, and to make sure that any decisions that we make have that as core and center to any and all of their actions. I look forward to more of the discussion and to hear more, especially from the participants, the chat and the comments keep growing. I wish I could be there with you at the same time. But here we are and a lot more to say.
>> ROBERTO ZAMBRANA: Thank you very much, Sonia. The chat is growing and growing. Thank you, this was a nice closure for this first round. Now we can move to the second policy questions which says, what principles approaches, incentives and coordinated actions as enabling environment should be central to telecommunications, regulatory frameworks, in order to spur investment in, afford better Internet access and solutions in developing countries particularly in order to accelerate its penetration in the region. Welcoming Moctar, we can start with you this one, the floor is yours.
>> MOCTAR YEDALY: Thank you very much. Thank you for having me. Before going to this second round, I would like to take you back a little bit on what does it mean inclusiveness and meaningful access that most of the people do, to reset what I'm going to say, I'm going to give you example. I'm in Addis Ababa and actually the capital of Africa, and I have almost one gigabit coming to my house, but my problem is when the power is cut, I lose everything. I find myself with a very good car which is BMW, without know how to use it. This is one of the biggest mistakes sometimes people do, the issue of power. If you look at this very much, there is a good correlation specific in Africa, correlation function between the access to electricity and clean cooking, and the rate of access to Internet. You see that they are close, 40 percent, 40 percent. If you look at the discrimination, 40 percent of the people are in urban areas, other 40 percent cannot access Internet. When we were doing engineering and setting up the network, what do we do? First we ask the question, how will I power my station. How will I power my station, my station in the sky or the earth, the first question I ask is, if I'm not able to power that station, it is useless.
Then this is what is happening most of the time. Say there is 95 percent coverage, yes, probably, there is, on 2G, 1G, if 1G has existed, but the issue is even those people who do have the good signal of 4G cannot afford to access because simply there is no power in their houses, and there is no devices that they can be used to access meaningfully to specific application. This is fundamental question. And we as people from ICT we think that is not our responsibility. We assume that the public sector or the English sector have done its job by providing the power and we have just to plug in. That is not true. We need at this point of time to coordinate and see that we cannot comprehend the issue of access to Internet without taking into account all things. Why do we think the rate of urbanization, how to stop that, why don't you think there is a better way to invest and keep the population somewhere else. Two or three years ago I have calculated the number of bandwidth that exist in Africa, tremendous amount of bandwidth, and guess what, digitalization rate of the current existing bandwidth of Africa is below 35 percent. Tremendous amount of megahertz floating everywhere, but that is just noise, there is transport sector have capacity, they have fiber, everybody has fiber somewhere, but it is not being used. This is where we have to shape our policy in taking into consideration the fact that we need to apprehend the development of access to Internet in a 360‑degree vision rather than focus on what is related to us. With that I stop here and I'll be glad to answer your questions.
There was a good suggestion from everybody. Thank you very much.
>> ROBERTO ZAMBRANA: Thank you very much, Moctar. African region is similar, belonging to the global south from Latin America. From there we have Christian, we welcome him in this panel. We would love to hear your thoughts, the floor is yours.
>> Thank you very much, Roberto. I'm grateful being part of this panel with such distinguished colleagues. Some of you, I met Vint and Sylvia 20 years ago in the '90s. We were building the networks. We were deploying the equipment, learning and some others were teaching how to do that. At the time we had to make a huge effort to reach the Internet, to build, in our countries, in Latin America, at that time there were no routers in our countries, no proper infrastructure. Everything was built from scratch, to build something that nobody knew about at that time. We had to convince our bosses, to convince everyone that it was worth investing on something that they didn't know.
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A few years later, the landscape changed completely. There were businesses surrounding Internet and service providers that saw the business case and started to deploy their own networks, and got used to wait for the Internet to reach to us, to connect our houses, to connect our universities, so in a few years, it was for Internet reaching place willing to connect, we recognized that it was something that was for good, not only for entertainment but a lot of value. Not only the business around the Internet was clear, but also the need and the governments regulated accordingly. So the whole system was ready in place to develop the Internet based on the business models for Internet service providers. It was very successful, with that system we were able to connect almost half of the world.
