>> MODERATOR:  Can we start?  Okay.  Hello, good afternoon, everybody.  Thank you very much for coming on behalf of the Institute of International Studies of the University of Chile.  We are holding now the session called Net Neutrality and COVID‑19, trends in Latin America and Caribbean, and Asia‑Pacific.  First of all, I want to thank all of the people who has joined the panel, and our online speakers also Javiera, Felipe and Piero.  So, we will talk about now about why is net neutrality important for our countries, why are we making a link between Latin America and specifically the alliance within Latin America and why we are linking it with the Asia‑Pacific.  We will address a global discussion, comparative regional processes regarding net neutrality.  And, for instance, just to make ‑‑ to start the conversation, the presentation of the paper that Professor Javiera and Felipe will talk about for instance the important outcome of the four members of Pacific alliance, Chile, Colombia, Peru, Mexico, the four of them have regulated a law, the Principle of Net Neutrality and that had as a result, the Pacific Alliance as an organization and in the trade protocol, they set the principle of net neutrality in an international treaty and setting important precedent in international public law.

That's why the first presenters will present the paper Net neutrality exceptionality a look into countries during COVID‑19 and lessons for Asia‑Pacific economies.  This paper is now in press in the framework of the call for proposals of the UN Economic and Social Commission for the Asia‑Pacific, UNCTAD, United Nations Industrial Development Organizations and ARTNET and this call for paper is called unleashing the digital trade and investment for sustainable development.

The presenters of the paper, I will present every speaker when the time to talk arrives, and our first presenters are Professor Javiera Caceres, also one of the authors of the paper.  She is an instructor professor at the Institute of International Studies of University of Chile, and also PhD fellow at the London School of Economics and Political science, and Professor Felipe Munoz, associate professor of universal studies of University of Chile.  Professor and I are authors of this paper which will start the conversation of this principle in our region.  So Professor Caceres and Professor Munoz, thank you for joining us online and whenever you want, you can start and present this research topic on net neutrality.

>> JAVIERA:  Thank you.  Good afternoon to all of those there.  I don't know if you can see.  I asked Piero if he could project.  Piero?  Yeah?

   >> MODERATOR:  Now we can see it.

>> JAVIERA:  Perfect.  Okay, so at first, I would like to thank Agnasio for convening such an interesting session.  It is my pleasure to share with you the finding of our research project, as you were saying, specifically on net neutrality exceptionality in the Pacific Alliance and how this experiences, some lessons can be taken for other economies, especially the Asia‑Pacific.  I'll be presenting here with Felipe too, but I will be the one presenting.  Next, please.

First we'll start with an introduction that you can see on the screen.  It's not new that the information in telecommunications revolution has changed paradigms of presumption, consumption, and social interaction, the COVID‑19 pandemic allows us to witness the extent of the Internet as an essential tool for individuals and businesses.  So in a moment dominated by restrictions, social distancing, digital tools allowed people to connect and collaborate with others across the globe.  During the pandemic as we all know, the importance of the Internet as an essential tool for people, business, and the digital economy has surged.  So several activities turned into digital environments as consequences of the pandemic, ranging from for example remote working and education to the rise of e‑commerce or increased use of digital platforms for social communication and leisure activities.

So, in this context, or research focus is on how studying how the Pacific alliance economies have regulated and managed principle of net neutrality during the COVID‑19 pandemic in order to draw on some ideas that may provide insightful information for policymakers or using net neutrality principles during exceptional circumstance.  Next, please.

Now, this is a bit of kind of a theoretical framework or literature review, so I don't know, yeah, there.  According to Tim Wu, Internet service providers, ISPs should be required to treat all Internet traffic equally, without discriminating or charging differently based on user, content, website, platform, application, type of attached equipment, or method of communication.  This is the basis of the net neutrality principle.  If not, this author argued that Internet service providers could become Internet gatekeepers controlling access to information and stifling competition and innovation.  This principle seeks to prevent Internet service providers from blocking or slowing down access to worksites or applications or charging consumers extra fees for faster or prioritized access to specific sites or applications.  Net neutrality can ensure the Internet is open playing field where all users have open access to information and to services.  For this reason and to provide stronger regulatory framework, we can see that some countries have already decided to incorporate net neutrality principle as part of mandates in free‑trade agreements, including the case of analysis that we are presenting, the economies of the Pacific Alliance.  Next, please.

