IGF 2017 - Day 2 - Room XII - DC Community Connectivity

 

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. 

***

 

>> UnIdentified Speaker:  Let's start this second meeting on the Dynamic Coalition on the connectivity.  Actually it's very surprising to see that this is only the second meeting and we already have done so much.  Only a matter of two publications we have done with a matter of great matter of amazing people we have created with a very bottom up collective work with a lot of ideas continuously streaming up.  It's very impressive.  Olugbile voluntary work that we have been doing over the past two years.  So congratulations.  I would start with congratulation all the people here that have been from the very beginning and that have joined during the course of actions and are still putting a lot of energy in what we are doing.  So let me first ‑‑

My distinguished panelists of today.  President in terms of the society done by who is director of the commission broadband competing offices support facility.  There will be myself and Luka.  I have senior researcher and head of governance for the society.  Then we will have Segun from Bombay.  Peter bloom who is back there.  Natalia from university.  But ‑‑ where is he other Elise.  Who is president of ISO Mexico.  Then we will have Michael Gia, independent consultant, Carl from IPC and from Collab.  As we have very short time slot due to unjustified decision decided to slash from nine to six and by the way I urge you all to ‑‑ because we have been slashed from 90 to 60 minutes.  It's really unfeasible.  Very challenging to do everything to present all the work that we are doing.  The e‑mail is IGF at UN.org.  Tell them went our 90 minutes back.  Without having introduced the session with these pretty keynote remarks, now we have the honor of having the remarks from ‑‑

>> UnIdentified Speaker:  Luka, thank you.  With poll jeez ahead of time I have also double booked but in my view this at the top of our list at the Internet Society, the top of our list activity that's going on in the community, the actual building and running of these networks by the community, with the community with your expertise I think has been for me one of the highlights of the last number of years to be able to connect with all of you and to be able to partner with you and support you is what we were born to do.  It was ‑‑ it's been about from the very beginning that the Internet has to be for everyone everywhere and it's can these hard places at least for the commercial carriers, they tell us how hard it is for them to reach these communities and you're doing it and so I have great respect and admission for what it is you're doing and how you're doing it.  So I think that are at least three fold.  One to actually organize the communities to to be able to communities to use the technology and run those technologies themselves.  I think this capacity building I hope and I think is part of everyone's business plan.  Secondly to actually get technology up that works for the community.  Having visited a couple of these places for me it's always the kids that I enjoy watching as they figure out what life online starts to look like and where they can go on this technology.  You who are busy building this stuff and making sure it's running take a look at the faces of people who use it and know it's a life‑changer.  To demonstrate A it's doable and figure out what enabling policies if you will would help the community's ability to actually do this, access this spectrum, for instance.  The ability tort community actually to while using the technology to create new markets to get goods to market, for instance.  So what you are doing is creating the environment for each economic activity happens as well as personal empowerment, talking about with policymakers about this aspect of why it would be so important.  I had breakfast this morning with the minister from ‑‑ regularity from Argentina, it was quite interesting to me how quickly even though the government does know in some ways you're getting them off the hook there's a requirement on the part of public officials to ensure that particularly rural areas and areas of great poverty and need in their cities are serviced and they frankly don't know how to do it.  So it seems to me that the kinds of tools you bring to the table are ones that they need to learn from as well.  So there's a partnership here that I see.  Fine with me too.  But I think also having those people who have control of the stuff, you know, like as best I can't know, like licenses, like that to understand the value of this is also quite important.  Congratulations.  I've seen some of these projects.  I know where they are and what you're doing and I find it exactly right.  So thank you for doing the work.  And keep doing the work.

>> UnIdentified Speaker:  I would like to add (?) very supportive engaged in the beginning.  Very really excellent to keep working with you guys and we have been doing amazing things and hope to do more amazing things.