But now we are in a situation that is similar to what happened in the early stages, where the current business model it's more encouraging the service providers to improve the access whenever people disconnected with more speed and not as much in reaching those areas where people are not yet connected.
We have to go back to the style that we have at the beginning, and try to enable those unconnected places to build their networks, small businesses, communities, whatever, so they are able to bridge unconnected place, they are able to deploy their own affordable access and connect to a connected place, to the Internet.
In order for that to happen, we need to adapt, we need several changes, we have to build another environment as it's proposed in the question, about regulatory changes environment, for those place that is need to get access so we have to adapt, we have to change. We have to try new things in those areas that are not yet connecting, not only rural areas but also in cities, there are places nearby where there is a need for access, sometimes it's affordability, sometimes it's infrastructure, sometimes it's power. So there are many reasons.
We have to create this new environment. In order to do that, we need to change several things. We need to be open to new approaches and changes and doing things differently. That is sometimes difficult to get or to convince regulators and businesses and those that got used to work the way they did so far.
So we have to be prepared to adapt, because sometimes when there are changes you have to correct them so eventually you have to correct things that you decided, because some of the changes in the field that you tried did not work. But you have to be open for those new approaches. You have to involve as many people as possible in the decision, so when governments, new projects for infrastructure or new rules or new regulations, spectrum, whatever it is decided, deciding to connect people, you need to involve as many parties as possible in the discussion, because if you want things to change, you need to address and to analyze all the possibilities.
Also, we have to be fearless, and nowadays, it's not that difficult because there is support on connecting those that are unconnected. We are all aligned on this. This year ...
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Things are more obvious than they were in the past. Nowadays, no one doubts the value of the Internet, the Internet is a force for good, so it's easy to convince people that we might try things that might look risky or pushback. Let's try to benefit from that. Let's try to identify and remove barriers for ways to deploy new infrastructure. Often as I mentioned before, all the systems prepared for businesses and oftentimes those are at the same time barriers for new small companies or community networks or those trying to build a small part of the network to reach, everything is usually prepared for big companies. The process, there are business agents that need to be involved to go to the capital cities, everything is problematic when you think about a rural area or distant place. Let's try to identify those barriers, involve those that are, the ones that we want to help, see what do they need and how can we support them. That would be my proposal. And on the second question we can think about commitments.
>> ROBERTO ZAMBRANA: Thank you very much, Christian. You started this, action oriented comments, and you mentioned the difficulties that we have to overcome and include in the analysis, and it's similar to what Sylvia said. Now we may go with Sylvia about what actions can be taken in order to overcome what you mentioned in your first intervention. You have the floor.
>> SYLVIA CADENA: Thanks, Roberto. Going back to the points that I made on my ‑‑ sorry, there is window from the Secretariat, that is blocking my view. Sorry. I lost my train of thought.
Going back to the points that I made in my initial intervention, I'm not now going to go to traverse over, I would like to highlight first the importance of increasing the level of investment in building technical capacity locally. The Internet is as fast as secure as reliable, and affordable as the capacity of the engineers that deploy it, operate it and maintain it.
They may be in, they might be invisible when your connectivity doesn't work as you expected, but they are certainly the fairy dust that make it look like magic. That resonates with the comment that Christian made about how we met over 20 years ago, when Vint was our teacher and we were trying to figure out how to bring the Internet to our countries in Latin America. Now that I'm living in Asia, in 20 something years later, many of those challenges remain. If you give me a second, I'm having to engage with my notes, give me a minute. Sorry.
>> ROBERTO ZAMBRANA: If I may in the meantime, we are of course receiving your questions. You may use if you want the question and answer button, but we have, I know that there is a lot of chats going on. Some of you are also using this section, so again you are encouraged to put your questions using this button question, questions and answers Q&A. Karim is also registering and systematizing them in order for our panelists to react later.
>> SYLVIA CADENA: I'm sorry. The second point that I wanted to make was about, also resonates with what Christian mentioned, is that it's so important to have clear honest and open conversations between regulators, the Government agencies and operators, the operational and financially but with compliance, regulatory requirements, that may be negatively affecting targets when exploring deployment of new technologies like mentioned in the first segment, when facilitating access to remote communities, for example, can help regulators to obtain a deeper understanding of the challenges that new players in the market may experience to be sustainable like what Christian mentioned, as well as support change of the larger operators where compliance take a large portion of their business, something that resonates with what Mongi mentioned before.
