IGF 2010
Vilnius, Lithuania
15 September 10
ACCESS AND DIVERSITY
15:00
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Note: The following is the output of the real-time captioning taken during Fifth Meeting of the IGF, in Vilnius. 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 session, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> OLGA CAVALLI: Hello.
>> NII QUAYNOR: Hello?
>> ANTANAS ZABULIS: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Let me resume this afternoon's session dealing with access and diversity. I hope everybody had a very nice lunch. Let me present first of all myself, I'm Antanas Zabulis, and I'm holding the position of being the Social Adviser to the Prime Minister of the Republic of Lithuania on the subject of information society. It's a great honour for me to start the session of discussions on the subject of access and the diversity.
Last year in Sharm el Sheikh in Egypt there were two sessions, one on access and another on diversity. But this year we have these topics consolidated and I think that is very, very right because it's even difficult to imagine how we can separate these two issues going together. Our session today will focus on access to infrastructure and access to content. Topics related to regulatory issues and investment will be addressed tomorrow. This afternoon, we look forward to a range of issues from your home location, the global reach of social networks and the linkages between access to knowledge and security solutions both in terms of hardware and software. An issue of interest over the past years have been the use of filters to installed to block illegal or harmful content.
What conditions do you believe filtering should be considered? We'll also discuss network neutrality another issue that has come to the fore over the past year. What do we mean by network neutrality? Should any prince also be applied equally to fixed and mobile networks? This is a question that may be particularly important in the developing world where noble networks will be the main means of access. As was noted during the critical Internet resource section we're beginning to see the introduction of internationalized domain names but as we think about diversity the issues of local language, the ability to access and create content, in all languages is essential for furthering the richness and value of the Internet for all.
Multilingualism can help towards making the Internet more relevant and useful to people around the world. When talking about Internet access and diversity we should distinguish a few key level: Infrastructure level and the content level supplementing it, as well as the knowledge and skills levels which to my understanding is one of the most important. Since the opening speech shouldn't take too much, I would say a few ideas about infrastructure and leave the content and knowledge topics for the end of the session. So the access. Most of us for us it's difficult to conceive the world's technological able. Some people wake up at 3:00 in the morning, go to bathroom and afterwards check their email. On the way back to bed. Well, the reality is changing. An issue about the access to a network is still relevant even in well developed countries where surprisingly large part of the society still lives in digitally detached.
For example even 30% of the population of the European Union has never used the Internet and many of them have not done this just because we don't have an access to any network. I think the discussion of the global access to Internet should start with establishment of the right to the Internet at the global level as one of the basic human rights.
It's not on the top here but it's necessity which is implemented practically by the most advanced countries. By bringing the right to the Internet forth to the level of basic human rights there will be a global obligation and general incentive for Government, international organisations and businesses structures to achieve this goal.
The second public private partnership so called PPP can be the most effective way to expand the infrastructure of the Internet. This method has justified and has been proved by many times, a number of successful examples across the world. We here in Lithuania have inspiring stories about the establishment of public Internet access points which we have around 1,000 across the country. Somebody said it's more than the number of gasoline stations for development of broadband Internet access in rural. There are factors which completely change the indicators of the Internet and e service by the population. One of the fastest ways of ensuring the global Internet access would be mobile broadband, Internet networks and mobile devices.
The reasons are obvious. According to our mother company report published a few years ago twice as much Lithuanian feel naked without a mobile phone than they do without their underwear. The future Internet access is an access to the pocket or in the palm accessible anywhere at any time. Encouraging indicators of the strength are the mobile strategies selected by Google, a boom of mobile applications market and new mobile technologies providing the possibilities of mobile Internet which have been only imagined until now. Rather than implemented practically. Before GLD allowing speed up to 100 megabit per second is a reality today and most probably some of you have already experienced this because just right now, by trying the telephone you can do it yourself here at the IGF conference and we're proud to be present to present to you such an option.
So by concluding I'd like to express my wish the discussion during the IGF would enrich us with new ideas and good leads. It's time to introduce our moderators, Mr. Nii Quaynor, the Chief Executive Officer Network Computer Systems, President Internet Society of Ghana, and Ms. Olga Cavalli. And we also have a remote moderator, Raquel Gatto, Assistant Professor. So Olga, Nii, and Raquel, I'm looking forward to the discussions.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. It's a pleasure to be here in Lithuania. We'd like to thank the Lithuanian authorities and the Lithuanian people for such a warm welcome and being so kind with us. We'd like to thank the Secretariat for arranging such a very good infrastructure for these meetings. I'd like to stress the fact we have transcription not only for the main sessions, but also for the workshops. Which is a major achievement and allows many people to follow all the work we do here in Lithuania, not only here but also remotely, because there are people from all over the world following us through the remote project. We have in Argentina and there are many others all over the world so it's not only a meeting for people that were so lucky to be here with us today, but also for everyone who is interested in the future and the present situation of the Internet.
Let me briefly explain the plan we have for these three hours of our time. I will introduce the panelists. We have 6 very distinguished panelists. Thank you very much for having the for being with us today, and for being present in our preparation during the last two months of this session.
They will take about 5, 6 minutes each to present their perspectives. Mr. Mike Silber will talk about diversity and access to knowledge, how to find the right balance. Mr. Yamil Salinas Martinez will talk about global reach of social networks. Mr. Philipp Grabensee will talk about geolocation, and Mr. Mahesh Kulkarni, online content available in native languages, experiences in IDNs in Indian languages. And Mr. Virat Bhatia will talk about enable environments and legal frame works. And after that, for the first time, I'm a MAG member and after the experience of organising main sessions and workshops, we have noticed it could be good to have some feedback about the workshops which are related to this main session. So after their presentations, we will have a very brief comments about the workshop organizers and after that we'll have about two hours for questions and answers and comments from the audience and from our panelists and at the end, we will ask the panelists to do a very short and brief wrapup.
So thank you for being with us today, and Nii, would you help me presenting our panelists with their names and affiliations?
>> NII QUAYNOR: Okay. The first panelist is Mike Silber, Director for ccTLD Domain Services in South Africa.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Our second panelist is Mrs. Manal Ismail, the Director of the Technical Coordination of the National Telecom regulatory office of Egypt and she also is, she's in the GAC of ICANN.
>> NII QUAYNOR: The next is Yamil Salinas Martinez, and he's Manager of social media for Telefonica Argentina.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Mr. Philipp Grabensee, the Chairman of the Board of Afilias, former DNS member of ICANN and from Germany.
>> NII QUAYNOR: Next we have Mahesh Kulkarni, and he's from the centre for development of advanced computing from India.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: And we have Mr. Virat Bhatia, he's the President of AT&T India.
So our first panelist is Mike. Mike, he has been so kind to replace Virat Bhatia, our person in the panel but he couldn't make it here in Vilnius but he's been so kind to replace. He has to attend another workshop. So he'll be a while with us and go to another workshop so Mike the floor is yours.
>> NII QUAYNOR: I think we actually meant Vika Mpisane who is not able to be here, so Mike, you have the floor.
>> MIKE SILBER: Thank you and apologies from Mr. Mpsiane, General Manager of the .za Domain Name Authority. I'm speaking in my capacity as Director of that Authority, and the views are specifically as discussed within that organisation.
A lot of discussion takes place around the so called digital divide, and a very interesting comment was made by a colleague in turn quoting another colleague, so possibly this is starting to pick up some momentum. That it's there's no longer any purpose about talking of bridging the digital divide. Because there is always going to exist some form of access curve. Those who have access and those who have either limited or no access.
These increasingly are children are gaining access to linked networks at an increasingly young age, but there is a certain age at which our children, our youngest children, don't have access, certainly not unsupervised, immediate access, to this network of networks, and that's entirely appropriate. Similarly, there's a generation of older people who don't have access because they lack many of the skills, and the intent or the desire to learn those new skills in order to obtain access is still to me very intimidating seeing the number of that community over here far more professional than myself or younger people.
That being said from a purely age based perspective there will be people that will be outside of the connectivity curve. Of course, one of the biggest drivers of that connectivity curve is poverty, education, and geographic location. Meaning that people in developing countries are far more likely to not have access than those people in more developed countries.
And that has a significant impact on issues of access to knowledge, access to information, access to the resources that can actually help those people improve their lives. So when we talk about a digital divide, and when we're talking about diversity and access, we need to also look at the broader Millennium Development Goals, and recognize that we're always going to have a divide. What we can hopefully do is move the access curve along. Hopefully we can decrease the extreme points of that curve so that a greater number of people have a more equal access. But we're never going to remove it completely.
With that in mind, content and an increasing use of local content, so increasing the relevance of this Internet network to local people is an absolutely critical step.
Yes, for many people, the ability to engage with a global community is a driving factor, but in a rural village, as a subsistence farmer, the ability to connect with people in another Continent speaking a different language may not actually be that appealing. And it's the ability to access are relevant, local content, key information, that affects the lives of those people that is a major driver. It certainly has been a major driver for the uptake of mobile services, and particularly mobile data services, which given the world garden nature of many mobile technologies has allowed them to very specifically target and focus on rather small and very specific audiences.
And if we're going to take the success of the mobile technologies in developing economies, one thing that needs to be developed is the mechanisms for local content creation, and there have been a number of steps. The first being internationalized domain names, and certainly we haven't seen statistics coming out of that. They're still too new. But that hopefully will be a mechanism through which local relevant content can be increased.
But there are other mechanisms that are required to actually increase the amount of relevant local content so that the Internet becomes more relevant to more people.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Apologies. My mic was mute. Thank you very much, Mike. Thank you so much.
Our next speaker is, I'm lost, Ms. Manal Ismail from Egypt. Manal, the floor is yours.
>> MANAL ISMAIL: Thank you all for this opportunity to share with you from a developing country perspective how we see IDNs and the multilingual Internet. Over the past years, the Internet has proven to be an indispensable tool and has grown in a way that affected all facets of our lives. It is now used as a permanent source of information, and everyday tool for communication and social interactions, and a mechanism to conduct online services. The Internet has also proven to be an effective tool used in preserving National identities and protecting cultures and cultural heritage, so it comes as no surprise the need for a multilingual Internet where users can easily use the Internet in their day to day activities, and in their native languages, especially as Internet access started to be listed as one of the basic services in some developed countries.
A multilingual Internet should be viewed as a citizen right, and a Government obligation. Governments should not differentiate among citizens in availing all basic services, and Internet is now one. So it's high time to have a multilingual Internet in order to avoid ending up with a digital divide even at the National levels. Within countries where the majority of the population do not master a second language.
So as we try to reach a multilingual Internet we need equally consider three aspects upon which a multilingual Internet is based, and as Mike just mentioned, those are the availability of local content, localization of applications and tools, and internationalization of domain names. With regards to the local content, it's extremely important to enrich the Web with local content in native languages, and was users are not any more at the receiving end, they should be able to create and receive information in their native languages.
In addition to the user generated content, we should also work on triggering local content markets, and come up with initiatives and business models that would help intensify native content on the Web.
We also immediate to make sure that we build on the need to make sure we build on the positive experiences that end users might currently have. For example it's important to make sure all needed tools and applications, like search engines, browsers, and others, are available and localized to meet the needs of those local communities.
Last but not least is the internationalization of domain names which is yet another important component of a multilingual Internet. It may sound trivial, yet it's a key aspect to enjoy seamless access to local content. As they allow users trying to access local content to also type the URL in their native languages. One may not be able to easily access the content he or she wants if they are unable to understand, guess, or recall its address.
It also doesn't make sense to have Governments promote e government services using a foreign language, or to have businesses advertise their online services to local markets in a language that is understood only by a minority of its population.
It also is a challenge to call for trademark protection, then be obliged to protect its translated or transliterated form. All those issues and much more indicate the importance of IDNs, and it's worth noting here that IDNs is one aspect that really needs to be coordinated at the international level. And with the IDN gTLDs now being a reality, I really expect this to pave the way for the introduction of IDN gTLDs where there will definitely be some learned lessons from the language communities it's also expected to open new market opportunities in terms of having registries and registrars in those emerging markets, as well as triggering the local content and application development markets. So this is definitely a right step toward a multilingual Internet that would ultimately bring more users online, help them interact and communicate in their native languages and help them protect their culture, heritage and preserve their National identities. Thank you.