>> Thank you very much, Luka.  Thanks first of all for inviting me to be here and speak and echo what Cathy just said.  The objective should be the Internet for everyone everywhere.  I think that's the perfect summary.  My job Luka mentioned my very long and boring title but basically it is to make sure that is also happening in Europe because it might sound strange but even in the opinion there's a huge gap between rumor and urban populations having access to fast Internet but only 40 percent in rural areas.  That's half.  Even in the ‑‑ huge gap and clearly something needs to be done about this.  And since many years we know what some of the barriers might be they are around access to finance, they are about the legal environment and I think you just alluded to some of this but they are also about the technology and capacity of people that want to promote these networks to do so, once that actually have the amount how can they take destiny into their own hands.  Not easy answers to this but many good things have been done and again I cannot but echo what you said amazing things are happening all over the world but it's happening ‑‑ citizens so happening in different little corners, grassroot initiatives.  Is to create network and platform and create these best practices and learn from each other.  This is basically what set out to do and then they are to emulate this network and we bring together these company's offices and also have them at the regional level, one of my objectives for next year is to go more regional.  Nice to talk to other countries.  Great we have engagement from all the other countries but in the future we want to go really to the regional level so we're closer to the end users if I may say.  We've seen quite a few of initiatives already in the EU and now our plan is to work closely with initiative been running for over 20 years, network for rural development which brings together basically citizens for real diversification, connect diversion occasion in rural areas.  Been doing this for many years but now they realize if they want to continue to keep our villages active and bouyant we need to connect them.  We going to work hand in hand in trying to achieve in in next years.

>> UnIdentified Speaker:  Thanks for also giving us hope on what will be did you know also by prestigious institutions.  But would like to start very short speech.  I hope everyone here among the panel as well a lot could speak in three, four minutes.  I know it's very few but we will manage to do it.  My work as researcher is to build bridge between technology and from the mental rights and since the very beginning when I started connect network, I always thought they were excellent example of self determination.  Fundamental right of self determination and my chapter in this book is actually on the right to network self determination.  Which is something that is not being covered so far but finds legal basis on the very consistent body of international human rights.  First article of both human rights is right to self determination.  Has right to pursue economic social and cultural development and article 1.3 puts a positive obligations on the states that have to make enjoy their right to self determination.  What is the link between this?  Well, by constructing network infrastructures, community they determine their economic, social, cultural development.  They simply do that.  Simply implement what already exists in the very consistent body of international and self determination is freely associate and define together ‑‑ design, management, structure of common goods so that everyone can freely seek important information and receive innovation without restrictions.  That is simply rephrasing what has been drafted 50 or '70s years ago and give it more modern appearance.  You will find out it is exactly what is already in the international community we have not used.  Second environment that is at the basis of what they call self determination of network self determination is in the eighties the German constitution of court called informational self determination.  So based on article 22 of the universal declaration human rights the right to freely ‑‑ free development of one's personality and the right to freely develop ‑‑ to pursue the free dominant of economic and social status in the eighties, German constitution of court created the right network self determination, sorry, information of self determination which is the right of everything to define how their personality data can be collected and used.  Networks allow you to build infrastructure, manage and control it.  In that sense of the exercise of this right, 3 billion people still connected, policy such as ‑‑ selection of services paid with your data.  In absence of network self determination we have digital communication, which means that the hard choice due to very unsustainable connectivity policies of the past 20 years, doing something ourself or receiving a select service paying our data and people will have no control.  So the right to control how your data are collected and used forget about it.  Other choice is build your own metric.  This is something that speaking can be constructed from the human rights and in my paper I actually examine four different types of community networks that I will not illustrate because they already here but they illustrate how de facto this right already exist even before being consecrated.  It means that without being already in a treaty and binding document people already exploiting it, all right putting it into practice.  In the second part of my chapter I speak about externalities of network, not only connecting people, not only getting access to Internet but generation of new economic and social economic system around connectivity.  New services, new applications, new capacity building opportunities, new digital literacy, new social bonds among the community and partnerships.  I think very pragmatic point of view this right already exist and I think it's something that is work fighting, the consecration of this writing something binding international policies and I will let my colleagues explain with examples.  But first let's ask Carlos to explain what could be the barriers and the difficulties to implement networks.

>> Carlos:  Thank you very much.  And I present ‑‑

>> UnIdentified Speaker:  I will follow the order of the books.  Emphasis on (?) and suggestion on very short agenda for the future.