Here we see a little bit more information regarding net neutrality and COVID.  So as I mentioned, the use of the Internet skyrocketed due to the rise of the COVID pandemic, so the population used the intermet for communication and leisure and video calls and streaming services, and various activities moved into virtual environments.  So, the increasing usage of network limited the capabilities of Internet service providers to provide their required broadband bandwidth, so this problem was particularly relevant in developing economies and rural areas, and for those who did not have the access to broadband LAN connections or latest generation mobile connections.  So in order to ensure that citizens had access to the Internet, particularly those that are digital and digital‑enabled services considered critical, governments imposed different measures and policies like zero‑rating or the discrimination between digital packages in which companies may discriminate regarding the price they will charge for specific content and prioritization, both part of measures that could be understood as inconsistent with net neutrality principles.  Next, please.

But Alts it's important to see here that net neutrality should not only be seen as technical issue regarded to governance of the Internet but as as tool for development.  Why there is no specific reference to the net neutrality principle within SDGs, it can be said that the net neutrality principle might promote more credible access to the Internet, might not allow discrimination regarding access to various content distributed in various environment.  Hence, the relationship between net neutrality and SDGs is significant as the Internet is essential tool for achieving SDGs.  Here we can see on the screen some examples of how net neutrality could help achieve the SDGs, and shown here, so we have first for example that we might think about SDG 4 which is quality of education, and then need to access educational resources and online learning platform, for example.  Or scg 8 which is descent work and economic growth and create digital environment and both are dependent for access to the Internet for which any discrimination of Internet service providers could hinder the population to participate in that.  Next, please.

Thank you, so the Pacific Alliance becomes an interesting case study as a regional blog established as one of the main working objectives to construction of regional digital market.  Various Presidential administrative declarations and roadmaps are elaborated toward achieving this objective in which those instruments expressed the cooperation on net neutrality is necessary to and quoting, create an enabling environment to promote exchange of digital goods and services.  Moreover, during the amendment of the digital protocol, the Pacific alliance, trade instrument within the alliance, the following provisions were adopted.  So, I'm going to quote here article 14.6 of the commercial protocol, which is part of the telecommunication chapters, which says that each party shall adopt or maintain measures to ensure compliance with the net neutrality.

So, what countries might have their own measures to achieve this objective, the common goal of net neutrality is committed at the regional level within the Alliance.

Next, please.

I'm sorry for this slide and the following one.  I know it has a lot of information.  We can afterwards share the presentation, so I'm just going to summarize this.  We can see here that the four countries in the Pacific Alliance have implemented policies to ensure net neutrality.  Our research found that Chile was the first country to adopt these measures to a large extent, then the other three economies have replicated the Chile model with small variations.  What is most interesting here and relevant for our discussion today is the final column, because here we can see that the information ‑‑ here we can see information on how these countries have addressed exceptionality during COVID‑19 pandemic, so it is concluded while existing laws on net neutrality is imposed, there is policy space to allow countries to implement measures to ensure access to digital critical services at occasion or health related was possible during the pandemic, so prioritization was possible under the event of the pandemic declared by the World Health Organization as happened also in Colombia, and we also see that traffic measures for emergencies were also put in place.

Also, for example, Mexico defind that these kind of exceptioned granted if there was risk in security of network and private communication abusers, and exceptional temporary con justian and also emergency and disaster situation, so net neutrality was not incompatible with emergency situation.

So this takes us to Asia‑Pacific economy.  So while the use of net neutrality has been widely discussed for countries in the air Asia‑Pacific, most countries in the region have not yet implemented former regulations regarding net neutrality.  There are various reason for lack of regulation, one common acknowledgment is stakes are high for consumers and industry holders and states don't want to lose the possibility of controlling traffic on the Internet.  Nevertheless, we can find some cases in India, Japan, Singapore, for example, where these countries have already implemented in different extents net neutrality regulations, as you can see in the slide.  So, as I mentioned before, I know I don't have much time left, so I'm going to afterwards share this presentation.  Next slide, please.