>> NII QUAYNOR: Thank you very much. Next panelist is Yamil Salinas Martinez. You have the floor.
>> YAMIL SALINAS MARTINEZ: Thank you Mr. Chairman, Olga, Nii. It's great to be here in Vilnius at the 5th meeting of the Internet Governance Forum and in this plenary session. I want to thank the organising Committee and Lithuanian authorities for the warm and kind reception to our participants. My name is Yamil, and I come from Buenos Aires, Argentina. You know about our passion for football, but let me tell you we have a strong passion for the future of the Internet. That's why we are here.
Argentina like many other countries in Latin America have experienced in the last two years one of the most changes in how the Internet is being used. More than 60% of Internet users have one or more profiles in some of the most relevant social networks and the share of time dedicated to those activities has today surpassed Google search in emailing.
Just like in other parts of the world, we use them to contact old friends, school mates, find a job, collaborate on projects, get in touch with migrants' families or just to play Farmville. In this short talk I want to focus on three ideas about this global stage of social networks.
To begin with the first one that shows us the power they have and what they can do, let me start by telling you a short story. This is a story of Ellie, a very active American woman in an online community with hundreds of contacts and friends.
One day, Ellie, in her 20s and eager to see the world out of her window, decides to leave the comfort of her home, job and belongings and take a long trip around the world. All her contact and friends gave her a very warm farewell and with wished the best for her trip. Once on the road in the middle of the Himalayas she received a call, a very personal about culture that move her to become a nun and change her life. She contracted a serious illness and in the blink of an eye she was in a New Delhi hospital in a coma. On the other side of the world in a matter of hours he friends in the virtual space made contact with New Delhi doctors investigated medical emergency flights and even organised a fundraising campaign to get her back home.
Fortunately after a few weeks Ellie could recover in the United States and finally got back to India again. This short story demonstrates the enormous power that online social networks have, the power of the connection of people. We can say that almost saved a life but what I like most about this story is it happened almost 20 years ago before Facebook, before Twitter, before Google and even before the IGF. In 1991 Ellie was an active member of one of the first virtual communities dedicated to connect people and this story is told by a well known research and pioneer in cyberspace in one of his books. So what can we draw from this story? The first point is that social networks are not new in the Internet ecosystem. The difference today is the huge number of people participating in these platforms and the pace of change. At this moment, hundreds of millions all over the world are logging in into their profiles and even from this hall. In the past, access to these tools was only for a few people who could afford them in most developed countries.
The use of these services challenges us with very important issues and actually are redefining topics like privacy management, security of personal data, identity theft, the right to delete permanently our accounts, the right to that need to be addressed in a multistakeholder environment especially in developing countries where legal frame works and representatives are not yet fully adapted to this new reality.
I believe with great power comes great responsibility. Not only from users, also from companies for the personal data they keep and want to monetize and Governments for citizen states that can find and easily monitored and tracked today. The second idea I want to share refers to the geographic extension of social networks. As I mentioned earlier the topic of this is the global reach of social networks. And today we can say that social networks have become global. We have a long way ahead but from almost every country people are joining these services and platforms. I think the point is they're not yet globalized. Besides this global reach the stage which is positive. We haven't engaged with global people yet. On average, we're still getting in touch with people with the same point of view, interests and location, or even more, with people we already know. That's human nature. We still tend to socialize with groups of people who share our common view, interests.
I think this is one of the most important challenges to face and it is not related to technology. Building new roads and bridges between people no matter where they are to take action to present and future global problems. This meeting and all of you who are here tweeting, blogging and in remote participation are a great example. In this sense I want to highlight the thoughts of people who are translating in their local languages all the proceedings of this Forum.
Anyway, despite being not yet globalized, social networks have the demonstrate a powerful impact on the local scene to connect people, promote freedom of speech and help those in needs. A few months ago our neighbor country Chile suffered one of the most serious earthquakes in its history.
The quake which occurred by night, cost millions in material losses and sadly took the lives of many people. Immediately people began to communicate from the mobile phones through social networks, mostly to Facebook and Twitter. In real time we knew what was happening there and soon Twitter was one of the platforms to finally look for families, friends and loved ones.
Not long ago the same situation was speared after an earthquake in China and the same applies to political activism as seen in Kenya or the Middle East. This is really powerful. We have a platform that can help people spread their voice in minutes. In short although not yet globalized and diversified in contacts and conversational flows where language is still a high barrier to overcome, social networks every day strengthens the global presence and have proved to be an unseen channel for expression and communication.
The last point I want to refer to today is a historical path of the social elements of the Web. In this sense, I think that massive social networks that we can see today are the peak of the social layer of the Web which began years ago with the first and for today primitive social obligations like BBR services, IRC chat rooms, wikis, blogs, chat rooms. Online words. Today platforms like Facebook, Twitter Foursquare are the tipping point at the social Web stage. Today it's impossible to think of a Web service or even a single page that cannot be shared or linked to our network so this doesn't mean we have finished.
All of us here and those committed to the future of the Web know that there is always room for more innovation and better ideas. My opinion is that the next challenges are to continue in the balanced adoption to these technologies taking them to Government agencies, cities and organisations to generate a more significant impact on those people who are still behind also companies and businesses.
In my professional career I have seen the positive impact social net with works can bring to small organisations to global companies linking professionals and colleges, fostering innovation and new services. Finally to sum up this brief talk, the three points I wanted to share with you today have been exposed.
The first one, social networks are not new in the Internet system. Just remember Ellie's story. But today they're radically changing our perception and use of it. The novelty lies in the enormous number of people who use them and how they're pushing debates and hot issues at high levels like identity, privacy, property and security.
The second is that social networks are now a global phenomenon and not any more an emerging issue. Despite not being globalized, they have proven to be an unseen channel for participation, mobilization, and communication at local levels or in a human crisis.
The last one, these services are the paramount of the social layer of the world. What comes next? The Internet of things, interruption through social objects? We don't know. Nevertheless, I'm sure that once again, the Internet experience for all of us will never be the same. Thank you very much.
>> NII QUAYNOR: Thank you very much, for a very vivid example. But next will be Philipp Grabensee. You are on.
>> PHILIPP GRABENSEE: Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman, colleagues and
friends. Thanks a lot for organising and putting this session, you
know, this group together.
I've been you know -- although we discussed it, I will talk a little
bit about geolocation and I think the intention of the thoughts I will
share with you is rather to get us some common ground for the following
discussion, then giving you a complete picture of all aspects of
geolocation. That would be certainly too much for this session and
this small introduction.
Geolocation is generally defined as the identification of real work
of graphic location of an object, in our case it's mobile device or
Internet computer terminal. Or you know, call it a wire device as
well.
Of course, the technical aspects of geolocation and I think if you
look at the technical aspects of geolocations, you have to
differentiate if you talk about the wire to device, or if you talk
about a mobile device. Generally wired-to device is located or the
geolocation can be performed by associating this device -- by
associating a geographic location with the Internet protocol IP
address. Of course we know that this technique or this mechanism of
identification and location has its limits. Limits are based on, you
know, the preciseness of the database, which of course has several
limitations; and also of course there are ways to get around those
identification procedures such as, you know, people using proxy
services or entering the Internet through VPN from a total different
part of the world.
With the identification or the technical aspect of geolocations for
mobile devices they differ a little bit here. The IP addresses are not
used for the location of the device but rather the information given by
the Internet or by the cell phone carrier, or by the device itself.
For example, in inbuilt GPS system, also identification or location is
possible through third parties.
This is just a brief summary about the technical aspects of it. But
I think, you know, more important, you know, for our discussion and
further discussions are the different applications of geolocations you
can look at.
And I -- there are probably different ways of differentiating them
and mapping them; but I, you know, for the purpose of our discussion, I
differentiated them a little bit by two aspects. One, you know, the
applications which comes more from a regulatory side, and the other
which are more market-driven and so come more little bit from economic
than rather regulatory side. Of course there's an interaction,
interlink between those sides.
Looking at the applications coming from a regulatory side, we look
at -- first we look at the aspect or the implication of criminal
investigations. I think especially in the U.S. But more and more
countries laws impose the necessity on bank software companies and
other venders to know their customers and to identify their customers,
you know, to, you know, prevent certain things from happening. An
example, money laundering traffic and all those. So in that sense
geolocation is used, you know, in the content of criminal
investigation.
Then of course geolocation can be used in the context of censorship.
An example for companies distributing pornographic content, geolocation
can be used to prevent that content to be delivered in certain
jurisdiction where that content is considered to be unlawful or it
could, you know, also be discussed that geolocation is used to enforce
international trade agreement.
Finally, you know, and also important maybe former regulatory point
of view, spam fighting, because you know certain countries or could be
used by identifying certain countries which are known of, you know,
producing particular spam. But of course we do not know how accurate
those measurements are. However, I do want to mention them.
At the last point, you know, if you look at from the regulatory
framework, taxation is an interesting aspect of geolocation because
the -- in several taxation treaties the place where the server is
located is also considered for taxation purposes as permanent resident.
So that's another important aspect.
If you look at the -- what I call the more market-driven or
nonregulatory aspects of geolocation, I think the main aspect is
geomarketing that you can, you know, develop -- deliver a certain
specific content, you know, to people in certain regions. I think
that's -- that that's in certain geographic areas, I think that becomes
more and more important and more used, especially you know people using
mobile devices.
I think that content, you know, there's a subjection of that target
content should be mentioned. That certain or the aspect also sometimes
called geotargeting, when websites show different Web content based on
users' geolocation or different information.
Also, you know, the aspect of regional licensing is important to say
that if companies have -- broadcasting companies or companies who give
access to movies have license agreement for certain regions, or certain
countries, so geolocations, geolocation can permit that this content
or -- to certain extent of causing, this content is delivered in
regions where those license are not valid.
I think if you -- to finalize my thoughts, I think we see two
interesting development. On the one hand when we see more hosting done
in the clouds, it seem to become less important or elusive or
arbitrary, even, to say, you know, where certain content is hosted. Of
course we know when you choose certain cloud providers, you can choose
or decide if your cloud is in Europe or in the national country or
wherever. But the differentiation of wherever it's hosted in the loud
is, in my view, relatively arbitrary. And I think that will have an
impact on, you know, issues such as basing taxation on wherever, you
know, some service might be located at or some content might be hosted.
So it becomes less important, I think, in the world of wired devices
and Web servers. However, if you look at mobile devices, I think
geolocation, you know, becomes, from a consumer side, more important.
Because you know, the consumer is seeking for specifically geographic
linked information using his mobile devices wherever he might be in
time.
So I think we see here two different developments which go in a
different direction that I'm looking very much forward to discussing
those aspects with you in the further session. Thank you very much.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Thank you very much, Philipp. I never know if the
mic is on so my apologies for that. Our next speaker is Mr. Mahesh
Kulkarni, so the floor is yours.
>> MAHESH KULKARNI: Good afternoon, everybody. I represent the
Centre for Development of Advanced Computing, a scientific society
under the Department of IT, the government of India. Today the
challenge is to build ecosystem for seamless access of the vast pool of
information -- uninterrupted anytime, anywhere, and with various access
devices/methods.
In country like India, with its rich cultural and linguistic
diversity, this becomes more crucial and poses high-end research
challenges.
Diversity comes first, since in each country there's a societal,
linguistic and cultural diversity. The need for access as a democratic
process automatically should follow.
The citizens of each country need to have access to information as
their birth-right and that too in their own mother tongues and native
languages.
Information poverty is as big a problem as a economic poverty. The
growth of access in the world is a welcome pointer to alleviation of
information poverty.
IDNs in one's own mother tongues are the major step in resolving this
infomatic-societal problem.
Coming to the multilingual diversity in India. We have totally
listed 452 languages, of which 438 are living languages.
However, constitutionally 22 Indian languages are there which make
use of multiple scripts.
There's a challenge of one language and multiple script, and one
script and many languages.
Over 95 percent of the Indian population works only in their mother
tongues and do not use English at all.
As far as challenges in the IDNs are concerned, the Indian languages
are highly complex syllabic structure, three/four tier font design. At
the smaller point sizes there is a great change of phishing, because
of allograph -- similar looking.
Browsers are not fully supporting all of the Indian languages.