>> Carlos:  Thank you and thank you very much for the work of coordinating publish the book and make all this work available to all of you and other people in this room.  As you all know communications, sustainable development have been recognized as one of the contribution to sustainable development goals is very clear and has been recognized for instance in sustainable goal No. 9.  What has happened is until now everyone thought that there was the mobile revolution by which we thought universal affordable access was going to be achieved just continuing that allowed the mobile network to continue expanding.  What happens is that ‑‑ afford access in communications human rights describing, many of us and many other people outside this room are proposing community networks and local access networks as an alternative paradigm to provide not only connectivity in areas where ‑‑ some values Luca is presenting.  Program is a continuation in a way of appointment in the report last year.  I presented a map of communities in Africa by which identified 37 community members in the continent in 12 different countries.  But if community members recognize a certain important alternative to connectivity why there are so few.  So then I say that to understand why these pioneers were ‑‑ this paper is actually included in this report that were subsidized by ‑‑ funded by ISOC.

What communities are doing in Africa.  Here and Seoul for instance representatives of the ten most active community members in the continent are here today.  I went to understand by interviewing 30 experts and interviewing leaders in the country.  Fourth dimension, first one socially and lack of awareness, the no only of the benefits of accessing information, not about the Internet but access to information, this morning in the coalition, highly emphasize the volume of information for the people but awareness that people could actually create by themselves.  Leave this for ‑‑ they think it is the government or the operators, not themself who can do it, which is actually part of the ‑‑ in the continent part of the lack of confidence due to generations of colonial ruling, right?  And then there are also economic careers.  In many places that are no connectivity but in places where there are many people are sacrificing on foods and basic needs to communicate.  In that case how we need to reconsider the community that ‑‑ people find infrastructure can apply in rural and even urban Africa:  Also together with that the infrastructure is lucky, the import taxes and customs are very high ‑‑ even higher with lack of adequate business training is making difficult for communities to actually tackle this economic careers.  On the technical careers we have lack of communication skills.  People are not ‑‑ they don't have the skills.  They have other type of problemsolving and relative skills to build their houses but technical skills for many reasons are still lacking.  In many areas, heat, wind, you need more expensive and more devices to ‑‑ cities accessing those devices in the local market, equipment you need to provide support infrastructure.  Also technologies available at least to the fourth dimension doesn't meet scenarios that exist because there is no spectrum for communities, you need to ‑‑ you are forced to used VoIP over Wifi which is nobody but not best solution ever again, we are first to use Wifi.  The fourth dimension in terms of careers are the policy framework that are not conducive for rural communities or local access initiatives to actually fill.  Not only in terms of a spectrum, it's not right of ways, capture in terms of the companies influencing to actually have relation and policy that benefits themself, from other countries, if.  CC regulations that actually has had some positive impact in the sense of some of us here having created the (?) there are careers that force that stuff.  But still with all these careers, there are initiatives that have to handle and they are filling but these initiatives that a set of factors that make them unique.  We need to analyze them if successful understand better dose elements made.  With funding from IDFC, ABC in collaboration is leading a research project to try to understand better these elements these initiatives.  We need to tackle all these from a systematical approach that interact with each other.  The first one is about research.  Understanding much better the system of initiatives.  At the same time understanding unique impacts women participation in this initiatives is one of the main focus areas.  Second one is actually on trying to create a more conducive regulatory environment from the IPU to the regional associations of regulators to actually the national regulators and also create an open data to know where those structures are available ‑‑ by that a couple ‑‑ a week ago at least for instance we ‑‑ trying to regulate all this information report been made available there in Dynamic Coalition made a list to aggregate all this information so there is a series of society a regulator movement this modern format is going on.  At the same time it's about creating synergies between all of us, try to work together, try to do more resources we have.  Activity about emerging.

Network how those type of technologies can be repeated and be useable by local communities and communities in the south.

Now moving directly to Peter Boon on the paper TKA case.

>> Hello.  Thank you Luca.  Book looks great.  Congratulations to everybody.  Chapter I raised with some collaborators with collaborators of mine.  What we've done in this chapter is adapt a larger document that's a manual that we wrote in both Spanish and English that tries to lay out how we went about creating the first and largest cellular deployment in Mexico.  It was quite a long article compared to some of the other ones.  Chance to look at some of the different elements and pillars of things that we think are important and that hopefully are applicable to any community network, not just community networks.  I want to draw on some of those.  And it really has to do also with the way we think about the work and way we try to implement the work in realize.  A systemization of those things.  A lot of times we talk about our work we think of sort of this triangle of technology, policy, a is sense of organizational capacity and this article lays out how we think about those things.  The technological piece is really about how do you reach people in a way that uses devices they already own in a way that's actually appropriate for folks.  So I think there have been many less than stellar and large projects in the past seek to create new ways of connecting people, new technologies, put some new things somewhere.  What we tried to do is say let's actually look at what people already have, which are cellphones, some are basic, those are now becoming what we call smartphones but let's start there as a way to begin the connectivity debated.  That technology needs to be adaptable inexpensive and work with devices people have.