There is a big misunderstanding between what actually happens in between in those closed doors, and the challenges that those operators actually face, they are large and small. That dialogue needs to happen in a open way, which means sometimes it's difficult because when you put all the cards on the table, you are giving away part of your competitive advantage. That is why having network operators groups, NOGs as we call them in the technical community, is important to make those bridges between network operators to discuss technical and business topics, that affects them, and compliance with regulatory requirements is one of those.
Finally, I think it's extremely important to continue to support effective coordination around disaster management and raise investment around disaster preparedness, so that recovery is faster. In that regard, as an example of what happened when cyclone Pam hit Vanuatu, for example, trying to understand what providers back then, we were engaging with one that they had to have 17 towers that they used to connect different islands all start back under the ground, ready to go, in case the other towers were knocked down. If you have to do that and bring a tower in a ship from New Zealand already put together over the ocean in a boat, it makes a whole different, it takes a lot of effort to actually make it happen. In that cost of rebuilding the infrastructure, again and again every summer when a cyclone hits, is seriously affect affordability in economies about the population is small, to be able to make the margins that that investment requires.
One example to go back to what Moctar mentioned on electricity, I think he read my mind (chuckles) one of the examples of coordinated action which is the point of the second action around regulatory frameworks that could benefit the community is a deeper exploration across the global south of the connection between the Internet connectivity provision and electricity provision, which is as you mentioned Moctar intrinsically linked across the world as well as in many isolated areas of developed countries. There are technical innovations already in place that support the provision of Internet access in combination with green electricity provision, that could support the development of sustainable business models targeting real community needs. In those models, the electricity provision is what supports the sustainability of the Internet access. But that literally hits two birds with one stone, but because the regulatory frameworks for those two services are most commonly managed by independent agencies, then those working on scaling up those technologies face considerable hurdles to be able to make it sustainable. You can check, I will post later in the chat, there is a interesting innovation in region that is supported by Microsoft that is linking the technology for Internet provision and technology for electricity approach, but the regulatory framework doesn't allow them to make that more sustainable. There are many others working similar solutions. Thank you, Roberto. Back to you.
>> ROBERTO ZAMBRANA: Thank you very much. For closing this second round, we are going with Vint now. We know that he had a opportunity to deal with several regulatory things, but I think he is also going to repeat several of his comments that he's provided in the chat, for those that are following the other channels, and not allow for them to see the messages, and they are really rich. You have the floor, Vint.
>> VINT CERF: Thank you very much again, Roberto. I have to say about the chat, I've seen some very interesting things happen between a serial presentation which is what our oral part is about, and the fact that people can be simultaneously saying things without colliding with each other, because the system spreads them out and puts them in some sequence.
I watched some of these discussions suddenly fall silent, where everyone goes over here to the chat, because they don't have to wait for their turn to type something. That of course raises the other question as someone raised in the chat, which is how the heck do you follow all this because it's not in any particular order. It is like a giant cocktail party.
Let me come back to the points that have been made already. The first one is that there are a wide range of different requirements that need to be satisfied in order to make the Internet a useful facility. It goes all the way from the provision of electricity to physical facilities for radio and wiring and optical fiber, and then into the application space, languages, in which the information is available and discoverable, literacy in the use of the system, and also knowledge about how to use the Internet safely. That topic hasn't come up yet, but we all understand this environment is not necessarily the safest in the whole world. The equipment that you get that has software in it may or may not be able to defend itself against a serious denial of service attack or against malware which is exploiting bugs in the software.
This is actually a very serious problem, and most people, including probably a good many of us, me included, are not in a position to actually go and secure their own equipment, we don't have access to the source code, not everyone is a programmer. There are many different programming languages used in order to implement the technologies that we are relying on. There is a safety and security and literacy component to all of this, that we should keep in the back of our minds as well.
Then I think the final point that I'd like to make as I listen to the aspirations and the expression of problems that need to be solved, is that even if we manage to solve all those problems, we will have created what I consider to be a potentially fragile infrastructure that we are depending on, and I'm nervous about our increasing dependency on these complex systems, especially software. I used to make a living writing software. I have a little dent in my forehead from the many times when I had to go, uh, what a stupid mistake I made, and probably a lot of programmers have this programmers' dent.