The government of India has developed a policy for IDN. The policy
was frozen through the democratic process such as workshops, on-line
awareness, consultation of academia, and cultural bodies.
Also language-specific Augmented Bakus Naur formalism to ensure
well-formedness of the URL.
For ease of implementation of the policies, application programming
interface are being developed. And --
Currently 7 languages are put on fast track. We expect others to be
submitted to ICANN shortly. The major issues in the ideals are
localization of ccTLDs, language tags -- which is also very important
part -- consultations with countries sharing the languages,
encouragement of Indian language on the Web for ease of access.
Two Indian languages -- Hindi, 490 million; Bengali, 215 million --
are among the top ten languages spoken across the world. However, no
Indian language is among the top ten languages in the Internet.
There is 15 times growth in Internet over year 2000.
English is most favored language of reading for only 28 percent of
the Internet users. Users of "vernacular language" Websites up at 34
percent from last year's 12 percent. The growth of the rural Internet
user has grown by 12 percent in the past year, that is, 2009.
We see a rise in wikis, blogs and social networking sites.
Availability of newspaper in all languages. The Broadband connections
and connectivity is still a challenge.
There are various issues -- rather there are a lot of initiatives
undertaken by the department of information technology and CDAC to
increase the online contents. National initiatives have been
undertaken using the best of tools and technologies, are integrated
into free language series. These CDs also have localized versions of
Open Office, browser, e-mail, content management system in all 22
scheduled languages as well as scripts as well. It also has fonts and
keyboard drivers.
5 million CD distribution and downloads are there.
We hope that with this initiative the contents will increase.
100,000 community centres are getting established, offering various
services at village level -- all through Indian languages. Under the
digital library initiative of India, one million book digitization
project is on. Currently 1.5 lack books or roughly 48 million pages
are digitized.
And finally, with the support from government is setting up the
national repository for Indian language which will house best
practices, standards, tools and technologies, terminologies and
research outcomes.
Lastly, on the subject of IPI, especially the content material to be
made available to researchers, to cross-lingual information access can
be announced. Thank you.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Thank you very much, Mr. Mahesh Kulkarni. Kindly
remind you that we have transcribers and translators, and sometimes in
our passion of the speak, we -- I do all that all the time. So for me
it's always a problem. That I speak very fast. So if you cannot go so
fast so they can catch up with translation and the interpretation.
And our last speaker before our question and answer and dialogue and
before presenting the workshop is Mr. Virat Bhatia. The floor is
yours.
>> VIRAT BHATIA: Mr. Chairman, Olga, and other panelists, thank you
first to the host country for facilitating this event. We're thankful
for the -- the last few days.
I'm told I might use my time to jump right into drawing attention of
this audience into a region that sort of hasn't been discussed in that
detail in the last couple of days. But represents nearly all the
challenges that we are discussing in terms of access and diversity that
faces the area of south Asia. The region represents approximately
close to a fourth of the world's population. It covers from
Afghanistan, Pakistan on the west to India in the middle. Nay Paul,
Bangladesh, Myanmar, on the other side -- towards the south. It
represents all the complexities that a region -- it has abstract
priority on one side and has the newest billionaires, fastest number of
billionaires, being turned out. At the same time in the last decade.
It represents strong national character on one hand, and in case of
India, as my colleague just spoke about, 22 official languages, 450
different languages and sometimes a dialect every 10 kilometers as you
travel the country.
Add to that the Germany, from Afghanistan, all the way to Dakar, and
you can imagine the diversity this region presents.
Full -- food habits range from nonvegetarian, to vegetarian and
Vegans for six generations. It couldn't be more different than all
living together at the same time buying the produce from the same
markets sometimes. Mix of villages, political environments,
democracies. Insurgency, everything that falls in between. Actually,
no two items, events, movements look the same.
At the outset let me say that the region has done exceedingly well
where mobile telephone is concerned. The -- I know a lot of speakers
have spoken about Broadband and wireless being the next hope of
delivering Internet. So let me sort of talk about some practical sides
of that. Because this is a region that's done exceedingly well where
it comes to mobile Broadband penetration. Sorry, mobile penetration.
The penetration is about 60 percent across the region. It's --
considering the fact that the mobile revolution is only about a decade
old, the plain old telephone system has been around for about 100
years, there are 750 million current users in these countries. And
growing up to 900 million perhaps by the end of this year.
So by the middle of next year you have 1 billion subscribers using
mobile telephony in south Asia amongst these seven or eight countries.
On the other hand, Broadband access and Internet penetration has been a
major source of challenge. India, for example, that has 650 million
mobile subscribers and counting at 20 million new adds every month,
only has about 70 million Internet users and approximately 9 or 10
Broadband users, depending on whose numbers you are looking at. Which
is what my colleague confirmed. That 95 percent of the countries are
yet to connect on real -- so English-speaking Broadband. That's the
challenge that we have.
With the exception of a few open cities and perhaps one or two
countries which are smaller, this challenge is quite wide spread. We
believe the governments have a leading role in ensuring Broadband and
Internet penetration through regulations and policies that will help
get this to the next stage.
We believe for the most part they need to put out an environment that
favors very large scale domestic and foreign private investment.
Because the resources that these countries have are competing between
basic education, primary health, rural development, poverty
eradication. And private investment has done well in terms of
innovation and service where mobile telephone is concerned. It's a
great sort of lead-in to allowing future policies to help bring in the
private sector.
There's also a need for fiber. The sort of approximate investment
required in the region is about 7 to 8 billion dollars together. About
5 billion pounds -- sorry, Euros, to -- on the last mile of the
Broadband which is fairly well developed by now. Let me briefly
distribute challenges why Broadband has done poorly as compared to
mobile telephony. And it's done relatively poorly for citizens as
consumer, government itself, and businesses. For consumers the
challenge has simply been the availability of service coupled with high
cost and hesitation interrupting complex user charges. Plus there are
very serious language issues that my colleague allude to. You can
imagine almost all relevant content is in English, and only 5 percent
of the nation or about 8 percent of the region can read, write and
speak in ink English. Unlike China or I was talking to my friend from
South America, where there are two or three dominant languages which
can help for translation, in this region there are 30, 40 languages.
Moving, search over to that knowledge base or finding ways to get
people mainstreamed into that languages is a real challenge in which
the government is working very hard. And that's some of the points
that my fellow panelist made here.
On the device side the cheapest laptop is still sort of -- because
the numbers are higher, and still subsidized. They're still in the
range of 4 to 500 Euros, as compared to a $20 phone. If somebody wants
to have a look at this at the end. About 700 million phones that have
been sold, we are now manufacturing locally a $20 GSM mobile 3G phone
that can be used widely and has all the functions that any phone would
have. The one of the challenges that we have with regards to
government using Internet at a large scale is a low PC base within the
government. Again, this is not across the board. I think some
departments, including the one that is represented here, the department
of IT is actually quite advanced in the user PC and Internet. But
that's not the case across all the departments. And also loyalty and
majority of the employees. Government still do a lot of work on legacy
paper systems. Majority of the government employees are not savvy in
using the PCs. As the same influence and fluency that they use in
mobile phones and paper. There is a usage issue that is a confidence
issue. There's also confidentiality issues.
For the business community, there is a lack of coverage of the kind
of Broadband investments that are required in tier 2 and 3 cities.
Tier 1 cities are well covered. The quality of services is very low.
The devices concerned, the cost benefit of the PC has not won the
battle hands down like the mobile phone has. The spend and cloud
services is limited, which focuses on premise. And that uses the
business utility. So the picture of the sort of fixed reasonable
George with some exceptions in large cities.
Let me conclude by saying that the real hope for Broadband telephony
does exist as -- for Broadband penetration in the feature. We see this
as a three-stage process with the government, is to continue to foster
policies for large-scale investment, regulatory environment that allows
for companies to be profitable, manage their networks in a way that
they can stretch every dollar to the lowest cost of producing a minute
or the data that they want to send out. This is sort of followed by a
Nationwide buildout of infrastructure which is a combination of some
fiber and lot of wireless. We can talk more about that in detail when
we sort of get to the discussion. And the last stage where my
colleague spoke about here, in national governments are putting into
translate a lot of the content into languages that G2C services which
the states are putting together. So the government and the citizens
can link in with each other.
I think doing with the discussion I can also speak about specific
impact this is having on rural employment which helps poverty,
education, and primary health, so the whole ICT piece as it gets
delivered beyond voice has substantial impact on poverty eradication.
And we can sort of show the linkages. Right now I have to say that
those who are holding the discussion out as a promise, and it's not
immediate. It's not -- it's not that promising. Some serious
interventions are required to make it work. Beyond the current stage.
It's not the same as mobile telephony. And the successes should not
be taken for granted. Even though there is tremendous hope. I will
sort of -- even those who are skeptical about the world bank statement
that in a survey conducted across 120 country, between 1980 and 2006
shows a 10 percent increase in Broadband is a rough increase of 4
percent additional GDP. Even without that data I think there is
sufficient need for us to sort of focus on Broadband, use it wireless
as a band wagon to foster this. But a lot of effort is required. And
we are sort of -- I think the region as a whole with nearly a fourth of
the world's population is struggling with some basic, fundamental
issues which are not the same as some of the advanced issues that have
been discussed. I want to make sure that I collaborate the gap between
where the expectations are and what the reality is. Thank you for the
opportunity.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Thank you. Thank you very much Virat Bhatia. And
I would like to thank our panelists with an applause and I would like
you to join me.
(Applause.)
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Thank you. Thank you very much.
And our next step is to have a very brief report from feeder
workshops. I would like to start with workshop Internet in the light
of the -- Katherine -- multilingual Internet in the light of the
sovereign rights of language in communities.
Katherine Trautmann will briefly explain to us about the workshop.
Katherine, you want to explain to us about this thought.
>> KATHERINE TRAUTMANN: Thank you very much. Thank you for the
panel. In just a few words our key issues on our panel in which people
from ICANN, from African countries, from Egypt, from Europe, were
discussing is first three words: Stability, security, and process of
legitimization about the CCT and DIN. And because if it's possible
because of the decision of ICANN to go on, the problem is in front of
us and the job is also in front of us. And we see the complexity and
the -- all the technical questions, the lack of statistic, the
financial -- the cost of all these -- these process. And especially
for developing countries.
So it was said that because the -- it's a step for Internet for
everyone. And a citizen right. The success of these process is very
important. It was said that it was the right for all.
But it was said also that because the national sovereignty in these
matters, it must be respected, it's also a responsibility for the
states. And very strong one with responsibility in national laws, but
also in the means which are given to the people to enter in these
possibility services, and their own Internet. Because it's in their
own language.
The debate was also about vulcanization. Of Internet, and the fact
that we need to consider that IDN give more international accessibility
in their language to people and not just seeing it like just a regional
community possibility, even it is this too.
So the viability of financial support from states, from
organizations, could give the credibility. And it was -- we had a very
big debate about the private sector and the involvement of the private
sector in the new IDNs, because it's also a problem for business model.
So we are at the beginning for a number of important countries, we
could see the experience of Egypt and African countries, and we could
see also the example of Europe. And what we said was that we need to
continue to have this cooperation to succeed together and not to have
the sorts of second rank possibility for the new countries who are in
capacity to have their own CCT-LD, and IDN solution now.
>> NII QUAYNOR: Thank you very much, Katherine for sharing. The
next feeder workshop, reaching the most socially excluded people in
society. And it will be shared by Andrea Saks, but I will also call on
mobile Internet applications.
Please have some patience and speak slowly.
(Laughter.)
>> ANDREA SAKS: I'm famous for talking too fast. I grew up in a deaf household. I have wonderful captioners. The two workshops I've combined together in the comments because they were interrelated, and the first one was the digital inclusion, reaching the most socially excluded people in society, organised by Nominet and the other one was from can apps create a new golden age of accessibility? And this was organised by the WBU, EBU, DICAD and UNESCO and we basically DICAD is the Dynamic Coalition on accessibility and disability, and I am the coordinator for that.
I could speak for hours. A lot of the panelists have covered a lot of the problems that we discussed in these workshops. So I'm going to give kind of a list. I don't have to go into too much detail because many of the panelists have very accurately described some of the people who are excluded. But there wasn't enough on persons with disabilities so I can do a little focusing there.