On the political or policy and regulation side there's lots to do.  I think that's probably one of the hardest things we have in front of us and I think with a Kathy was speaking to as well was this issue of resources held by governments, also held by companies sometimes not accessible to community networks, things like spectrum, also things like access to fiber or simply information about where the fiber is and some kind of fair pricing mechanism.  If we can't access that type of information or those resources it's quite difficult for us to think about any kind of connectivity beyond an urbaner why.  So how do community networks, smaller organizations, how do nontraditional actors engage in that process.  That's super important.  Not just ‑‑ changing laws that don't need to be changed.  I think that's a huge piece.  It's not just let's work around the edges or corners.  Let's really go at the issue there are policy and regulatory barriers in place that if they weren't there or weren't favorable go do a huge amount in empowering folks and as we consider, says help strengthen network sovereignty and self determination.  And then lastly comes down to creating some kind of way to make those networks sustainable and many different ways to do that, many different models, many which outlined in the book, more comment based models.  More model based on making an inexpensive service that's easy for people to engage with.  In the case of telephony projects that we have, it's just basically essentially ‑‑ it's inexpensive and very clear who's in charge of the service, very clear who needs to help maintain the service and more collective decisions made when those are necessary but it's not that everyone all the time always has to be making sure the network works.  It's also about being able to delegate responsibilities to people in the community and being clear what their roles are and those folks have support.  I don't think we can expect everybody to become a telecommunications or software hacker.  That's not going to happen.  I myself am not one.  Nevertheless everybody has a roll to say.  Has to be clear roles and model of sustainability in place that allows the network to have the resources that it needs to continue to function.  Again, we see lots of connectivity projects that don't take into account the local community and don't take into account the fact that people are willing and many advertisements assuming they are able to participate in terms of decision making and on‑going maintenance and running of networks.  Those are the things I like to basically highlight from this chapter.  It tries to be as sort of pragmatic as possible.  So I hope it's of use and I hope folks can read and adapt it to their experience.  There's a more detailed version inner of this online that's maybe 60 pages, 30 pages that go into spreadsheets and all kinds of costing, so on.  If that research is useful for you, that makes us happy.  Thank you very much.

[ APPLAUSE ]

>> Unidentified Speaker:  Now we go to India.  Before that I completely forgot before going to India we have to understand why each network can be sustainable choice to expand Internet access with Michael.

>> Michael:  Thanks.  That's perfect because that follows up on Peter's remark.  It's really such an honor for me to be up on this stage right now., especially people community networking professionals.  I can't do what you do.  I want to do my best to support you in other ways.  The way I'm doing that really builds off the work that people like Peter and the ideas that people like Peter and the on‑going Carlos promoting themselves.  In the past couple of months I have been working on the sustainability of the Internet because I recognize that with the, it's not very stable.  I came to a conclusion at one point.  We talk about connecting with the next built, for instance.  The fact is we cannot legitimately discuss access without addressing sustainability.  Now, I kind of started creating this definition.  I talk about it in the book, sustainable access.  Defined it as the ability for any user to connect to the Internet and stay connected overtime.  To me I hope it's self evident how community networks are such an important part of that paradigm because in fact I think they're a pillar of sustainable access.  Also a right of sustainable development period and the thing is aside from providing infrastructure and promoting things like digital literacy skills, ICT skills, technical capacity building which I know is really integrated into the core of much of the models, community networks provide energy.

Now, what I found when I was writing this chapter is while there is definitely a mention of energy and there is a couple of resources that explain how to create decentralized energy systems I would say especially the role of energy is largely kind of underemphasized.  I guess this is also self evidence and I don't mean to preach that power is a prerequisite of Internet access and energy and Internet access go hand in hand.  Cannot be decoupled.  Challenge of generating energy to power infrastructure pose a barrier especially to infrastructure, lowering access calls and scale.  What is my kind of response to this, sustainability needs to be integrated into the core of ICT's period but while this includes design I think community networks can really provide an excellent model to build on especially for the rest of the community given that energy is so important to the work that you're doing.