Here we can see so the comparison between the three processes, the Pacific Alliance, APEC and ASEAN so as previously mentioned, the significant development and level of binding instruments and working develop nlts on the regional market all of them addressing net neutrality is taking place in the Pacific Alliance.  In the case of APEC we can see net neutrality highlighted in recent years in relevant working documents which may eventually lead to an equation but still no further progress has been achieved.  While in the case of ASEAN economies, there is no relevant advances to establish that the net neutrality principle is part of their agenda, pointing out the differences between member economies, too.

Next, please.

So, to wrap up from our research, it can be stated that members of the Pacific Alliance began with the incorporation of the net neutrality trade protocol of the alliance, so in turn the adoption of the principle by the four countries not only closing time but as their connection points have been highlighted in key issues to promote the digital economy and intra‑regional trade, as they intersect in subjects such as traffic management measures, transparency, compliance mechanisms and references to international technical standards.  Regulation details regarding traffic measurement measures in a way that would allow the adoption of measures to prioritize traffic and data for essential services in time of emergencies such as pandemic.  So in this regard, the four regulations start off with the level of detail and for the instructions to reach internal service providers there being able to manage data traffic to ensure the continuity of critical services.

Members of the Pacific Alliance made progress in joint discussions that led to the reform of old telecom legislation and subsequently set the first multilateral precedent for the cooperation of the net neutrality principles in international treaty, so alliance practices align with members digital trade policy.

Just a couple of more ideas before I finish.  The regulation of net neutrality within Asia‑Pacific economies is matter of divergence and some countries have built regulations on frameworks about this issue.  In countries, others have not worked on this topic, and while the topic has been covering some free trade agreements, it has not been covered in others such as RCEP.  Next, please.

Just to conclude, here I think I already mentioned everything related to COVID‑19, so I'm going to focus on the last two points, so we see that the Asia‑Pacific region, particularly APEC and ASEAN has discussed concept and net neutrality at multilateral level, however, the experiences in local regulations are still scares and many organizations or forums have focused more on the declarative sphere rather than actually developing and creating regulations.  The Pacific alliance has offered a unusual normative and political experience.  It has significantly developed its binding discussions in net neutrality and so I think this can help us build best practices in the Asia‑Pacific region.  Thank you.  Next, please.  Yes.  Thank you.

   >> MODERATOR:  Thank you very much, Javiera for that excellent and clear presentation.  Now I give the floor to Ola who is the national director of cybersecurity in Argentina.  Olga, thank you very much.

>> OLGA:  Thank you for inviting, very interesting initiative and outcomes of this regional ‑‑ I was wondering Pacific Alliance, I'm ignorant, how many countries make part of Pacific Alliance?

So the ones that you mention, Chile, Colombia, Peru, Mexico, okay, so very interesting that you gathered together to have a treaty which I understand that it's binding to national regulations, which is important.  Because sometimes we get together and do declarations which are perhaps aspirational, and then it doesn't reflect what really has an impact at the national level.

Argentina doesn't have a specific regulation on network neutrality, although the national law on digital services, I would say, national and digital established two articles that guarantees the network neutrality for the services in place.

Although I would have some questions that I would like, philosophical questions about this issue of network neutrality.  Sometimes I think it's a bit aspirational, and perhaps it's difficult to think about it in a world where most of the traffic is increasing and really concentrating, especially in streaming services.  If you look the way that the Internet traffic has been concentrated in the last years, it's mainly concentrated in 5 or 10 main companies that deliver services.  At the same time, you have the content delivery networks that deliver most of this content to Internet exchange points, so at a point trying to do regulations about network neutrality with reality that most of the content related with streaming goes through private networks and doesn't go through the Internet, sometimes I wonder if, but this is just a question myself, in any way I'm put in doubt of what you're doing, and sometimes I wonder if it's something aspirational and really can ‑‑ we can achieve it.  At the same time, thinking about mobile services, the practice of for example in any package that you buy and then you get some services for free or included in the bound of services like WhatsApp or some, but not all, messaging services like WhatsApp but not all messaging.  That's a common practice.  I know that in some countries it was not allowed like Chile because you have a specific law on net neutrality, but in many countries, not only in Argentina, it's a common practice.

So I wonder if, how can you prevent that to happen if it's something that we should really struggle to achieve or just bear in mind that it exists?