Youth and children are some of those people that are excluded. And we had youngsters there who were wonderful who actually told us what they wanted, what they needed, what they were afraid of. They want privacy, and they want safety, and they want access. They want the libraries. Now, this one threw us, libraries to have technology so they can do their homework. Libraries are being closed, books are been thrown in the bin. Why do Governments want to close them and throw them away when we could actually reinvent those for technology centres for not only the young, but the older people, too?
There are indigenous people and we've heard about all the different languages. By the way, China has 50 something odd dialects and a lot illiteracy in the rural areas, and has a similar problem as India. In fact because of the population, is just as equally as intense. The problem also is that a lot of indigenous people do not have a written language, and there was a thought that came up through this that we should allow indigenous people to create their own content, and use tools to allow the Internet speak to them.
Older persons correctly are not as it was described are not exposed but they don't see the relevance. Why do I need the Internet in my life? I don't need it. Well, without human intervention to help people understand why, in fact, they might need it, and that might be useful for them to actually learn something about it, we're not going to get anywhere.
We need to introduce and explain how services work on the Internet and that's something that needs human intervention which a lot of people want to cut costs and get rid of people thinking that technology's going to do it all.
Women: They are at the bottom, and in fact, I almost said, in my, the one that I was moderating which was 114, that actually I was in control of 5 men but that isn't usually the case. Women, because of role of gender I'm going to put it this way: Of gender roles, domestic activities and a lack of relevance, a lack after training and they often don't speak English do not even get on, and it's not seen that they are worthy. This is a very big problem in the developing world, but it's also a problem in a cultural environment in developed cities.
They are marginalized in many cases by poverty, disability, income and age. Persons with disabilities, now, that's my favorite place. Because it affects us all, and sometimes we're temporarily disabled, as in a noisy environment which we've been experiencing, we can't hear. That captioning has helped all of us and I think all of us will agree with that. And we haven't been using the absolute, the audio things. We've been using the captioning. And that's good for people who don't have English as a first language
Now, the problem that comes out also is a lot of people don't think they're disabled. The elderly certainly don't. We can't even call them that, sorry. Older persons. They just happen to have bad eyes, bad ears, bad legs but I'm not disabled. I'm not one of those people. You talk to a deaf person and the deaf person's going to say to you I'm not disabled. I just can't hear. So there is a situation where we have to educate people and also this includes people with mental challenges. The disability is not just a medical condition, it's a situation that affects all of us. What I'm talking to you about also, I'm telling you about your own old age. A lot of you are very young in the audience and you haven't got a clue but it will happen to you someday if you're lucky to survive. The biggest thing that came up over and over again. We had a gentleman from Africa who was telling us about education. Education, education, education. It is so vital that not only in our schools, but in our other centres like in the library and other places, that people are given exposure to technology, and many of the groups I have described above do not have access.
Broadband was mentioned over and over again. And it was in reference to rural areas, and countries that are not developed but it was also referenced in the regular world that we call the Western world that service providers say we're giving 20 megabytes, when in fact they really can only deliver 2. That was pointed out by the young people who came to that session. Mobiles, most of the world does use mobiles as it's been pointed out by the gentlemen on the Board that they basically are taking over the land lines.
The mobiles are actually becoming computers. One of the things that was also very interesting is that maybe older people don't realise what they're holding is a baby computer and they'll be taking their money out of the bank with their computer but they think it's a mobile phone and smart phones, being used for persons with people who have mental challenges, who are autistic, who don't want to carry around a little laptop even if it is a notebook to do their work or try to communicate, they can do it with a touch screen which will enable them to be able to communicate with others. There are so many applications and now I'm into the next workshop, can apps become a golden age?
Yes, it has already begun. The touch screens are now available in a way that the blind can use them, and using standards that will enable us to have an interoperable environment is also something that needs to be done.
We need to have things like total conversation, which happens to be an ITU standard because I'm also the joint coordinating convener for the joint coordinating activity on accessibility and human factors for ITU and I've been working with ITU standardization since 1991. And the problem is, video doesn't take it for deaf people in all senses of the word because older people don't necessarily know sign language so you need not only video, you need voice. Not only that, you need to have realtime text. IM is not realtime. You've got to push a button. It also has timing issues. Realtime is character by character and it has a standard process where you can put it through the Internet and people are using it in Europe, in an emergency service situation, again human intervention. We need human beings. It can't be just technology. We've got to have human beings to be the interface for the deaf community, for the voiceless community, for the deaf blind community.
Broadcasting also has been taking this on in very, very seriously. The BBC has been doing wonderful things in making their Internet accessible television, IPTV, accessible to persons with disabilities and everyone else but it has to be unilateral. You've got to make it recognizable. Everybody uses a different browser, so what do you do? You cannot keep the profile changing constantly. You've got to have something that people will recognize. So where do you put the little buttons?
If you're using Mozilla you do it where Mozilla does it. If you're using Explorer, you do it where Explorer does that. We have to have a library for our software engineers and hardware engineers to be able to access and chart these things so they can make a unilateral application that works over many different things. I'm just using the browser as an example.
I promised I'd be 6 minutes and I'm just going to take one more because I know that I'm going a bit further than I intended to do but again I took advantage of the fact that the gentlemen and lady spoke about many of the things.
We need to use standards, we need to have libraries, a different kind of library for standards that people can access. We need to use universal design to start from the beginning as we intend to go so if you design something that everybody can use including persons with disabilities, indigenous people, women, and youth, then you have something everybody can use. We live in a global village. We want everything to be interactive. We don't want the situation where noble phones are restricted to. If I've got this phone you can only talk to me if you've got this phone or I'm that supplier. We have deaf people who are isolated because their neighbor uses a different subscribing system. They can't talk to the Orange person. They can't talk to the T mobile system and this is already tied into the, we've got emergency services that these people depend upon.
So we can not have proprietary standards that cause exclusion. We know you need to make money. We know you need it for research and development but there has to be a plan to evolve, to be able to be interconnected, to be able to not restrict access for all these people.
I do want to point out that the Dynamic Coalition is very aware that there is an enormous commercial potential in this area. We need to work together. We definitely need to work together. This is a global village. And what I'd like to see is more people get involved with the Dynamic Coalition on accessibility and disability, because we have a lot of members but they're not all that active. We have a hard core group that are great. I need more and I also wish very much for all of you to join. There's a website for it. And come tomorrow at 9:00 a.m., room 4, for the conclusion. It is from Athens to Vilnius, and that deals with accessibility.
Thank you for letting me go a little bit over.
[ Applause ]
>> NII QUAYNOR: Thank you, Andrea. I am particularly interested in the solutions for people with autism. We have one more feeder workshop of interest and it's the use of ICT by people with migrant backgrounds and that will be reported by Yuliya Morenets.
>> Does it work?
>> OLGA CAVALLI: It must have been challenging for the translators and transcribers, so thanks to you guys. You're great. Thank you.
[ Applause ]
>> YULIYA MORENETS: My name is Yuliya Morenets. I'm with the not for profit organisation based in Strasbourg and I'd like to present the results of our workshop “Use of ICT by people with migrant background”. We had yesterday very successful discussions and we had very interesting panelists with different propositions, with different perspectives, and our conclusions are the following. Actually, we realised that we really need to continue the discussions concerning this question of Use of ICT by people with migrant backgrounds. And of course propose the concrete actions.
As for example the promotion of culture of cybersecurity with a specific focuse on the young people with migrant background.
We'd like also to underline that we really need to integrate the people with migrant backgrounds into the process of Building of the Information society, and we would like also to call on the Council of Europe as a Human Rights organisation to help us to develop a guideline concerning this issue.
>> NII QUAYNOR: Thank you very much. We'll have one more on a very interesting subject which affects many of our participants. And this is remote participation workshop and that will be presented by Marilia Maciel.
>> MARILIA MACIEL: It would be more like an advertisement because the workshop did not take place yet. The name is remote participation in the IGF, and in regional Internet Governance meetings.
It will take place tomorrow at 11:30 in Room 8 and remote participation has been offered in the IGF now for 3 years, and I believe it's a successful experience. I believe that the community shows that it trusts and has interest on remote participation. This year, more than 30 hubs all over the world have registered to participate remotely in the IGF, and we have had more than 10 panelists from different workshops that have given their speeches from remote. I would like to take the opportunity to thank very much all the volunteers who have accepted to be remote moderators and be in the workshops. After all it's the human factor that makes this whole experience work and I'd like to thank all the hub organizers that are watching up from remote that have volunteered to organise hubs. And the purpose of the workshop is to reflect and think about what we're doing here in practice.
In fact, I believe the workshop would be a great opportunity for all these great suggestions about remote participation that usually pop up a week before the IGF, because we're talking about remote participation.
I would like to suggest actually invite those people to go to the meeting and make the suggestions tomorrow there, because there we will try to find synergies and ways to move forward, the suggestions that you're making about remote participation and different platforms.
And on our workshop last year, one of the suggestions was that we should integrate remote participation with other kinds of social reporting, and actually, I'm happy because this year, one of the youth Dynamic Coalition members Tim Davison has created a platform that does exactly that, tries to integrate remote participation and captures all the blog posts have been made and all the Twitter feeds. It's all in the same platform and I think it's very interesting because we're building like a parallel narrative of what is taking place here in the IGF from the bottom up. When we put together this information in a coherent way that we are trying to do this year, I believe that will be a very interesting narrative of what is taking place here.
And the workshop tomorrow is going to deal with the role of remote participation in multilevel Internet Governance. We are doing remote participation in regional meetings as well such as the Latin America meeting and we'd like to think about it and how to increase inclusiveness in the remote participation. Sometimes people watch the webcast but don't feel much encouraged to intervene and ask questions and we will try to think about how the dynamic could encourage people to actually participate and ask questions and we'll discuss the interplay with process that relates to remote participation such as the discussion about the code of best practices for participation that has been discussed by APC and other partners. We wanted to make bridges with these other discussions. Thank you.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Thanks very much Marilia, thanks to our feeder workshops. I still have to talk about one and I'd like to say hello to all our remote participants, to our access and diversity meeting. Welcome to our session. And you're welcome to make questions. We have Raquel Gatto our remote moderator.
Before we start with the questions and answers I'll take two minutes also for advertising a workshop that we're organising, which is use of Latin and Native American languages and the Internet. It didn't happen yet. It's on Friday. And what we expect to review among some experts that they have been so kind to agree being panelists is the use of languages like Spanish, Portuguese, Katalan and other Roman languages into the Internet. If you go into the first page of wikipedia Spanish is a very widespread language in Latin America and other countries and if you see the amount of articles published in Spanish and compared with German, pole land or other languages which are spoken by less amount of people, we don't have so many. We don't have a lot of relevant content in Latin languages.
Less also for Native American languages. There are some companies like Microsoft was a speaker and sent a video, are doing some development to do their software in those Native American languages and they're doing an effort in making them live through the Internet.
We will have presence of they do interesting experience with content in Katalan with their project. We will have the ccTLD from Spain, dot ES. We'll have people from our regional RIR, LACNIC and other panelists. So you're more than welcome if this is an interesting subject for you and I should shut up and give the space for questions and answers.
The idea is to use the microphones in the alleys. It could be good if you could present yourself, say your name, say your affiliation, and speak slowly, because the transcribers and translators have been having challenging time so we want to give them a little rest now and make them work at a normal speed.
So also if you ask the question, it could be good if you tell who of the panelists are you addressing the question, or if you want to address it to all the panelists, and maybe some of them can take the lead in answering the question.
Should we start with one question?
>> NII QUAYNOR: Yeah.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: I will take the freedom of making some comments. I would like to thank you very much we have one? Yes, we have a mic. You can use this one, that's easier.
>> Thank you very much.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Remember to say your name and speak slowly.
>> REINHARD SCHALER: My name is Reinhard Schäler, the developer of the Localization Research Centre and the CEO of the Rosetta Foundation. When you talk about access to digital content and knowledge in different languages, I think one point that still remains to be made is that right to access to digital knowledge and information in your language is not something that should be left to market forces, or to policymakers.