Aside from promoting decentralized energy systems, essentially energy offgrade, happening where you are, solar, it's wind, whatever resources they are, one idea that I propose is also encouraging universal service funds to not just focus on Internet and infrastructure but also to focus on energy.  I found for instance there was few examples of this, one of which was in Senegal.  The fact is there is a sense of ‑‑ there is a ‑‑ it's been happening before and so I think that's one way you could do it.  And I think community networks provide a great model for sustainability but a lot of things that need to continue to happen so community networks can be sustainable into the future.

Thank you.

[ APPLAUSE ]

>> Unidentified Speaker:  We can finally get to India with Sarbani.

>> Thanks, much, Luca for giving me the opportunity to speak.  We are a community network at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay.  So this is rural project that in Institute of Technology.  I am a senior researcher there at this institute, this project.  This project began in 2012.  And we did some analysis and found most of the TV spectrum broadcasted in India is (?) at the time at the place it's only 16 megahertz being used and rest of it hundred megahertz is completely underutilized and not been used at all.  So we thought that we should start using that as that part of the spectrum approach department of communication and license for uploading providing in seven villages close to Mumbai.  Imagine Mumbai as metropolitan city.  30 kilometers away there is no connectivity.  You can imagine what is the status in rural India, 640,000 villages no connectivity.  50,000 villages even don't have any voice connectivity.  It's a very serious situation.  We went about this project in the year 2013 and 2014.  Connected seven villages with the space.  First TVwide space in India.  Study in the year 2014 and 15 on what has been impact about Internet connectivity brought about to these villages that had absolutely no connectivity.  There was no 2G, 3G connectivity at all in these places where we provided connectivity.  What outstanding lives include in the sense they have saved on a lot of money and by not going to the nearby they have to walk 20 kilometers, take a bus and save a lot of money, save a lot of time.  Then connectivity provided to the village themselves.  So they started using it and other thing after the project over in year 2014, license was taken back from us.  150 people.  They said no we don't want to acquire them as customers because cost is very high and not viable for us.  We then thought how will we do this.  That's when the community they came together and they told ‑‑ we want to set up network of our own and you can do the handling for us.  We told them that, okay, we can do this and wrote the next proposal and scaled it up to 25 villages.  We again took villages that are completely unconnected, completely tribal.  Some of them are tribal locations and we provided connectivity over there.

Now, what happens is that the thing is that these people are connected now but there is ‑‑ we wanted to understand that this situation that happened in the first space should not happen again.  Actually use the ‑‑ go out in the field when we ‑‑ we don't have the funds anymore.  Become actually the model, they can run the Internet connectivity over there.  Self year after year.  So what we thought is that we look into few more days there.  Usually the public‑private partnership models.  These models succeeded in India.  There are various models that are there.  So we thought we should take into account ‑‑ that is the village, name of the local office in the village, that takes responsibility of owning the network and we have ‑‑ now 25 villages is alive network.  The community is running network over there, local self government is running network over there.  They purchase ‑‑ for this time it is that we have purchased the ‑‑ after six more months village local self government is going to start paying for the banquet themselves.  We have got them connected to the tell contaminate operator and they are going to buy that from them.  How is it going to ‑‑ India we have the village ‑‑ it there are some women as village entrepreneurs and local youth in the village entrepreneurs they sell the bandwidth inside the bandwidth.  They have found.  First time business model.  One is license because ‑‑ technology ‑‑ as well as other things that it can go through very ‑‑ actually doesn't need a line of sight.  This is technology we're looking at.  Be licensed for the rural ruindybia mote areas where tell com operators are not going at all.  Receive some of the challenges in field and that is one of the important things is the cost.  We want to understand what is a good cost of a technology, which technology is good.  This is something we are looking at as well.  That's how.

>> Thank you very much.

[ APPLAUSE ]

>> Luca:  Now we change continent and go to Brazil.  First maybe it is better if we start a first with the description and then going to Natalia who analyze this sort of framework.