We are very dependent, we as a population are dependent on the skill of software programmers and to make matters worse, not only are we dependent on their skills, but we are dependent on them to find and fix bugs and then how do the bug fixes actually get to where they need to go, how do we know where they came from, how do we know they haven't been altered on their route from the source to the destination computer or destination device that needs the updated software.
All of those considerations need to be part of the solution, if we are going to insist on using these very powerful tools, but also very complex tools in order to carry on our daily lives. The pandemic has simply highlighted how dependent we are and increasingly so, because of the absence of our ability to be in proximity to each other. It also has highlighted what I consider to be the inequities in response, because some people cannot work without being in proximity, and if they can't be in proximity, they can't work. That has a big economic impact.
We have a huge range of issues to be addressed, as the panel has outlined. On the good side, we have people on the panel and in this session and more generally at IGF who actually care about solving those problems, and are looking for the technical and the policy and the economic solutions that are needed. That gives me some hope that discussions like this one will lead to real solutions to making the Internet affordable, sustainable and useful for the bulk of the world's population.
>> ROBERTO ZAMBRANA: Thank you very much, Vint. Another great closure for the round. We are going now to the third round, with a question, are there particular telecommunications business models in mobile broadband Internet services that have been shown to be particularly effective at expanding affordable access to the Internet, and what are the role of the other stakeholders in bringing about this interest, investment and affordable access. We can start with Sonia, please.
>> SONIA JORGE: So interesting to hear everyone. I'll start by actually picking up on something that Vint mentioned about fixing bugs. One of the things that we have to do, especially to welcome new business models, new innovation, not just in financing but specially in supporting complementary providers, and really new business, new ways of thinking about the business of providing access is by fixing a couple bugs in policy and regulatory frameworks, that in fact prevent all of this complementary providers from not being bugs but actually being welcome members of the ecosystem.
I would say that those kinds of business models and I'm sure Christian might come back to that again, are the kinds that support and that many different community networks are implementing. In fact, I'm sure there is others on this session that have done some work in that area, and I think community networks have a really wonderful promise and provide a incredible promise and hope into how we can reach many communities that have not been reached, that remain unconnected, that not only remain unconnected but are not covered, are very far from ever being able to afford. So it's important to think about not just community networks and rural operators, cooperatives, all sorts of different kinds of complementary providers, that can fill the gaps that currently exist in the sector, gaps that have remained because of these traditional way of thinking about policy and regulation that primarily benefits large operators, the M&Os which again are very important, but are not able on their own to not only connect everyone, but to provide access to everyone affordably and meaningfully. Fixing some of the bugs in the policy and regulatory frameworks is absolutely critical.
One important bug in that there is many that we can talk about, in fact we do a lot of work in that area and I urge you to look at the work we have done, but a couple that I like to highlight, one is precisely related to the point that Moctar mentioned on power, is having a lot more collaboration between the power and Telecom sectors, and making sure that infrastructure is better planned, coordinated so there is a greater amount of infrastructure sharing, but most importantly, around infrastructure planning, so that we can reduce the overall costs of the industry, especially on the infrastructure side, and therefore, transfer those savings from really good infrastructure planning, including with a power sector, to lower costs to the users. It is not about just saving and reducing the cost of the industry, but making sure that those savings are transferred to users and customers of the entire ecosystem.
But the another area in addition to infrastructure sharing issues that is really important and especially important for complementary providers, is new innovative ways of thinking about spectrum policy, where unlicensed spectrum should be by default a norm, and not a exception. It shouldn't be that anyone in any country or region of the world should be begging regulators to have a slim of a band to provide either wi‑fi, public access, or any other kind of community based access. That should be the default. In fact, all regulators and policymakers should include in their policies provisions to ensure that percentages of the public good that spectrum is, is allocated to the public interest, to make sure that people have access to connectivity in that way.
I think you mentioned, Vint, earlier the issue around wi‑fi, that is exactly where it's come from. We are fortunate to benefit from wi‑fi opportunities in many parts of the world and in others, there is very little, because of this. So again, a lot of these bugs can be fixed. It is easy to fix them. We need the will, political will and the commitment from those involved to actually make it happen.