It is actually something that is a human right. Access to information knowledge is as important to people as access to clean water, food, and justice. Many, many thousands of people die every day because they don't have that access to knowledge that they require. Access to knowledge on health information, AIDS prevention, HIV, and similar issues. And I'd like to see that issue raised much more prominently in the Internet Governance Forum and I'm very happy over the last 2, 3 days that has already started to happen, much more prominently than it happened in Sharm el Sheikh. So hopefully, at the next IGF, the issue of access to content and to knowledge in your language will become one of the central issues of the IGF. Thank you very much.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Thank you very much. In relation with your comment, I would like to tell you that when we organised these sessions, we shift a little bit the focus of this session towards access to knowledge and languages and diversity, and left the infrastructure issues for the development main session. So if you're also interested in reviewing the development and infrastructure related with access then you should attend that main session.
Thank you very much for pointing that out.
>> JERRY ELLIS: Hello, my name is Jerry Ellis. I'm a software engineer in Dublin. I've been a software engineer for 30 years and consultant in usability and accessibility under the name of field benefit and for those who can't see me I'm blind as well so I have the experience with disability.
I just wanted to pick up briefly on two things. One is we talk about rights and absolutely access to information, access for people is absolutely a right we must have indicated, but we also have to debunk this myth that accessibility costs. That will is a cost associated. It is cheaper to include than exclude. We'll talk more about that tomorrow morning at 9:00 in Room 4 so be there for that. I wanted to pick up briefly on something Andrea Saks said which is about universal design. Universal design is an approach to design which tries to include the needs of as many people as possible without need for adaptation.
One of the problems we find that if you go to Governments or policymakers or whatever, even to private businesses and you convince them that it's a good idea, they say well, our designers don't know how to do it. So a group of us in Europe got together under the auspices of CEN, which is one of the European standards bodies, and we have over the last year and a half worked out a curriculum what's called a workshop agreement which is one step away from being an official standard.
And this is a curriculum for teaching universal design, in particularly third level colleges but could be used just as easily internally within businesses and so on. This won't be published until the end of this year. Our target date is for the end of November so I'd encourage people if you want to learn more about universal design, how do you teach universal design and how do you implement it within your mainstream software engineer courses? Watch for the website around the end of November, start of December. Thank you.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Thank you very much.
>> VIRAT BHATIA: Olga, can I respond?
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Go ahead, please.
>> VIRAT BHATIA: To the point the gentleman just made about the fact that access has a cost, I think it's submitted with at some level there's a cost associated but I think the cost battle is being won by technology and competition. For example I will tell you that some of you might not believe this that you can in India for one Euro you can buy four hours of talk time on a mobile phone. Now, clearly this is not a number that coincides with any other country but you could pick up between 3.5 to 4 hours of talk time for one Euro. So these are the world's lowest rates.
The mobile companies are using on an average, 6 megahertz of spectrum to serve 650 million subscribers. In the West the average allocation of spectrum is about 20 megahertz, so I think technology and competition will help innovate, drive those prices down, if the numbers are large. So in a way the point the gentleman is making is quite relevant but it still requires policies to foster large scale private investment at least in the developing world, the Government doesn't have the money that's needed to build this infrastructure on their own so to the extent they can be out of the way and assist in bringing in the investments, I think that will help drive down the cost and get the access going.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Thank you very much. Do we have
>> NII QUAYNOR: Just go to the mic, it will help a lot. We can get more in if possible.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Can we hold on a second? Thank you very much for your comment. We have two questions from remote participation. Raquel, would you be so kind to read them?
>> RAQUEL GATTO: We have two questions from the Washington DC hub. The first one is they are both addressed to any of the panelists who wants to answer. First question: If older people don't want to use the Internet, why are we pressing to do so?
And how does this relate to community hot spots?
And the second one: Do you have examples of how native Americans are using the Internet? So that's it.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: I think that the question also goes to the feeder workshops presenters, or to the panelists, whoever wants to address that.
>> ANDREA SAKS: We had someone from the Department of Commerce in the 114 workshop, who they had come through with a survey, which basically said that 95% of the people had access in the cities to broadband, but really only it was about 50 or 54 people, percent of the people that actually or was it 80%? 80% that actually accessed it. But you go into the rural areas and that goes down. It also had a racial divide because that was an economic determiner. It was actually specified as the Asian, the White races, the urban, the people employed were the ones using the Internet and broadband.
You go down to the people who do not have jobs that included the Hispanics and Blacks, the percentage was much lower. We could probably get you the exact statistics but statistics don't always give you everything and all of the information. Rural areas for instance do not have good broadband. A lot of the people I mentioned earlier who are persons with disabilities, who are older, American Indians are another group of indigenous people do not have access for many reasons.
So it's misleading to think that the United States really online all the time everywhere, and has access. We have in this economic climate some of the same things. And I wanted to add at this point also which is not part of your question but I'll take advantage of the mic, economic forces do not solve the problem. They help in many circumstances. But as long as there are proprietary standards that create barriers, and I'd like to ask the gentleman from India, what is he doing about the deaf? Do you have relay services that enable deaf people to actually communicate with hearing people? Are there any systems that give a reduced rate for text messages? Is the education there going to be backing them up?
It's not just industry as a driving force. They can help and do help, and with new research and development like some of the touchpads it's fantastic but one Euro only takes care of a voice population. It doesn't take care of some of the populations that can't access voice. Thank you.
>> NII QUAYNOR: Any more questions? Yes, please. Alejandro.
>> ALEJANDRO PISANTY: I'd like to ask the panelists what they think in rather sharp terms are the obligations of Government involvement in providing access to the Internet for maybe also differentiating between Telecom's policy and the Internet itself, what are the limits that Governments in their view should respect and enforce for the private sector to be engaged? Stark statements would be welcome.
>> NII QUAYNOR: Thank you. Anyone would like to take that.
>> ALEJANDRO PISANTY: My name is Alejandro Pisanty.
>> NII QUAYNOR: Yes, please.
>> ANTANAS ZABULIS: A few examples and probably one of the best examples is a few years ago a project which started nationwide in
>> NII QUAYNOR: Hold on. We can't hear the response.
>> ANTANAS ZABULIS: One of the best examples to follow would be probably the
[ Off microphone ]
>> ANTANAS ZABULIS: I think one of the best examples would be the example of South Korea because we've launched a nationwide project both the availability of the mobile network and also the supporting developing different applications. I think another example would be the example of Sweden where we have companies which actually rolled out the National wide fiber optics and it sold out to private companies on a cost basis. Exactly the same is planned in Lithuania because we have a very wide fiber optics and it's also exactly the same pricing, it's cost based so in a way it's a lot of interest from different private companies to supply the last mile to different regions and if there is a possibility of making a contract of supplying a network it's a lot of private business who would get into the business and play well.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Thank you very much. There is a question that was not answered about the use of Native American languages by people, I am not an expert in that field. This is why we're hosting a workshop and the people that will give the presentation did not make it yet, so I'm not able to feed with that information for our remote question.
But I encourage remote participants to go to the workshop and participate remotely, and I will address the question to the presenters in the workshop on Friday. So it's not that we don't want to answer. It's that we don't have the answer yet.
We have more questions? Yes, please. Tell us your name and go ahead with the question.
>> RICARDO PEDRAZA: Hello, my name is Ricardo Pedraza for VeriSign, and I would like to address Mr. Kulkarni and Mr. Bhatia panelists. You share with us some issues a fourth of the world's population
This illustrates some of the diversity and access challenges in India. We hear from you that the development of inexpensive mobile phone seems to have created an Internet enabled environment. At $20 a mobile phone is real impressive as a price but what is the next challenge you're facing to bring Internet to the 700 million Indian people? We tried to switch here.
>> VIRAT BHATIA: Actually at many levels but not only for India, but Southeast Asia, Pakistan, some of the other countries. The challenge remains to a very large extent society has built itself on local contact which work really well with mobile conversations. So the language and the dialects don't come in the way of mobile penetration.
Literacy is a very big issue. In these countries, which represent about 1/4 of the world's population, nearly 30, 35% are illiterate. We now have for the first time in the last 5 years or 7 years a third category of literacy. There's the literate, there is the illiterate and there is the key pad literate which basically knows the red and green button on every phone and they know how to dial a number and even send an SMS but otherwise they can't sort of write but they can send an SMS so there is this bridge being built right now between those who can't read or write at all and those who just started doing the SMSs. SMSs have now gone to about 7% of the total revenue stream, which is an indication of the fact that data traffic is growing, because the chances that an SMS user will adapt broadband or Internet services is fairly high vis a vis somebody who only uses voice. So that's the kind of evaluation.
The other opportunity is youth. Large populations of this region are below 25%, nearly 60%. That's the sort of opportunity. The challenge still remains the device cost unless we can deliver broadband in a sensible, readable, usable format on inexpensive small screen phones, and unless we can do it at a price point that as I just suggested which is for a Euro, you could get 3.5, 4 hours of talk time, unless we can beat the price point, get the device right and start moving content on to languages, or have a way that the search can be done in a regional language and the answers can be translated.
So one of those technology breakthroughs has to be brought. So there is a demand side challenge but that's being sorted out. On the supply side I think there are sort of other new issues cropping up but the network is there. The investments are there. It's just now stuck at this 80, 100 million subscriber base using Internet in this region and it's not going up as fast as it's going up in the rest of the world and that's the real challenge. We'll leave it to Mahesh because he can talk about languages with more authority.
>> MAHESH KULKARNI: When we talk about 670 million mobile phone users, the great challenge lies in terms of all these 670 million mobile users are not doing text SMS. They're using it for voice communication so that's a major thing, and what we are trying to look at, that these mobile phones should be language enabled but while doing so, all 22 Indian languages there's a complexity in terms of technology, to go into the hand set, as well as when we say 95% of the population, Indian population, do not speak English, the fact remains that 36.5% of the population do not, can not read, and cannot write their own languages, they can only speak. For such people, we require certain technologies so some of the technologies which have been coined are the speak technologies but then again there's a grand challenge in development of the speech technologies because every 10 kilometers the dialect changes and there are issues related with that.
Secondly, Indian languages are very complex in terms of inputting in the sense if you take a keyboard, it's difficult to input, so there is a possibility of development of something like hand character recognition and these are technological breakthroughs which are required. Third component which has been touched upon are the search engine, definitely a search engine through the mobile is very, very crucial, because if you today try to do a searching on a mobile, possibly you'll get a huge links, which are not required. You require a very focused search, and you require a lot of natural language processing tools and technologies to augment the mobile so these are some of the challenges.
>> VIRAT BHATIA: Because texting is very small because Internet access from the net is small we are the second, the region as a whole is the second highest user of voice software in America so people talk all the time and the information that they can't get from the net they get from each other by calling sometimes multiple times and having long conversations so people are finding their way around this in capability but actually that's the reason why voice minutes are really moving up, the costs are moving down. So the trends are quite clear that the lack of information on the net is being made up for word of mouth by talking and asking questions.
Also directory services many of the very effective directory services are sort of still operator based. You can call in, give them your information and they'll give it to you on the phone and SMS it to you rather than find it on the net. So there's a lot of that because that labour is cheap so I think in the meantime, the access sort of is being made up through voice in the best way it can. It can't duplicate everything that's on the net.
>> NII QUAYNOR: Thank you. I think Philipp wants to get in on the.
>> PHILIPP GRABENSEE: Let me ask you one question in the context of bringing Internet via mobile the devices to the Latin population. How important do you think it is that the websites are mobile access friendly? If I see the relatively small device you've shown me with a relatively small screen, I could see that it's rather difficult if you have, not mobile friendly website and also a lot of, without a lot of traffic with also additional cost
[ Off microphone ]
>> OLGA CAVALLI: We cannot hear.
>> PHILIPP GRABENSEE: Sorry. So how important do you think it's
that you know more mobile friendly websites are there to give people
who access websites the first time through mobile device get a more
present experience?
You think that plays a role, as well?
>> VIRAT BHATIA: I think both factors are very important. Mobile
websites and phones. This phone has been innovated to $20 phone.
Because it's for voice and it does really well for voice. But I guess
as the market for Broadband increases, those friendly websites come in,
then I think larger screen phones actually for prices will come along.
As I said, I don't think we'll have to fight the technology battle.
I don't think we'll have to fight the cost battle. I think the
challenges lie elsewhere which is in terms of very large scale
investment is required. And governments in this -- somebody -- my
colleague friend here spoke about how Twitter helped in the two
earthquakes. But 18 million people in Pakistan are under 20 feet of
water. They don't even know what Twitter or Facebook is.