>> Unidentified Speaker:  Thank you for organizing the connectivity group.  I'm going to try to be really fast.  We're running out of time.  Not going to describe too much the article because it's really comparing to community networks in Brazil.  Every network ‑‑ every installation is really a new experience one predictable facts and events.  These are two very different metrics.  One is rural environment of like 300 neighbors.  There is a local competition from one provider 200,000 neighbors, about the size of Geneva, apparently.  There was no way ‑‑ plan was never to provide access to everyone but very interesting group of young people who wanted to have their own network connectivity and got actually one connection from the university which is not far from there, but the results were really different.  In the sense that the natural world, no password.  They even were afraid of leaving Internet open because competitors, local providers which were ‑‑ which had or permission from local drug lords, more private thing.  With everything with all of these experiences we get to know a little bit more about how people can access technology, how they can decide how to ‑‑ whatever they did, put together themselves, they can also have the power to decide how to use it, what to use it for and how to make it sustainable in every case.

So going to keep it there.  I'm open for questions in the end and let's continue with this very rich panel.  Thank you very much.

[ APPLAUSE ]

>> Unidentified Speaker:  Just a comment on what you were saying.  In your case, demonstrate how empowering it can be to build community network force local community and giving really different opportunities to youngsters that otherwise would be actually cut off any kind of opportunity in their life.

And now we have Natalia to exploring the regular frameworks of Brazil.

>> Natalia:  Thank you, Luca, thank you also ISOC for support and congratulations for the work.  I would like in this piece I wrote, for the first time I shared a really personal story.  For the first time I shared in public something that happened to my family six years ago in a rural area, close to San Paolo city.  Three hours is a city becoming really tour risk.  Rural area.  There was a landslide and basically half of my family died.  And at the time there was no cellular, you know, in order to ‑‑ and one person survived, by the way.  So there was no cell phone connection.  There was no landline connection.  There was no wireless connection, no wireline Internet connection at a time and the only public phone was about like one or 2 kilometers from the place and it was the whole time taken by the media that was covering the incident.  So while, you know, community networks is not all about connectivity only, it's also about resilience.  I would like to highlight the aspect of resilience to these networks because this might have been better had we had a connectivity at the time.  I was writing this piece from this very same city some months ago and I was asking around because finally there is connectivity, wireless connectivity and generally pretty poor families around there are paying 40 to $60 per month to get wireless connectivity.  That means about 15 to 20 percent of minimum wage in Brazil which means a lot of them actually get minimum wage.  That's a lot and much higher than standards set bilirubin commission or alliance for affordability development.  That said I was talking to Dana today.  He said that when he had a call out for this year for supporting community networks, he had 50 communities interested.  That shows like the interests and, you know, the demand for the ‑‑ but just briefly talking about some programs and development in Brazil's regulatory framework.  We have had had regulation for restricted regulation since 2008 which has been there for a while so maybe we should have had more communities by now.  We don't have many in Brazil.  The framework was improved so you don't need a license operating when you use a license spectrum.  End of cost they also have increased the costs for that.  There was a cost and now there is no cost anymore.  However that said despite some recent improvements there is a need to strengthen especially the spectrum.  Issues for example TV wide space mentioned here by Carlos and Sarbani has been discussed suns 2010 in the country and is not yet regulated.  And, you know, that's like one example of things that, you know, could easily have been did you know but haven't been done the more we have technological development the more important it is to actually foster what you were describing as self determination and how does networks can be managed and emerged we have many options.  Also think this is situation considering the fewer challenges for spectrum management for example upcoming technologies such as IET or also future pressures that we might face for example maybe caught some of the people trying to use this at a lower scale.

[ APPLAUSE ]

>> Luca:  Thank you very much for sharing this personal event.  I think we can.  I think we can now finish with the presentation by Luis Martinez and then have a very brief discussion.  Again ‑‑ complain with the MAG and use the criteria.

>> Luis:  Marlene is not able to present her paper.  We had been working together since summer we're in a meeting sponsored by ISOC in Panama where we develop the idea there are so many projects around the world and so many in community networks that we need to look back, reflect, and look what is everybody doing.  So main aim now is to make a new map of worldwide community networks.  We want to provide a platform to pinpoint every community network around the world but that will be very expensive to do it visiting all these community networks so ‑‑ what we plan to do is provide this open platform using free and open software to operators use of these networks, operate data we believe we believe will encompass knowledge about community networks.  This will help us Carlos was saying to inspire other projects and maybe do not duplicate efforts in improving so we're calling this project the community network atlas and briefly that time we have developed is composed, inspired by Carlos by Landro Navaro, very few academic literature on technicalities, frameworks, community networks.  Set will be demographics, history, localization, architecture, services provided, community networks as database on radio, practices such as technical management, governance neutrality, sustainability.  And finally the frameworks that will be in the beginning regulatory and legal framework for that particular network.  We have problem with those networks that operate of this legal framework and that can be.  So those networks on the request of the people that are providing data won't published.  Just be taken into account of the statistics provided in open data.  Because people to communicate, we all need to communicate universal right for communicate.  That's one of the reasons of committee networks and that that cannot be hours on safety and security.  So that's why we're keeping the privacy of those that want to have privacy.  And thank you very much and you're all welcome to provide data.