At the same time, I have a question for those who made the research.  The inclusion of the Internet of Things in the mobile networks, like for example 5G, will include a new way of treating the bandwidth which is called network slicing.  Some people think that network slicing is a way of not respecting the network neutrality because you're treating differently different types of traffic.  But it makes sense in relation with the service.  I mean you cannot delay an autonomous car, the data streaming of that car, because it may hit someone and do an accident.  But you can delay other traffic, I don't know, perhaps streaming or music or broadcast of television or radio.

So then some type of traffic in the networks that are being developed now, whether in 5G or I also think about this new network related with laws or satellites, should have priority.  And if you are thinking about objects connected and they're providing critical services to users, so that's a question for those who have made the research and I congratulate you for what you have done.  Thank you.

   >> MODERATOR:  Thank you very much, Olga, for your input.  Now, I believe that you mentioned, for example, some technologies that are developing.

>> OLGA:  It doesn't come to mind because I'm totally jetted.  Thank you for reminding.

   >> MODERATOR:  I don't know, Piero, I don't know if I speak on behalf, I'm not sure if you are going to refer to it, but don't worry if you are not going to.  Piero Guasta works in UnderSecretariat of International Economic relations and present commentary and Chile experience net neutrality within the Pacific Alliance.  Piero, thank you very much, because also there is a lot of time difference between here and Chile, so thank you very, very much for being here.

   >> PIERO GUASTA:  Thank you, Agnasio.  I hope you can hear me.  Okay.  Everything is okay technically.  Okay.  Well, first of all I would like to thank you, you, Javiera and Felipe for inviting me here.  My first comment in general is that I think this effort is very good.  For me it's very important.  It's key to start discussing these type of issues.  I think as a general problem, if you will in the trade work, this type of topics are very high behind more famous topics, so it's always good to discuss this.  Particularly because we are in a stage on trade that Civil Society is asking why we negotiate ‑‑ why we are working on these topics and Internet has specifically that we are kind of defending the technical aspects that are born with Internet, for example, freedom of flows, net neutrality, et cetera.  It's not something that we need to implement in the future, but something that we need to protect, if you will, in trade agreements to continue that.  It's a discussion between colleagues of, for example, how do you implement new agreements, like the electronic chapters, because like we already have that, yes, the idea is true, but the idea behind this is to protect these issues.

Regarding the specific topic, I will talk again, and I'm sorry for repeating myself, about the trade perspective.  I will connect that that with what Agnasio was saying, in that a sense the view from trade, I don't want to say economist, but the competition, the opportunity for companies to export.  So, in our view, for example, we discuss a lot the new measures that countries took during the pandemic.  In the case of trade, it kind of allows because it's specific in the case of Chile, we follow the idea that you can make network as administration, but without being discriminatory.  So for example, during the pandemic you can prioritize health services or any other service, but you cannot discriminate between different providers.

Same idea with the streaming, same idea with email providers, same idea with all the areas of the Internet economy.  Okay.  So in that sense, I think the current legal framework or architecture of all trade agreements allow that because again, our focus is nondiscriminatory, they all have the opportunity to be able to enter the market, and that is very important, for example, in the case of the pandemic, there were some initiatives or platforms that for example Chile developed or Colombia developed, and the idea was to be able to offer the solutions to Pacific Alliance in the same conditions.

So in our view, we don't need specific measures for that because it's already available, that's the main idea, the main objective of trade perspective.  Regarding the topic more in general for us has been very useful.  I remember some early studies from specifically one of our ISPs that talked that it was very useful to have these kind of policies because you make the market more attractive, more competitors can enter the market and be able to reduce prices and allow more data products and services to be available.

In the case of Chile, we are early adopters, so almost everything technological, and we have almost access to everything that is currently on the Internet.  We have some particularities that for example Asia products that maybe took a little bit or long time to enter other markets like Europe or the U.S., are very easily entered to Chile.  So I think it has been a good practice from Chile.  I know that the Internet has been evolving, and there is all the discussion about autonomous cars and I'm prioritizing that digital health issue, but I think we need to see how everything is evolving regarding, for example, streaming.  There is a lot of work regarding the broadband they use.  There is a lot of competition regarding algorithm that compresses images, probably it's not ‑‑ broadband is not much importance as latency of the connection, so I think that is another point of discussion regarding specific health and autonomous driving.  Again, I'm closing for not extending too much my discourse, but I think it's a very good paper.  It's good that we continue the discussion.  I know that maybe we need to evolve this more because, again, it's a technical issue that we kind of establish in the agreement that was already there, and we hopefully we are not going to change in the future.  But it's important to highlight that to see that this is important that we negotiate and other topics in the future.  Thank you to the authors.  Please, if you have any other questions, feel free to ask.  Thank you.