So you know, the reality of that region is very, very different. And
so we need to just get -- I think sometimes we are discussing and get
ahead of ourselves. It is a fourth of the population that -- of which
90 percent doesn't know what a mouse looks like, 40 percent haven't yet
made the first phone call.
So it's a very different world. And access issues are quite
different from some of the ones that might have been debated so far.
>> NII QUAYNOR: Olga?
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Thank you very much for your active participation
responding.
Now we have brief comment about workshop related with gender
accessibility by Katharine Sarikakis.
It's challenging with the mics today.
>> KATHARINE SARIKAKIS: You are discussing actually the great
majorities of this world. When we talk about accessibility, when we
talk about diversity, we're talking about the majority of the world.
So the question here is of course what have we been talking about?
Until now.
I just wanted to be a little bit provocative to grab your attention.
The workshop I was asked to contribute to is called women's rights on
the Internet. And it was supposed to be feeding into this session, but
unfortunately it has been scheduled for later on Friday at 11:30, by
the way.
Since you probably won't be there, let me just make a very brief list
of the issues that we will be discussing.
And they all have to do with the issues you raised, but they shed
light on the very gender-specific experience of the Internet.
Geolocation, for example.
The surveillance and cloud computing?
Linguistic inaccessibility, if you like? Of the Internet. All these
areas -- and I am talking now of course when the conditions for access
to the Internet have been fulfilled, create zones of danger, if you
like, for many women and not simply -- and not -- forget simply -- not
women in the so-called developing world, but our post industrial worlds
too.
What do I mean by that?
Women can be tracked down, especially in the context of domestic
violence. It can be -- they can be tracked down, they can experience
violence. There's no place for them to hide. There's very little
anonymity and so on and so forth. This is just one very important
aspect.
Another aspect is, for example, when you were discussing mobile
friendly website, this is not just a matter of personal pleasure. It
does include it of course as well. But it is also matter of safety.
It's a matter of health. It's a matter of accessing authorities, of
state accessing health services, accessing others who can support you
or you can support.
There's another issue here. The issue of misrepresentation and
discrimination in terms of content. Again, this is a very
gender-specific aspect. It does bear with it other intersections of
race and age or disability or so-called disability and so on. But the
gender dimension cuts across all these sections.
So when we talk about diversity and access, we also need to pay a
little bit more attention, more conscientiously and more systematically
as to what actually the great majorities of the world experience.
And I'd like to finish with just a very brief declaration. I am not
stating here that the Internet is a dangerous place and that we should
regulate it heavily so that we are safe. No. I'm saying that we need
to take women seriously, we need to include them in the policy process
meaningfully. We need them as educationalists, we need them as
innovators, and creators. And not seeing only as victims, which they
can be at certain points, like most people. But we need them more
centrally involved in these processes.
And if you feel like it, come to our workshop on Friday.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: That is well done.
(Applause.)
>> NII QUAYNOR: We have a question from Frank-Charles Osafo.
>> FRANK-CHARLES OSAFO: My name is Frank-Charles Osafo, with
Vericloud, Ghana and United States of America.
I also want to be a -- perfectly simple question. I have been to a
lot of workshops. It seems to me this idea of language is a basic
concern to all -- most all the population in the workshops. And the
question that I have is that seems to me are we using the Internet as
the panacea to solve all ills, solve all our language issues?
And the reason why I'm saying this is that sure, the Internet is
here. But I don't see how access, having Broadband, even having the
Internet, having to do with the language that have been written for
particular countries or particular population.
And the reason being, people in those -- because I was in an African
workshop, and I know that came up. And what just occurred to me is
that people -- this is a software issue and education issue. People
should be in the universities and stuff, should be encouraged with
grants or teachers research, or whatever, and start writing these
language applications so that when it comes to time, what would be
delivered through the Internet, through mobile, through whatever, is
almost a trivial matter. The key is the writing the application.
You guys happen to have a moderator, Dr. Nii Quaynor. And I have
been fascinated by a project that he has 30 years ago. 30 years ago as
a student in Dartmouth, Dr. Nii Quaynor wrote a programme that again in
Ghana, we call it "OWARE". He wrote it in basic, simple basic
language. He has brought this language every generation to every
environment. And lo and behold, about two months ago, he brought that
language into the iPhone, iTune.
Now, why is this relevant?
It's relevant because the application that he wrote in translating a
very complicated game as a student, that game can now be brought on to
the Internet and everywhere. That to me is the issue. The issue is
developing -- like the gentleman who have left here was talking about
software development. The idea is to develop the software, the
environment will take care of itself.
So using the Internet as a forum is great. But I don't think the
issue of language development for any country -- I personally don't
believe it has to do with Internet Broadband accessibility or not.
Thank you.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Thank you very much. Are you addressing a specific
question to panelist or -- okay.
We -- let them have the idea. Maybe we can move forward with the
next request of the floor. This is from Carla Wetherell, from
Childnet.
>> CARLA WETHERELL: Hi. I'm 16, and I'm from the U.K.
I'm a member of the youth project involved in Childnet. We have
produced a statement of belief for our involvement here. And access is a
theme that we have been -- that has been at the heart of our discussions.
We want access for all.
We believe the Internet is a utility and should be available to
everyone, whether rich or poor, and regardless of their location,
disability, background, or culture.
We believe that all users are equal and should have accessible wealth
of information on line. We believe that addressing fair access for all must
be a foundational priority for the IGF. This is our central core here. We
have copies of our full statement for everyone and Dan Becker and I will be
giving them out at the end of our session. Please also come and benefit us
on be free. Thank you.
(Applause.)
>> NII QUAYNOR: Can I ask a question to change a movement a bit?
Do -- we're supposed to address content policies as well. So I want
to -- please get to the mic. I like to ask a question to stimulate a
discussion. Do some content management policies, whatever purpose,
interfere with the Internet's open infrastructure?
Are we changing something by the way we try to manage our local
policies on content.
By filters, blocking, whatever. I'm trying to put it out there that
there are content-management issues. But these may only not interfere
with the open structures that we have on the Internet.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: If I may add something to your comment, which I
think is relevant. I think that the big problem is that for some
countries, some contents are fine. And for some others are not. Which
is okay, because cultures are different. We have different beliefs.
We are different in aspect and in the way we behave.
So we experience some events during 2010 in relation with social
networking or some contents that were taken by some countries.
Do you think that that's really a major problem?
Do you think that it's a question to the -- to the whole panel, I
think.
And would you like to make a comment about that?
Because it has become a -- also in the daily news, not only for
people who is directly involved in the development of the Internet or
as a technician, it's in all the newspapers lately. So perhaps you can
give us your thoughts about this.
>> MANAL ISMAIL: I think it's not white and black as it seems. I
mean, the solutions should be there and it should be the users' choice.
For example we have in Egypt the ISPs have some filters for the
children. But again, it's the parents' choice whether to subscribe to
the service or not. And whether to have this applied to the whole
subscription of the family or just for special account for the kids.
So I mean, the solutions should be there to help the people who would
like to have it.
>> NII QUAYNOR: Alex, you had a question?
>> PHILIPP GRABENSEE: I think that the challenge that the Internet
is a global medium --
>> VIRAT BHATIA: These issues are intensely local, villages and
sensitivities. You can't go past shops in New York City or London
without seeing underwears made out of the national flag. In India or
Pakistan, you have to take the national flag down before sun set. And
it can never touch the floor while you're wrapping the flag. It can
never be used for anything else except national building in a certain
way. I'm giving you an example. That's the contusion. And it's
enshrined in the constitution now.
If there's a website on flags which is showing the suspect, I think
governments will tend to respond differently. Similarly the tolerance
that people have for nudity is very different in Tehran and what it
would be in sort of, you know, Los Angeles.
But let me just say this. That I think to the extent that the
government doesn't retain extensive discretionary powers to define this
last minute, I think we're okay. So long they say upfront what they're
looking for and it's enshrined in law, it's negotiated, discussed.
There are open houses, there is consultation process. I think that law
then has its foundings in the constitutional realities. And then you
know, you may like it or not, but that's the law.
But if it is left to the discretion of the government to interpret
it -- for example, we will take this down if it's not in public
interest. Now, public interest can be interpreted in many different
ways by people in discretionary power. To answer your question, I
think we should leave discretionary power out of this for government.
In that sense at least everybody will know what is wrong and right and
how much to push. But that's one way to create the kind of a filter
against, you know, the user discretionary power.
>> NII QUAYNOR: Thank you. I think Alex, you have a question.
>> ALEJANDRO PISANTY: There is a question, yes.
Do any of the panelists believe that the standard kind of 16-year-old
people is traveling 2,000 kilometers away from home to read the
introduction to a prepared statement, if you don't believe -- if your
experience with children or young people this age is different and it's
more like these kids have -- these young people have ideas of their
own, they are probing and exploring the world through the Internet as
well as through all other previously existing media; if you believe
that 16-year-olds are inquisitive, active mentally, intellectually,
emotionally active, then I'll move my question to a request, and that
will make that request kneeling.
Could you kindly respond to these guys beyond applause?
Have anything to say to them or ask them?
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Thank you, Alejandro.
(Applause.)
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Thank you. We have more questions.
Maria Delores. Are you somewhere?
I think Maria Delores has a similar question.
>> MARIA DELORES PUY: The question was similar to the presenter. It
was related to the two -- what is your opinion about the tools and
methods used and recommended in order to block content.
I ask this because earlier during the workshop of protecting
consumers a lot has been said about Internet users' behavior and how
should them protect themselves. With all the tools that they have on
their disposal.
So what do you think about this?
If you want to add anything more. That's my question. I'm an ISOC ambassador, but I'm speaking in my own capacity as well.
>> NII QUAYNOR: It appears the question is not going away.
>> VIRAT BHATIA: I didn't quite get the question. I apologize.
>> MARIA DELORES PUY: I'm coming from the legal environment. I'm
interested in the technical effects also of blocking content.
So I think it's important to know what are the effects of blocking
some contents. Leaving them outside the world. You know?
>> VIRAT BHATIA: I think the principles of blocking the content --
>> MARIA DELORES PUY: The concrete question is that's the effect in
a concrete manor, openness.
>> VIRAT BHATIA: Does it affect whom?
Of course it does. If you block websites -- it's obviously put out
there for somebody to watch. It's the job of somebody who is in
authority or has the authority to do the cost benefit analysis of what
this would mean.
Now, do I want to see riots on TV because that is something that is
news to me?
Yes. But can it cause more riots or civil unrest in a different part
of the country?
Yes. And so the governments then or authorities will make that call.
They can never really get it quite right. It's not an easy task to
do.
The point that I was making was that to the extent this is predefined
and well notified in advance and the consumers know, especially because
there's a lot of user-generated content now on the net. There is as
much broadcasting content that is user generated content. Which there
is no censorship around there. There is a need to in a sort of savvy
way decide that. There is no clean answer to this which can apply
across the world, across sensitivities, across religions, across --
this has to be a local decision.
>> MARIA DELORES: I wanted to add just one thing. During the
workshop it was also said that businesses decision should come from a
cooperated -- a coordinated decision, resolution between business,
between the governments, and also between social -- civil society.
Not only from the governments. That's what I meant.
>> NII QUAYNOR: We don't have a mic. Take your mic.
>> PHILIPP GRABENSEE: Maybe to add something to your question. Of
course, you know, blocking any kind of content affects openness. This
is obvious. Things can only be one answer. But.
You talked about consumer protection. You know, if you really look at
it from a more philosophical point of view, all kinds of consumer protection
decreases freedom of choice. And decreases openness. You know, autonomy
is taken away from individual for the better good. So that's a very general
question, which is not, think Internet specific.
And it depends very much on your perspective of individual choice on
the one hand side, and autonomy on the one hand side. On personal
responsibility or how much a government or, you know, other agency or
whoever protects consumer, how much should interfere with your freedom
of choice.
And I think that's a question which is, you know, answered different
in different societies and different jurisdictions.
Beyond you know, the Internet only related issue.