[ APPLAUSE ]

And also send a survey sort of ‑‑ we could merge our efforts to provide more data to more maps, more project.  As no one is kicking us out of the room, I propose we have five extra minutes for brief discussion.  So if you have any comment, questions, please raise your hand and we can discuss together.

>> thank you.  I'm sorry but I don't know on (?) from my perspective has been in our in Sweden has physical fiber networks people get together in the community and build it.  Interestingly enough what happened after a couple years is first ambitious people they get old.  These issues to maintain that how can we maintain that good momentum with these community networks?  How can we solve that because it's been a challenge and more commercial place taking over so to speak or becomes part of the larger network because people are ‑‑ something long‑term around that.

>> Luca:  Take three questions and then.

>> My name is (?) South Africa.  South Africa been having some challenges in regards to idea from the panelist why people (?)

>> Luca:  Someone here.

>> Article on the database is in Spanish I think and not immediately visible to me what will be the Web site.  Is it working and how can we connect?

>> Last question and then we can.

>> Josephine:  (?)  Community network.  My question goes to Sabani.  Did you experience an issue of language barrier, especially in deploying the Internet in rural areas in English and in areas literacy is really low.  How would you overcome such a challenge?

>> Sarbani:  When we deployed networks there was no challenge in itself because we did it with the local people, with the local people support.  So that was not issue at all.  Language was not that ear for that because the people.  But, digital content.  That is already there in the format of the local language that is already there with the state governments.  All the state governments of India each state's local language.  That's all right there.  These people, religions use the Internet in the ‑‑ village office.  They use the Internet there for their social security card and other things like that but it is.  There is assistant over there.  Apart from the Internet they are using is on the mobile file.  I hope I answered your question.

>> Luca:  As regards to sustainability I can suggest (?)  Lot of different models as common resource important to define ground rules.  Common source.  (?) worked a lot on governance of community networks and exploring how also the annual ‑‑ common resources can apply.  It's extremely important to define ground rules on how to common resource will be managed and by whom and how to collect resources to keep and manage it.  Mainly manage defined otherwise network not sustainable.  Pretty sure my distinguished friends here will have more replies.  Please go ahead and provide your thoughts.  Web site will become Net atlas.info and we are launching the site on the first of January.  And I will be very happy to translate the words of Maureen if you give me one week time and your e‑mail I will do it for you.

>> Carlos:  (?)  Parliament and advocating for that.  So I think using any sort of ‑‑ government allows to advocate for spectrum to communities need to be used at the moment communications admin that looking for submissions on the very first of January.  Coordinating different submissions, work on that I think with open access framework, opportunities around reframing that spectrum not being used in rural areas.  In the 191800 for DSM and how many (?) interesting case together with the open Telecom as well it might be spectrum indeed not located, not spectrum but located and haven't been used by operators theorize might not have been allocated.  We're going to continue.  We are going to ‑‑ I'm happy to explore with you and with ISOC chapter submission for the current submissions on the act.

>> Luca:  I will give the last word to (?)  Who has been so kind to leave his comments.

>> Unidentified speaker:  I want to comment on the sustainability of these optic fiber ‑‑ it's a good opportunity.  We also have ‑‑ we are deploying fiber and my recommendation is to make privilege network as a common said ‑‑ community network can have more customers once the network is deployed.  For the case of freedom I'm not specifically familiar with this but I could imagine there could be a small ISPs interested in delivering services there and stability comes by communities.  Here I just want to make one extra comment and also put in regularity too make sure these assets are available to this highest piece under the condition that they remain as a common asset ‑‑ also available to them.  Thank you.

>> Luca:  I would like to thank again everyone for the great talks and ideas and I think now there's a reception downstairs and then dinner somewhere else so we can keep on talking downstairs with wine.

[ APPLAUSE ]