   >> MODERATOR:  Thank you very much, Piero for your input.  Now I give the floor to Mr. Delgato representing NIC who will comment and reflect on technical community and speak from the situation in Brazil.  Thank you very much.

>> Thank you very much, Agnasio, Felipe and Javiera for being able to be here and comment.  I should start with disclaimer, for the Latin America folks in Japan, this is the worst time of the day, (Laughing), for all of us.  We're all jet lagged a little bit more by the end of the afternoon because of the time zone.  So, forgive if some word is missing and we do look a little sleepy here.  Anyways, so the second disclaimer is I'm a lawyer and discuss community perspective but I will bring a lot in terms of commenting on regulation.  In Brazil, net neutrality was and still is a big topic.  It was interesting and that's what I want to bring forward with the questions Agnasio put in the beginning, of why it is important, right, and what has been done in each of the countries that we are talking today and mapping Pacific Alliance and now Brazil and others and Argentina and others.

For all that don't know, the Internet, the Brazilian Internet Bill of Rights or Internet framework, how we call it, and it was issued in 2014 after nearly 5 years of public consultations and discussions to really get into principle‑based legislation.  So, it's a law but it doesn't go into the nitty‑gritty details.  And one of the perspectives of it is to bring the users rights protection before we go into the criminal penalties that comes with the problems that we know the Internet faces.  Let's protect the rights first, and then we can talk about eventually the criminalization.

And one of the big topics was net neutrality.  The first challenge was to make the legislators understand what the Internet is and how it works in the technical perspective of open Internet working, and so how the decisions that you make, even with good intentions, can break this neutral core of the Internet.  That's an interesting exercise that happened.  Because it was discussed through public consultations, online consultations were also face‑to‑face hearings with the deputies and ones making the decision.  It was really important to have the click, you know, when they understand what are the consequences of their decisions in terms of regulations.

Fast‑forwarding because we don't have much time, the decision was to keep it as a principle to net neutrality, as point Olga was making kind of inspirational, and I think at some point it needs to be because it's a principle.  Then you go into the exceptions, and the study brings this forward very nicely in terms of, okay, so that's what we want.  We want to keep it nondiscriminatory, we want to have packages flowing, wherever the content is coming from, flowing to, and so on.

So but then you need to have exceptions, and then begs for the questions of who is deciding what those exceptions are and how are we going to control it or monitor it.  I'm avoiding the word control, but it doesn't come anything better in my mind.  Anyway, so in the case of Brazil, Markusview has principle of net neutrality as technical one, so nondiscriminatory, all packages flowing, but then it mentions possibility of exceptions in case of need, for example, for traffic trolling.  I don't know exactly how to spell that.  And then to prioritize emergency essential services.  And then after two years there was ‑‑ then Markusview appoints two organizations that are going to define the rules of those exceptions.  One of those is the Brazilian Internet steering committee where I work, so NIC.br is the executive arm of the CGI that is appointed there, and then it's ANOTEL which is the Brazilian telecommunications regulator.  And so both have put together a decree that sets out implementation of those exceptions for net neutrality.  For example, in case you have an overload with spam or with the DOS, the denial of services attacks, so in those cases, of course you're going to break and put it in the middle because you need to so that the Internet keeps working and Internet keeps doing what it needs to do, and so anyway those are the cases that there are already in the regulation and that they're being putting in place.

But then and I'm fast‑forwarding because this is the question I have also for you guys in terms of your studies and perhaps can you expand or just tell if this is something that you're looking to see in the future, but I think as I said, after you take the principles and after you take ‑‑ okay, you set out those are the rules, then you need to think on implementation and monitoring.  So how you are going to make sure those are exceptions and only exceptions and not themselves become the rules.  And now you're going to even prove that because this is an issue, right.  Even if you set out an oversight and ways to ‑‑ and the regulation has some penalties for that, even there, how do you prove it?  You go more into making it real than just aspirational.  So, I'm leaving it like that.  Thank you very much.