>> VIRAT BHATIA: Just to close this, the whole thing about leaving
out a certain segment from watching a certain content has been there
forever. Which is the reason why there have been sense certificate
votes in every region of the world which look at movie, and this in
civil societies and actors and producers and child activists who come
together and then they rate the movies U and A or A and U, and parental
guidance going on. You see that forever. When they call the movie
adult, they say this is a whole set of children who shouldn't be
watching it. That's easy to filter, because every movie has to go
through that door. In user generated content, the amount of content
that is sitting out there is so difficult that it always almost happens
after it's already broadcast. And after it's put on the net, after the
content is already there. And therefore when you remove it, it seems a
lot more hostile.
But the censures have been working for ever. And nobody has really
objected to it. Because it was seen in the good of the society to rate
films and rate movies and horror movies and exquisite sexual content
and stuff like that. It's always been done.
>> NII QUAYNOR: I don't think she's debating that you have to manage
content policy. Have a content policy. I'm hearing a question that
says are we doing it in an a way that may be destructive?
Are we making sure we don't do it in a destructive way?
If you make everything go through a proxy, you've created a single
point of failure for a network design not to be like that.
So I mean, this is subtle, but, you know, direct question.
In anyway, the panel wants to get involved. So please.
>> ANTANAS ZABULIS: I think when we talk about local countries, and
on the second hand I think the GSM Association already has like a
comity which was created two years ago and that's probably a major
topic. Because we talk about a different type of content. It's the
question how to manage the user-generated content versus the other
content. It's a question about standards, because still you know
there's lots of different devices and different options how to get
through.
And probably -- as soon as we involve everybody into this kind of
dialogue and access, reaching almost the entire globe, so it's enormous
power that is rather difficult to cope with. So we get so much
creativity in -- from different parts which sometimes we didn't follow
with different regulations and aspects which can create some problems
for different segments in our societies.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Thank you, chair. I think the question that Nii
made and Maria Delores made brought us to an issue that still needs to
be discussed. And it's -- it's difficult to find a right balance. And
I think this is the best way to discuss in a multistakeholder
environment. This is why the IGF is good for wee have a question from
Siranush, from Armenia. Would you like to go to the mic?
>> SIRANUSH VARDANYAN: My name is Siranush from Armenia, as an ISOC
ambassador. It seems that access to the Internet is a challenge in
every corner of the world. My question is is there a differential
access due to the absence of network neutrality?
It can be answered by any panelist.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Bring us to another -- quite a controversial issue.
Sometimes I talk with my friends in Argentina who has ISPs. And
talking about this differential access is if people is downloading
music or making really a big request of bandwidth to the network. And
I say this is not fair for the users. They should know.
And they tell me, Olga, the prices that we pay for access for
international access in Argentina are so high, that we are -- we must
use them in a very wise way to give the same service to all our
customers.
So this brings me also to this difficult balance to find among the
cost of international access, the right or not to download some kind of
contents, and the right of the users to know which kind of services
they are receiving.
So I think it's a very good question, Siranush, it's for the whole
panel.
>> YAMIL SALINAS MARTINEZ: Honouring Spanish I'm going to move to my
national language. Spanish.
There is some confusion between the fact that the net is so well
known and flat tariffs. So you need to know what is involved in
downloading and volume.
You have to respect the fact that the rates may differ from here to
there.
And there are also session particularities in certain country, it's
difficult to organise negotiating models for this purpose. This at
least is my viewpoint on that issue.
>> NII QUAYNOR: Any other viewpoint?
>> VIRAT BHATIA: I can tell you with some confidence that the
network neutrality debate hasn't even sort of surfaced in south Asia,
at least. And I suppose it's probably true for most of Africa.
I don't think it's a big discussion right now, at least in these
countries. They have not even started writing the first documents on
it. The focus is completely to get the infrastructure out there, get
the right policies. This is not an issue, the access is so small right
now that we're not even -- don't even think there's an anticipation of
a dialogue on this for the next 4 to 5 years. And after that maybe.
Hopefully by then it will be a settled debate in the west. And so
we'll just take the best practices. Highly unlikely we'll be spending
much time on this right now.
>> NII QUAYNOR: Okay. We have a question from the floor. Frank
Osafo.
>> FRANK-CHARLES OSAFO: This is a question, not a comment. Your
question about the content laundering, I'm Frank-Charles Osafo, from
Vericloud. The idea of content monitoring in my mind depends on the
stage of ingress or ingestion of the data, or in transit where the
filtering has been done. Right?
If the filtering has been done before actually gets to the
destination point, well, I can see that hampering affecting the
openness of the Internet. Because in that case basically all data has
been blocked. And that means in my mind it depends on what face or
what are the stages that you have blocked?
Are you blocking at the network level, I.D. transport level, are you
blocking at the application level?
In case of e-mail, which is an application, corporations in America
are filtering all the time. And therefore -- because of regulatory
requirements. But that doesn't change. The content comes in, is still
stored by these at the viewer level. At the viewer level the content
is filtered. So in that case really the data actually did move, did
come.
Now, we use to have laws and all kind -- we use firewalls and all
kinds of appliances to block spam and all those kinds of thing. Those
things are blocking data every day through networks. I don't think
that is affecting the openness of the net -- of the network because
those are options by end users who are on their own deciding we don't
want this. And that policy, has been done by policy.
So I really think that when we are addressing filtering of the
Internet we have to be specific what is it we are talking about. If
we're filtering nudity and language, those things are so trivial, I
don't think they're affecting the Internet itself. Because those are
just like application things, the data just flows. And it is by
policy. Somebody -- if you are a company that is actually X rated
company, those are X rated things, I can guarantee you don't want to
block those thing. So this is just a comment I wanted to make.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Thank you very much.
We have a comment/question, from -- Alvaro Galvani from Brazil. A
question or a comment?
>> ALVARO GALVANI: Of course both. Good afternoon, everyone. First
of all I would like to thank the panelists for the speech.
My -- I have the first question, it's related to the high cost of
Internet traffic. Most of you told about the solution of mobile
phones, for example. And the debate was very focused on the question
of mobile phones and the question of the last mile.
But if I'm not wrong or -- there is as likely problem relating to
Internet traffic internationally.
The question of the submarine cables and the big back bones. I heard
a lot of economic explanations about the access to Internet. I'd like
to ask you to do analysis economically about the very lack of
competition of providers of infrastructure in international scenery.
These in our point of view results in a very complicated situation. In
bad position for negotiation. If you consider the position of
developing countries.
I believe this is not a noted debate. But I really want to listen to
this, because I couldn't hear to it so far.
This is the question: While the panelists have time to think, I'd
like to do my brief comments.
One, it's related in the global level.
I -- IGF, thankfully, gather many people, different people, join
diversity, you have improved the diversity. And am some extent we have
to debate generic ideas that could fit all these diversity all
together. And in that sense, Brazil has presented a contribution in
this IGF that is the principles for the governance and use of Internet.
In Brazil it was developed last year after a long time of discussions.
And they are very generic. And we believe that a contribution to --
that we can establish in the world principles that makes -- that serves
as guidelines for looking the balance between these guidelines.
Related to the question of excess I would like to mention three of
them. The idea of universality of access. Many of you already told
that. Many countries already has addressed -- have addressed that
these principle in their constitutions.
The question of diversity, and the question of network neutrality, of
the network, I would like to read one, filtering your traffic privilege
must meet ethical and technical criteria, only excluding any political,
commercial, religious and cultural factors, or any other form of
discrimination or preferential treatment. My second comment, and I
will be very brief. It's related to national experience. We would
like to share with you three points.
In Brazil we have just launched last May national Broadband plan.
Our idea is to extend the access to Internet in our country, especially
the poor areas, the most -- the far areas, the remote areas. And this
is something that if we allow it to the market only, these -- we will
have -- we will take too much time to occur. So the government has
been playing a very important role in that. And mixing both public
policy actions and incentives for the market in a very intelligent way.
We could share this with you. And we want to listen to the other
national experiences too.
The second point I want to share is the Brazil experience in Internet
exchange points. These have contributed a lot to decrease the costs of
Internet in Brazil. Especially the Internet traffic.
We believe that could be a very strong point for a very strong object
for corporations, especially south-south cooperation.
Third, but not least, the question of accessibility that was
mentioned by our colleague. We -- our steering committee for Internet
in Brazil has developed a research under the ccTLD, that thought PR,
especially the governmental websites.
Regarding trying to verify how many of them on the -- the percentage
of them are following the national standards regarding accessibility.
And the numbers are not good yet. We have a lot to improve. But this
kind of indicators is very useful to promote an environment that can
join forces and contribute to have an overall movement towards a
greater accessibility in the Internet.
So I'm back to the question. I'd like just a brief analysis
regarding the question of competitiveness in the -- or the lack of
competition in the international traffic of Internet. Thank you.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Thank you Alvaro. One brief comment. The major
focus about infrastructure will be done in the development session.
But that's -- this doesn't prevent the presenter -- the panelists to,
if you want to make some comments about the question that Alvaro
addressed.
>> NII QUAYNOR: I think we have two, the chairman and Manal.
>> ANTANAS ZABULIS: I would say we should probably talk about the
infrastructure providers and the back bone providers. If we talk about
the infrastructure, I would say that we'll see the consolidation in the
market over the last five years because it was a heavy take off of 3G
and maybe 4G. If I look on the companies remaining still in the market
and selling the infrastructure, I think 40 to 50 percent of their stock
is in research and development. It's hard to believe that there is a
new -- company would be able to compete. It's more like a
consolidation basis.
On the other side, I think that it is always possible to calculate --
and we did that also in the GSM Association, lots of presentations and
also locally. I think that right now we're -- infrastructure you can
achieve around about 2 U.S. dollars if we are talking about 3 and a
half, 4G, transportation of 1 gig. So 1 gig, if we'll translate this
into applications, that's quite a lot. So in a way it's only a
question about the competition on the -- competition maybe from the
operators to give a better price to the end user. Because when we
compare voice and data. In data there is lots of plans which are
unlimited data. When the operator wants to stop you from using, paying
the price, but stop you from using. So it's a completely different
business model.
>> MANAL ISMAIL: Thank you, and thank you for raising this important issue. It's been there for quite some time, and a famous example is that when we make a phone call to some country, we usually split cost of it, but when someone sends us an email, we're paying the whole thing, because we're connecting to the backbone over there. And I think it's a point that should be considered on one side, and worked on Nationally and regionally on the other side.
We have to work on the Internet exchange points, Nationally and regionally. We have to work on the content. We have to develop a peer to the backbones that is internationally to better position ourselves for the private sector competition if we can say.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Thank you, Manal. We have more questions.
>> NII QUAYNOR: There's a question from Roy Balleste.
>> ROY BALLESTE: Good afternoon, I'm Roy Balleste from St. Thomas University in the U.S. These comments are my own. I wanted to thank the panelists and the moderators for this very informative session. I want to come back for a moment to the issue of access, and how that connects to openness.
I think as has been mentioned before that the end user is the key. Local standards have been mentioned and cost cutting agents have been mentioned but the reason underlying standard across the world we should consider and there is the universal Declaration of human rights, and in particular, the international covenant on civil and political rights. A treaty that most nations of the world have signed and agreed to abide by.
If we look at access from that perspective, and through the eye of the rights enshrined in the treaty then local standards and cost considerations become easier to handle. Access without openness really loses its purpose and so looking at these rights is very relevant and I just wanted to bring that up to the panel.
My question would be: If this is something that you're looking at as you deliver it back in your projects, your nations and what are your plans for the future to incorporate human rights? Thank you very much.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Thank you.
Next question? Any comments? We have a question from Rebecca from Childnet.
>> REBECCA CAWTHORNE: I'm 15 from England, and there's a problem we all found in our group that in schools, blocking the Internet has become overly strict. Like, most websites that you need to do homework or that you need to do your school work are blocked, and this is making doing homework and school work impossible.
What I was wondering is if you have this problem in your schools, or if you know any ways our Government could help improve the blocking in schools. Thank you.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Thank you, Rebecca.
>> PHILIPP GRABENSEE: I believe this is when we talked about blocking, relates to the issue you mentioned. Arbitrary blocking or proper due process. I think there's certain agreement that under certain circumstances, certain content may be blocked, but it should not be an arbitrary decision by authorities they take without any base. And I think that I don't know how it exactly works in your school. I personally did not have that experience, because when I was a student, there was no Internet access in schools.