The last point in terms of investments and stakeholders, Roberto, that you asked, as many of you might know, we did work with ITU recently which under Doreen has made tremendous progress in how to think differently about digital development, and we are proud and pleased to work with the ITU team to develop what is called a connecting humanity report, connecting humanity by 2030 to universal access, this idea of universal access that is at a minimum 4G connectivity. One of the things that we explored in that analysis and that report is precisely the important collaboration and cooperation amongst all of the stakeholders in the ecosystem to bring about really good partnerships, really good investments, so that we can achieve that estimate that we put out of $428 billion of investment that is required in the next decade, simply to bring the world to that level of connectivity that we have been discussing here today.
Stakeholders all have a role to play, and they have a role to play not just as investors, but they have a role to play to make sure that as we invest in the sector we don't forget the importance of investing in digital skills, in content, in updating and revising policy and regulatory frameworks in the way that we were just discussing, but most importantly, really embracing this challenge and believing that it's possible. It is actually possible. Without sounding too naive, and perhaps a bit provocative, I want to say something that I share with colleagues as we were preparing for these sessions today, 428 billion may sound like a lot to a lot of people. It is not very much at all. That's 42 billion a year over the next decade, okay, I'll tell you what. The world spends about that 428 billion on soda on an annual basis. Soda. Something unnecessary, no one needs, that's what we spend annually in the world on soda. If we think that meaningful affordable connectivity is more important than soda, I think we can collectively muster our skills, our collective mind to bring about 428 billion to bring people online. That is my call to all of you, is to partner with us, with our partners, the entire ecosystem to make that happen.
We know what needs to be done. We just need to make sure that those that have the resources do it right, and do it in a public interest, and not in the interest of the few, and of the elites. That is not good enough, as I said before. Thank you again, Roberto, wonderful to see the discussion. I hope we can share more.
>> ROBERTO ZAMBRANA: Thank you very much, Sonia, it was a great beginning for this final round. We move to Mongi. You have the floor.
>> MONGI MARZOUG: Thank you. First I have to comment some on the first speech of Sonia. In fact, when I reported some figures on coverage, and mobile network coverage, those figures were reported by ITU and those information provided by governments, and I have to say also, I was ICT Minister for Tunisia, I agree with you on reliability of the coverage. But I want to say the coverage gap is an issue, but more important than that is affordability, affordability, skills, digital skills, is very important, but why? Because we have more than 3 billion people lives in coverage may be good, not good, but 3G and higher coverage, but they don't use Internet. However, we have maybe more, maybe one billion, 1.5, but less than 3 billion, so we can say one billion without coverage. Here we remark this figure is close to the number of people living without power, without electricity, mainly in Sub‑Saharan. As you said, I agree with you, as you said there are some link, very important link between power, electricity, green coverage and telecommunication coverage. I agree with you that network coverage still is an issue, and when we say, when we cover for example, it's outside coverage, it's not indoor and it's not deep indoor, you know I work many years for telecommunication. I would say this is why it's not reliable. This is why the link is weak. This is why we need to innovate. We need to share spectrum. We need better policy of spectrum. We need to provide low band frequency with better coverage. This is what I agree with you we have to address for coverage, to improve the quality, improve throughput, improve coverage, but you know the indoor coverage in, rural indoor coverage is not a easy issue but we have to work on that.
Second, we have to address the issue, it's very important, of skills. Data protection, for engineer to manage how to protect our data is not so easy, each time you open a Web site, you have many questions, it's not so easy, so we have to work, to train, to coach, in order to improve digital skills in those country. Also we have to as operator and also as Government to push for, when we speak about universal service, universal service is not only coverage, it is coverage also social offer for population. Now this second element is very important. We have to work on inclusive and we have to work with Government, with tech company, with suppliers on the price of smart phones, the cost of handsets. So coverage, digital skills and local contents, how to have service from administration, so these four acts or those four items we have to focus on them together.
But what I said coverage is still an issue, but we have affordability, we have skills issue to address, and they become very important in inclusion issue. Thank you.
>> ROBERTO ZAMBRANA: Thank you, Mongi. We go with Moctar now, please. Perhaps you can tell us about any particular experience that you remember in Africa, about one particular example that you may share with us regarding this nice actions that some operators could provide in order to get affordable services for their citizens.