   >> MODERATOR:  Thank you very much, Rachel.  To provide a quick answer and then give the floor.  Yeah, effectively, one of the elements that our research our previous research considered, we identified 7 elements of net neutrality regulations and one of those elements are, of course, the exceptions, because you can have net neutrality regulations, but if you don't have the exceptions, what will the exceptions be, actually the legislation won't be operable, can't be effective.  And besides the exception, one of the other elements is the dispute settlement bodies when net neutrality is not taking place.  I do think this wasn't an element because there you can go when net neutrality is not being complied with on the part of the ISP, but I do think that it is a challenge, the monitoring.  I think all the legislation that we saw, they lack a body that actively monitors that everything is and everyone is complying with the principle.  I have that quick answer for now.

Now I give the floor to the Executive Director of NGO of (?) Peru.  Thank you for being here.

>> Thank you very much for the invitation and congratulations on the paper.  Talking about net neutrality, right now is not the hot topic like is AI, but it's always a good to talk about it because it's an essential part of the Internet, net neutrality.

And well, net neutrality as an ideal, as a principle, it is also in our Peru regulation.  But what happened during COVID is like, yes, we have net neutrality regulatory bodies that implement net neutrality and demand companies to comply, but pandemic starts and what we have in front is like all the infrastructure isn't ready for all of the flow of information that started at that point.  The pandemic started and nobody could get out.  Everybody was using their laptops, their cell phones in order to work and in order to consume entertainment.  So that's what happened in Peru and I think that's what happened also in a lot of countries.

The network overloaded, so Peru government in that case, led operators to take some emergency actions in order to prioritize the flow of some packages to some specific types of websites or services.  Talking about service rating, for example what happened in Peru.  The Peru government developed web page, and it was the center of information from all the students that couldn't go to school but in order to learn, in order to have access to some educational materials, they could get it through this page.

And what happens in Peru that the students that need to access to this information doesn't have the data packages in their cell phones or doesn't have the money required to buy the data package, so in that case, most of the telecom companies and also because of the Peru government ordered that, they put rating to access to these web pages, educational web page.  And also, Peru government, like it didn't order, but it suggested companies to prioritize some types of traffic to, I don't know, traffic for people doing remote working or maybe people using Zoom or Microsoft Teams or all of these platforms to do their work while they're stay at home.

But during the time of the day, but what the government didn't take into account is when they did these regulation, they were talking like more on the traditional form of working.  But what happened with persons that were making money through streaming services like streamers, like gamers and streamers, they were ‑‑ they couldn't have the necessary package flow to continue doing streaming and also working, because for most of them, video gamers, streamers, that was they work.

So that was the point that also Peru government didn't take into account when we were talking about net neutrality.  Also very important is Peru government meets civil righting and when is it done in arbitrary form.  So what is not arbitrary is not that clear, but in many case it demands to telecom companies to be transparent about it.

The transparency of companies in implementing this measure is a key concern here.  How transparent have been telecom operators if Peru, regarding network managing during the pandemic?  One of the questions that we asked whether these companies are adequately communicating their actions and decisions during these uncertain times, those uncertain types of the pandemic.  Among the major operators in Peru, just one at that time was complying with transparency demands on net neutrality, and the other two didn't comply with it, so we didn't know which platforms or to which websites telecom companies were treating or giving preference and treating to their data packages.  So, that is what comes to my question maybe and what we can discuss about the paper.  Through the Pacific Alliance maybe there are two or three big companies that are in the country, thinking about Peru, Chile, Mexico, maybe others, I don't know.  Maybe we can think about how these companies comply with net neutrality requirements in each country and why do they comply more or less in each country?  I don't know, in the case of Peru, Intel, at least from Chile is like 7 years in the Peru market, and actually not much compliance in net neutrality position at least in transparency.  But we have other telecom companies that do comply with, so maybe we can think in future, why do they comply more or less in some country when is we talk about the Pacific Alliance, no.  That is what it's going to be for me.  Thank you very much.

   >> MODERATOR:  Thank you.  Now that I hear you talk about transparency and you talked about the user rights and regulation, I am recalling the other almosts of net neutrality legislation that we started last year, and actually transparency and the user protection, especially privacy are one of the almosts of the net neutrality legislation, besides the solution also.

Now before closing, I know that Professor Caceres who presented the paper, wants to go deeper into one of the questions that were made in the panel.