But I think, you know, it should not be done. There should be consensus or there should be some policy in a proper manner developed if there's a necessity to block certain things for people in certain ages. But it should not be up to every individual school to arbitrarily do such things. That's the only comment I have.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Thank you very much, Philipp. We have some minutes before closing. If there are no more questions from the floor, I would request our panelists if they could just give us some last thoughts and last comments before closing, and I would suggest that we start from left to right, is that fine? Mr. Kulkarni, could you be so kind to give us some last thoughts in the session?
>> MAHESH KULKARNI: As far as the language contents is concerned, we feel that the role of Government should be there majorly like a facilitator, enabler and it should also manage certain standards in content creation.
Encouraging individuals to put up websites in their native languages which will increase the con at the present time. Opening up the ISP market and assuring penetration in the rural areas by providing incentives. This is one of the important things which was very important. In order to help the contents also the industry also has to play a very vital role. Localizing their website tools technologies is also one of the things. Academia if you really see, make ideas as well as the Indian language or typing a composite subject, encouraging students to create multilingual websites and finally the consumer, that is the end user, encouraged to use the free tools and technologies which have been provided. Children should be motivated to learn and type in their native languages. This will create a generation of users who will create useful content. That's the last one.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Thank you very much. Manal?
>> MANAL ISMAIL: Thank you, Olga. As far as the IDNs are concerned, I really believe that we should consider that some of those IDNs are being deployed in emerging markets, and developing countries, and we should consider that the financial aspect should not impede the deployment of IDNs in those countries, and also, we should bear in mind that there should be some know how transfer to and we should lend a hand to those emerging markets.
On the other hand, the language communities themselves, they have a responsibility to bring to the international community their issues and concerns, the technical solutions deal with scripts, and if we really want to make sure we're considering languages, we need really proactive input from language communities.
And more generally, I really believe that we should know the requests and needs of people who are not online yet and try to develop our future agendas. Thank you.
>> NII QUAYNOR: Martinez? It's your turn.
>> YAMIL SALINAS MARTINEZ: Well, social networks are radically changing our use of the net and promoting interesting debates on identity, privacy and security. I think there's a lot to do to spread access to these platforms but they are an excellent way and excellent chance for mobilization and participation. I believe that the big challenge is to continue to pro moat user skills and participate in a safe environment. Clear rules for software and other companies about how they handle the user's data and with whom they share it. And also from Government and legal authorities to adapt legal frame works to new realities.
Thank you.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Thank you, Yamil.
>> VIRAT BHATIA: I wanted to focus on the fact that there's a paradigm difference between the manner in which access issues are being debated in the developed world and in the developing world especially south Asia so I think we should be mindful of the fact that about 1/4 of the population is struggling to get this. I know we're talking about human rights, and sort of right to information being a basic human right. I totally agree with that in principle but I think that our issues that are sort of preceding that in terms of importance, the local Governments are extremely caught up with interesting challenges but I think the debate today has helped at least understand the gap, the vast space that exists between the haves and the have nots, the digital divide not just within a country but between countries.
We have a 16 year old here, a 15 year old, who talked about her blocking sites for homework but I can tell you the vast majority of students in that part of the world are starting to get their first blackboard copy so the issues are quite different. We need to take all after that into consideration. I want to say to our Brazilian friend who spoke about fiber investments I wanted to quickly say he's absolutely right, and I did mention about the fact that it has to be a combination of fiber, public finance and priority investment in the last mile wireless broadband. That's the hope forward. As far as prices are concerned I think regulators have to can come in wherever there is lack of competition and prices are higher to bring them closer to cost, or as close to cost as possible but given the fact that large scale investments are required in cables, undersea cables, local infrastructure, then I think the flip side of the debate of technology neutrality, sort of you can't have it both ways. You have to get this investment going. Hopefully have sufficient infrastructure there and sufficient competition that the prices are so low that you don't have to depend upon other modes to bring down easier cheap access.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Thank you very much. Philipp?
>> PHILIPP GRABENSEE: It's impossible to summarize all the important information in that session without missing important points. But I think one lesson which it's always learned but always, we tend to fall into the trap that we the issues we have here, you know, we're discussing in the Western world, we try to mirror or copy them, and even so intellectually we do realise that basic access is still an issue, we always say that in one word and then say yes, but, however and then we start to talk about our issues we have here and say shouldn't you think about that? But I think we should always remind ourself, I think the example with the issue of blocking certain homework Web pages, I think that's a perfect example, and we should always be aware that basic infrastructure and basic access has to be set up before we really get into those other issues.
That's something I always take home, and I'm afraid next session I always start with what I called the "however," but still I think we should all learn that and continue to learn that.
One other issue or one thing I take home and which I'm encouraged from being the Internet working, in providing Internet services and DNS services, I think this is a session not surprisingly of course, but it did encourage us from Afilias to work on implementing IDNs and working on the technology to implement IDNs and also working on continuing to work on the technology for IDN email. And of course, it doesn't come as a surprise but it's still encouraging to see how important that really is.
Thank you very much.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Thank you very much, Philipp. And if you let me just, I just take notes of some points that the speakers made that I found really very interesting.
Mike said that it is relevant to increase the local content for local people, the relevant content for local people.
Manal said something which I like very much, that multilingual IDNs, or IDNs should be a Government obligation and it is very important to capture the experience of the end users having all the tools for them to use, all the advantages that technology brings.
Yamil said social networking is not new and he gave us a nice example but it's really empowered by the massive use of the Internet.
Philipp made a very interesting comment about that if you're using a fixed service, maybe localization is not so relevant but when you're mobile, then it becomes relevant and I thought it was a very interesting difference. Mr. Kulkarni mentioned about the challenge that he's having 95% of the people only speaking their own language.
And having in mind most of the content in the Internet is English. This is really very challenging for some countries.
And Mr. Bhatia talked about the relevance of this kind of service for rural employment and for rural populations.
So I don't know, Nii, if you want to add something?
>> NII QUAYNOR: Oh, certainly. I think what this means is that we have to do this again next year because I noticed that the discussion on content policy and content policy technologies used to implement the policy generated a lot of interest, especially regarding how well we are doing with respect to the methods that have made the successful so I think we have to reconnect again and address this important issue afresh.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Thank you, Nii.
Before giving the floor to our Chairman, I want to thank all of our panelists, all our audience. The transcribers and the translators for being so patient and so nice to us to get our speed and all what we say. Thank you to the Secretariat for arranging all this nice room and all the tools that we have, for the questions for the feeder workshops, and the floor is yours, Mr. Chairman.
>> ANTANAS ZABULIS: First of all I would like to mention you Mr. Cavalli and Mr. Quaynor. I think in one of the comments it was mentioned it's a rather open discussion. And I think that's probably one of the success factors, to have an open discussion and I believe we have open discussions, a lot of difficult questions, a lot of questions which probably would won't be solved this year or next year. I'd like to mention some comments what I've been writing myself from different comments.
We've been talking about the ability to engage with the global community, ability to access the local content and that's especially then we talk about Indian example. More Internet to more people, multilingual content. Internet, multilingual Internet and that's as a part of Governmental obligation because that's probably not for the private company to handle these kind of difficult issues.
And I'm as representing a small nation which is only 3 million people, would be very much in favor of this. We were talking about digital divide on National levels and I think this is an issue which I would like to stress a lot, because the speed is accelerating, the mobility is accelerating. Then we were talking about voice, so we had one so called acceleration speed and we're talking about mobile applications, when we're talking about mobile Internet, I think the speed is slightly higher and it's really a bit of a threat of losing a certain part of the society because simply we will not be able to cope with the speed which the younger generation is offering.
I think it was mentioned the question about the issue about that every 10% of broadband penetration increase gives to the state around about 1.5% in GDP growth so I'd like to raise a question, probably this is the best return ever, and it's it gives a good I would say a reason for the Government to invest in also private investments, inviting so called establishing the certain PPPs, creating PPPs and I think by doing this everybody should be happy to Ben fit from the GDP growth and to benefit from all the aspects from the richer more knowledgeable society.
It was also raised the question about the cheap phones and cheap Smart phones so it's like a dilemma because if we would ask ourselves how much does the mobile phone cost five years ago, that with was probably something similar to what it is right now, a smart phone like $100, 100 Euro, so just in five years we get it like five times or seven times cheaper, probably that will exactly follow in the era of smart phones or even PCs. It will take for example iPad, I know some producers we're already thinking on the iPad something like close to 200 Euros which is not that bad compared as a start.
So and then again the access without openness loses its purpose. I mentioned in my opening speech that I didn't touch upon the content and upon the knowledge and skills, and I think that's also two components which are very, very important. So on the content, I think we're facing certain challenges. One of them is the content accessibility and its openness and also on the other side mobile applications and the access to the network for the disabled. That's quite high on the agenda but so far, it was quite a little activities.
Another aspect is the issue of privacy and security on the Internet. But on the other side as well that at least I do believe that the knowledge, the education, self regulation is probably a bit more effective rather than trying to tackle these issues only by technological measures like blocking or closing or rerouting somewhere else so that's on the level of content and on the level of knowledge and skills, I think it's a very, very important dimension, and I can give you just a Lithuanian example. We've been creating a very successful PPP together with the Lithuanian Government and a couple of Ministries and I would say four or five large companies in Lithuania trying to find a model how to get a chance for people to register for education which is free of charge. So we have 3 to 5 days of e learning sessions, and that was after that we've been receiving like an e certificate so I can just give on this free participation because people have been registering by themselves on a voluntary basis. 30% were teachers. So teachers sometimes feel that they don't understand the can kids which are illiteracy with much higher illiteracy and that creates a great problem. Then it was about 10% jobless people.
Then if we look upon the age, I do remember an example of 86 year old lady and she said, that's cool. I will also force my husband to go for the courses as well because that's so cool. And then applications, that society it's not just to educate them but you can see how much new ideas are coming out. I saw a lot of examples in the agricultural sector and the construction sector so we do create some thinking on how we can how they can make their procedures more efficient, that allows them to have a lot more time for being in a family, et cetera, and that's a big, big process and that process you can initiate in relatively with are relatively small money but with relatively small money.
So that one I think it's quite an important one with knowledge and skills. And by concluding I think again I would like to stress what I mentioned in my opening speech that I do believe and think that the Internet should become one of the basic human rights. I think that in four years from now when the new IGF will take place in can Kenya the world will be a little different. The questions, some of them will remain the same. Some of them will be completely different and I would wish that in the new IGF session would be something similar to the remark what we had today: Open and not avoiding difficult questions but trying to solve difficult questions. Thank you very much.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Mr. Chairman, before we close we have a nice comment from our remote hub. Raquel would you be so kind to read it?
>> Raquel Gatto before we close I'd like to read one of our hub participants during this session, during the morning. So allow me to read their comments. It's from the Bangladesh hub. They say they participated in today's two main sessions. We had around 55 participants from the management of Internet resources and around access and diversity. For most of the participants this was an eye opening to IGF. We never had such an opportunity in the past to witness and participate in this Forum.
We all really appreciate IGF Secretariat for providing remote participation tools. Quality of audio and video exceeded our expectations. Though we all participated remotely clarity of webcast made us feel in Vilnius. Bangladesh hub represented a broad stakeholder participation from Government, regulatory Telecom, educational institutions, service providers and Civil Society. Some high level senior officials attended the hub, and most of us felt very happy to see them all in one room sharing their views in an open setup.
Bangladesh hub is also thankful to PBC for organising remote hub to give us an opportunity to be part of IGF 2010. We are now in an agreement to establish a National IGF to continue our participation in our own future IGFs. We are enthusiastic to participate in tomorrow's two main sessions, too. See you all tomorrow.
So this is a result actually a result
[ Applause ]
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Thank you, Raquel. Thank you so much.
>> ANTANAS ZABULIS: The last sentence is for the Chair. I should know close the session and the meeting is adjourned. Thank you very much. Just a practical statement from the Secretary, please.
>> CHENGETAI MASANGO: We've been asked by the Vice Chairman of the Commission on Science and Technology for Development, CSTD Mr. Frederic Riehl from Switzerland, to announce he'll be holding an informal open consultation on the proposed CSTD Working Group on the IGF here tomorrow at 1:30 during the lunchtime at 1:30. So if you're all interested to participate, please be here at 1:30.
[ End of Session ]
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