>> MOCTAR YEDALY: Thank you very much. To be honest with you, there is not really a substantial example that I know of, to provide to you with regard to a good example in providing affordable access within the continent, specifically due to the fact that unfortunately in Africa the majority of operators are actually nonAfrican operators, most of them, most of the time have been guided by the return on investment, rather than looking at the ICTs as developing the continent. It's fair, it's just very fair. But allow me to comment first before going there to comment on that has been said by, first of all, Sonia said what I wanted to say with regard to that. Thank you, Sonia, for saving me time. But I want to comment on, there is no, the policy and regulation of the continent has been compiled into a tragedy, most South Africa country get in the trap of cycling the same, recycling the same regulatory environment and policy, and keeping that going. When the bug starts somewhere, you add it to things and you get into tragedy. Most of the regulatory framework that has been proposed to Africa did not take into consideration the example of the United States, good example of affording access, FCC products that are allowing the broadband access, the Obama programs affording broadband to everybody, that has not been taken into consideration by those development institutions that are coming to Africa by trying to say that we are bringing to you something that is good, push to privatization of sector, we provide you with mode of licensing that probably is not adequate to African continent because we didn't take into consideration the realities. The fact that Africa has been provided with a model of licensing and model of managing their ICT sector coming from outside, did not take into consideration what is actually the realities of the country. All that has not been taken into consideration at the beginning. We created what we call the universal access agencies and from there those agencies become a way of getting funding what we call election or so on. Unfortunately there is no, those operators want Africa first as tremendously resistant the issue of community network. The community network for instance could have been something that could solve problems. But those are nonAfrican operators, are tackling that at the ITU meetings, tackling it everywhere else, because they say this is our space, but at the same time they are doing that. To respond to your question, there is a need specifically for Africa and developing countries to adapt to fix the bugs, by allowing nonclassical operators to get into areas where they cannot, where there is no connectivity. And as Sonia said, it has to be well coordinated. It is not only providing access to the ICT, but also providing roads, energy, this whole urban planning scene, universal planning should be seen together. Once you see that together, you will see that there is no need for corporate responsibility or anything else. Everything will fall down and everything will be fit very well. Over to you.
>> ROBERTO ZAMBRANA: Thank you very much, Moctar. Finally, we are closing this round with Christian. You have the floor.
>> CHRISTIAN O'FLAHERTY: Thank you, Roberto. Before going to the questions, I would like to support what Moctar has said. And also I'd like to provide examples on what Mongi and Sonia mentioned about spectrum, the need to adapt our rules, laws, our relations to access the spectrum. We have been working with a company, I want to address that in a few minutes, but in places where there is no business case for companies to deploy networks, and we manage to get sustainable networks in places where the spectrum was completely clean, nobody was using what they were allocated, and nobody was able to use it, because it had an owner.
Nowadays, as mentioned before, there are many new technologies and there were improvements on technologies like the mobile technologies like 4G, which nowadays do have open source software for the network, and very unexpensive base station so it's not difficult for a local small company or community or comparative to provide their own network, even when it's not business for a company, so they could do it themselves if they were allowed to, but they can't, because somebody owns the spectrum that nobody uses.
(audio breaking up).
We have to change some of the things, working so far and now we realize that they need some changes. The question itself is about business models. It's clear that the current business model is very effective and companies were successful on developing the Internet so far. Other cases that need a update, that need a different approach. One of the things that work very well as I mentioned before were the communities themselves are responsible on building their own network, and reach connected place.
It is obvious that it's not a competing solution, it's a complementary solution because they have to bridge an operator, they have to build the network to reach a connected place, so operators shouldn't consider that a competing solution, because for them, it's demonstrated that it wasn't worth investing in those places. When the local community, the local small businesses or NGOs or whatever that organize, it's organized and let them build their own network, they will create a service that is affordable for them. As I said, there are many options nowadays to deploy inexpensive Internet access network. We have to let the communities create the service that they need, and identify and remove all the barriers that nowadays are preventing those networks to arise.
And for them to be sustainable and effective, that there is a big component on the community part, so we have to have a well organized group of people that are aligned and we need to solve their problem. Then you have to train, as Vincent before, nowadays communities are complex, there are security risks when you deploy the networks, because there are a lot of software components, and we can't apply the standard business model, network for you, projects where somebody comes and installs equipment, configure servicing, because in those places first of all there is no way for those communities to pay for those services. It's extremely expensive, if you follow the current procedures to deploy the standards that those companies are used for, in those places, that would make the network unviable.