>> JAVIERA:  Thank you for the questions.  I don't know if I have all the ideas to answer all of your questions, but I think it's been super interesting.  Regarding to what Olga was saying before regarding network slicing, I think we did not consider that as part of our paper.  I think that would be something very interesting to consider in future research or maybe revised version of our article, but I think that here it's interesting to see how kind of like both the literature or like how states are approaching this topic, it's very changing in a sense that when we talk about network slicing, like completely we could say right away that, no, it's not compatible with network neutrality.  But if we start thinking about it, we see also that this also depends on the application and intent, so we see that network slicing is used more to support technical requirements like low latency for services, like autonomous driving, for example.  We see in that case, we see network slicing as way of optimizing network research for safety and efficiency, and in that case when we think about net neutrality, we can see that in this case, actually the problem of net neutrality is we're talking about the preferential treatment for specific ASD, so in that case I think we go back to what Rachel was saying because actually how we monitor, how we regulate both net neutrality and network slicing will be very important to see how actually net neutrality or network slicing is being used, so it doesn't actually become a violation of network neutrality.  I think that's something very interesting to consider.

Also, moving forward to what Mr. Delmar was saying, about the idea of how to comply with net neutrality, I think that was also something that wasn't part of our paper in a sense of following or maybe going on different analyses, even like mythlogically speaking of talking to companies and how they're complying with net neutrality, but I think that's also very interesting to consider in future research.  Thank you very much for all of your comments.  Thank you, Agnasio.

   >> MODERATOR:  Thank you, Javiera.  And also recalling the exceptions, I remember when we studied Columbian regulation in the decree, they say the net neutrality principle is established, but the traffic management, they can manage traffic while the ISPs comply with the ITU recommendation, and they specify a specific recommendation, so if they comply with that, traffic management can be done, so that's one of the ways that they operationalize the exceptions regarding the principle.  Something else that I recalled on that previous research.

I don't know if anyone else has a comment or a question?  Please, yeah.

   >> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Hello?  Well, thanks for all of the panel, the authors of the paper.  Very interesting discussion.  I wanted to comment on what Olga said.  Most of the network slicing with 5G is something new that's going to stick eventually.  We'll have three type it's of slices.  The one that most of us will use for sure would be enhanced mobile broadband, but there will also be using the same physical layer that's a nice thing of slicing is that you would be able to have different logical networks and same hardware.  Machine communication for IoT having millions of devices and also for the I would say very few cases at least at the beginning with ultra reliable low latency.

To me because what I've seen, I'm not a expert or lawyer, I'm an engineer, and this also has to do with what Rachel pointed out and exceptions, that the law says the principles that guide us, we don't want arbitrary discrimination of the scheduler of the way we traffic packages, but there is also the same law usually says okay, but this is going to be defined in a technical draft, that's where the details go.  It's interesting what Olga mentioned because I don't see any technical draft today that speaks about discriminating not in the routing layer, layer 3 which usually we're all watching if there is neutrality or not, but underneath it.  So that's something that for sure we have to analyze and see what's going on there because that's where net neutrality, although in the routing it is being respected maybe underneath it it is not.  So that is something for sure that it has to be updated in all of the technical drafts that go with the laws in our countries.  So thanks a lot.  Very interesting topic.  Thanks.

>> OLGA:  Data regulation includes exceptions and enables good services for consumers and for service providers.  But you must have all of these things that will happen, or are happening right now, so because the environment will change very much from what it was before.  Especially considering the amount of Internet of Things devices that will be connected and the number is really enormous, and it's happening now.  The idea is that the regulation is good for everyone and it's not prohibiting things that are good but consider them exceptions or part or modify or more broad.  That's very challenging with any ‑‑ (no English translation) ‑‑ with all the regulations associated with technology.  It's very challenging because you have to be ample, you have to be updated, and the changes in the service is so, it's a process.

   >> MODERATOR:  Yes, indeed.  That's why there is a common phrase at least in Chile that says the law always comes late, and especially regarding technology.  Of course, there is a challenge there.  Thank you, and also you for your input and the comments.

Now, I think we might be closing.  We are on time.  I want to thank all the speakers online and on site for bringing their perspective of Latin America to the IGF of this year.  Thank you very much, really, all of you online and on site.  Thank you for also the people who attended our session.  Thank you for the participation.

(Applause).