So you have to train them to build the network on their own terms, but at the same time, you have to train them to make it secure, and they have to know what they are doing. They have to know what they have configured, they have to know the risks. So the second very important part is capacity‑building. You have to make sure that it is strong community, that it knows what they are doing, that they know what they are configuring and installing, and of course, there is always a need for funds, but if you compare the efforts required to deploy standard Internet coverage by companies, in those places, compared to what could cost to train the people and provide the equipment, there are orders of magnitude of difference.
Those are the barriers I was referring to, we have to look for those partners that are aligned with this and willing to help, and we are very strong support of community structure and community networks. There are many angles with it because oftentimes those communities can access a part of the infrastructure, the companies might not be able to access, might not be allowed, but as they own their own facilities and things, they can use themselves or the lands or whatever they want to deploy the power, they own the land because they are locals but there are many things that make things much more easier for them compared to companies.
That is a business model that is going to be sustainable. We look forward to identify more partners and people and communities willing to work with us.
>> ROBERTO ZAMBRANA: Thank you very much, Christian. We are actually reaching to the end of the session. We only have five more minutes for your final remarks. We will try to make it, make them, I know it's difficult to concentrate all the things that you may like to say. But first, before to go to that final round of interventions, I will ask Karim if you could read some of the questions, and perhaps one of our panelists would like to answer some of them. You can go, please.
>> Thank you. We had a lot of questions and most of them are in the chat, covered section, but we have Moctar who would like to respond to one question, the first one, are there good example of Government policies and multilateral aid project that specifically support community networks in remote areas which could help define solutions for other national situations. The second one, a dollar can't be spent twice, if spent on spectrum can't be spent on network deployment. What would be the impact if spectrum spending would be devoted to network deployment. The third one, access and cost are the major challenges facing rural communities in developing countries, for instance in Sierra Leone, what is the role of ITU to support these communities, where Internet is still very expensive.
>> MOCTAR YEDALY: I don't work for ITU. The African Union met in conference last year, 2019 and have supported, decided to support the community, in the continent, my team and I have been task to work on that and we are cooperating with some of the institution like Internet Society to see how we can come up with policy and we start already promoting the use of the community network. We don't want it to be in controversial with them, we don't want it to be confrontation with the local operators, we are preserving, making sure operators are preserving the interest of those license operators, we are trying to fill the gap with policy and policy has been prepared from African Union. Spectrum is not money. It is not just used to enjoy the money of, we have to use it for something, spectrum development this is probably the best approach for policy. Over to you.
>> Thank you, Moctar. Before going to the last remarks of our panelists, there was one question that I'm not sure it was answered, but it's good, if a Government ask you sincerely what are the three things we should do in order to facilitate meaningful access to most of our people, what should be your answer? Now we can go, anyone, we will start maybe Sylvia would like to start.
>> VINT CERF: Part of the answer is it depends on where you are, what the local conditions are, what the current availability is. There is a variety of different parameters that need to be taken into account. What the Government should be doing is figuring out how to facilitate investment in infrastructure, whether that is by direct subsidy, by providing facilities, that can be resold, for example, wholesale and retail, or adopting policies that encourage investment and competition. There are a variety of things that Government can do in order to provide incentive for investment in infrastructure and operation of new facilities.
>> SYLVIA CADENA: We go back to the main point that I made before that is investing in people, if governments forget that this is all about the people that they are serving, the people that elected them, that put them into office to actually deliver, then it becomes a numbers game and it's easy to forget that you are actually talking about people. If you are investing in capacity‑building, investing in access to devices, in sorting out public access like in the example that Igor mentioned on the chat or any other option or solution that is available that you find out that is appropriate and fit for purpose, always remember it is about people, and that should guide our decisions, and how we take action. That is why I mentioned earlier on the chat also that it is hard to guide our decisions and our actions based on effective and real principles, and human rights, I encourage you to find those principles, to look at organizations that articulated them, principles for digital development, principles for effective innovation, principles for intermediate liability. There are a bunch out there that people in different parts of the equation could look at those, you should stick to those, we will get there. The problem is we tend to forget that it's about people and when we take actions that are actually hurting people, so just don't forget that, and we will get there eventually. It took us 25 years to get half of the world connected. It might take us another 25, so we will see what out comes.
>> ROBERTO ZAMBRANA: Thank you, Sylvia. Now we go with Christian, please.
>> CHRISTIAN O'FLAHERTY: Yes, I'll try to, not to repeat myself, but to provide some examples of how to identify those barriers and the incentives that are required. Oftentimes when you go to a regulator asking for permissions to use certain equipment or to use certain part of the spectrum or to get rights to cross or use a bridge or things like that, you get negative response without explanation. Oftentimes the reason for that is that there is a process or there is a something that it's not allowed, but it's not clear why, and the way to address those gray areas or those blocking barriers, it is to create an open space for discussion.
Whenever a proposal to do something that can help connect people, let's try to invite as many people as possible to the discussion, and solve the problems, they might be things that when we ask for those permissions, there might be reasonable answers, and we can address different ways to do that, but the way to identify those barriers are to transparently and openly discuss those decisions, and this is what, multistakeholder discussion, but it's really the culture of transparently work together in a cooperative and collaborative way.
>> ROBERTO ZAMBRANA: Thank you very much, Christian. We go with Mongi now, final remarks. Thank you.
>> MONGI MARZOUG: Thank you. First, I agree with Moctar regarding spectrum. In fact, we need better regulation, better spectrum policy and even adapted spectrum policy for rural remote area. We need to allow spectrum sharing, so if we allow spectrum sharing we allow network sharing, site sharing, and also sharing of power sharing mainly in many country where we have problem with power. I were also Minister of Energy, electricity, in many country now we work off grid solution. Many grid solution, microgrid solution, and solar kit, and now we have solar to provide power, and with cost reducing, cost decrease each year. We have to provide by sharing also radio solution adapted in to rural and remote area in order to improve coverage for this area.
As I said in the beginning in the second speech that the aim is usage, to increase usage, the benefit of a population by having Internet to improve skills and to muster usage of Internet and application, and thank you.
>> ROBERTO ZAMBRANA: Thank you very much, Mongi, and finishing the closing remarks with Sonia, please. You have the floor.
>> SONIA JORGE: Thank you, Roberto. I thought there were one more after me, but I have to say after what everybody said which of course was spot on, there is not much left. But I will then say, mention something that I put on the chat, that we didn't have a chance to look at, and that is that we really have to think more seriously about all of these issues, and bring a very strong not just gender perspective to the concerns but also a perspective of rural communities.
I think that really begs for the need for very clear targets and clear goals by governments, clear universal access goals and objectives, and they need to be in such a way that we can measure, we can keep all of ourselves, all of us accountable and policymakers accountable when they have those universal access goals. I urge all policymakers to have clear goals, targets, targets that are not just about aggregates of the country but targets that are specific for the entire population, for women and girl population, gender targets and clear targets to address the needs of rural communities. Those two groups, there is many other marginalized communities, those two are by far the most not only marginalized, but frankly increasingly excluded from the digital opportunity.
In addition to everything that everybody said, I would say we need to be a lot more intentional as to how we think about our role, our responsibility for development of the sector everywhere in the world, and we also need to make sure that that intentionality is one that focuses on the abilities of women in rural communities to have access to meaningful connectivity. Thank you so much.
>> ROBERTO ZAMBRANA: Thank you very much, Sonia. Actually we would love to be here at least for an hour more, but actually we passed a little bit of our time.
I would love to thank you, all the panelists, Christian, Sonia, Mongi, Sylvia, Moctar, for the great interventions during the session. We received a lot of your wisdom, and we know that most of your recommendations will be taken into account in all this dialogue that has been established for a couple of years now, and I think give us a very nice future.
We still need to maintain the dialogue between all the different stakeholders and hopefully to think about new and creative ways to overcome the situation about Internet affordability and finally really get this global and universal access that we all want, that of course meaningful.
I would like to thank Karim, my colleague and friend, and all the IGF Secretariat for all the support in this great session. I think there are going to be other spaces in which we will get together again to continue the discussion. Thank you very much. Thank you of course to all the people that were following this fantastic session. Thank you very much. We will see you later.