FINISHED COPY
NINTH ANNUAL MEETING OF THE
INTERNET GOVERNANCE FORUM 2014
ISTANBUL, TURKEY
"CONNECTING CONTINENTS FOR ENHANCED.
MULTI‑STAKEHOLDER INTERNET GOVERNANCE"
02 SEPTEMBER 2014
11:00
WS 41
POLICY TO PROMOTE BROADBAND ACCESS IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES
***
The following is the output of the real‑time captioning taken during the IGF 2014 Istanbul, Turkey, meetings. 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.
***
>> MODERATOR: Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention? Please take your seats. Good morning, everyone. We welcome you to a participant workshop for the policy design to promote broadband access in developing countries. This workshop is co‑hosted anti‑internet Society of China and the China association for science and technology. This workshop has joined the capacity building programme tracked in IGF. My name is Gao Xinmin in charge of Internet Society of China. As you know, the broadband access is one of the most important issues in the building of information societies. Nowadays a lot of countries and economies pay a lot of attention for sustainable development of the broadband access. According to my knowledge, nowadays, more than 127 countries and their economies, the Government, has issued their national broadband plan in order to promote more balanced, more sustainable development of broadband access.
Because of the broadband access, it's most important to things for boasting economic growth, social inclusion and sustainable development. So in the developed countries, of course, they've already got very good results and progress in this aspect, but the developing country still suffers a lot of issues, and problems in this aspect. So this workshop we'll focus on how to improve the broadband design in a developing country in order to promote the broadband access for more people, no more areas, in more balanced manners.
So in this workshop we've invited today distinguished panelists to join us. They'll make a presentation and to give us a lot of advice in these issues. Today we will study this workshop divide in two parts. First of all I invite all the panelists to make their presentations and also make their speech. After that we'll leave time for all the on site audience and all the remote participants to raise questions and to make some comments.
Now please allow me to introduce our distinguished panelists here. On my right hand is Miss Neves, she comes from Portugal, she's an expert in this aspect. She also is involved in a lot of policy research work and a lot of international organisations, including ITU, OECD and also IGF. Next to my right side is Ms. Jia He, HE comes from China Academy of Telecommunication Research, she's also an expert on this aspect and involves a lot of research work in broadband policy design works.
On my left side is Mr. Khaled Fourati from the Worldwide Web Foundation. He told me he started involved in this area since 2005. You know the 2005, the first meeting, a status conference. And next one is Mr. Wu Lingxi, he comes from Enterprise, biggest Telecom company in China, China Telecom. China Telecom is a major player and a carrier in the broadband access construction project. And also we have another distinguished panelist, Miss Claudia Selli from AT&T. She's responsible for the European AT&T, I understand. Is that right? And I have another panelist but he will make some remote presentation. He is Mr. Mwendwa Kivuva from Kenya, he's the Chairman of the ISOC Kenya chapters. We have six panelists so I think we will start from first the presentation, I would like to invite From miss Jia He from China academy research.
>> JIA HE: Thank you very much. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I'm Jia He. You can just call me Jia. I'm from China Academy of Telecommunication Research and today my speech is about broadband development and the policymaking in China. Broadband as we all know is one of the core infrastructures today and maybe in the future and it's very important for our economic, social and cultural development as it is implied in the health, education, business, governance and many other areas. China as the biggest developing and we have 600 million Internet users. We already made very significant progress for the development of broadband for the Internet development, and today my speech will include the following, first development overview and second policymaking, the third is future perspectives.
Regarding to fix the broadband of China, you will see, until the second quarter of 2014 we already have 198 million subscribers with the penetration 15% each. And from this graph you will see in the past we only used the XSL which is copper based with limited bandwidth, but since 2008, China's Government proposed initiatives, it's called fiber over copper, meaning we use fiber instead of copper to increase our bandwidth. The process includes two stages. For the first stage we use fiber to the buildings and for the second stage we use fiber to the homes. Bandwidth is almost unlimited now. From the picture you will see the FTTH, the fixed broadband subscribers saw remarkable growth while XDSL subscribers decreased gradually, you will see on the left graph. In this graph you will see the number of homes and office which can be connected by fiber, it's increasing by five times over the recent three years, and especially the FTTH subscribers increased by ten times over the last three years. Also driven by the FTTH our subscribers using access above 4 MBPS and 8MBPS increased by 3 ‑‑ sorry, increased by 2 and 3 times respectively.
You will see the amount of two generations, second and third generation and the fourth generation users on the left graph from drafts, second generation uses of China start to decrease and the third generation usage, gross, and the fourth generation uses, start to grow because it already is on the process of commercialization. On the right graph you will see by the end of 2014 the investment on the fourth generation is expected to reach 1 billion.
The mobile phone traffic has been increasing. We still have some strategies facing not only by China but also by the developing countries. You will see on the left graph, from the perspective of the world, the gaps between developing country and the developed country in fixed broadband subscribers as still obvious. And even though we look inside of China, the gap between regions in the fixed broadband penetration is also obvious. You will see the difference between urban area and the rural area, the east and West. So the main reason, one reason is from the efficient investment of the second reason should be the efficient competition and third reason should be the efficient application. Also we have many others.
So how to figure out those challenges and how to develop the broadband in China. For the Government we made a series of policies since 2009, such as in 2013 we established a broadband development alliance and in March of 2013 we released FTTH national standards and just in August last year we launched broadband China strategy and action plan, I will introduce those one by one.
First, in August 2013 the state Council launched a national strategy called broadband strategy. By this we formulated the short‑term, midterm and the long‑term goals in terms of subscribers, penetration, speed and application, and in order to realize those goals, we identified five priorities, speed up application, security, and balance. Once more, the Government also made some specific policies. On the one hand, we established some coordination mechanisms to coordinate the central Government and the local Government, the Government and the enterprises, and the enterprises and the users. So on one hand we focus our policies on facilitate being competition, financial support, training, regulation, promoting information. Second, last year we release FTTH national standards. It's mandatory national standards, they include three important points. First, for all the new homes in the building, they have to use FTTH, that means the fiber should be constructed into the home directly. The second, the construction and the evaluation of the building ‑‑ of the telecommunication infrastructures should be at the same time as the construction and the evaluation as water, electricity and gas infrastructures. Third, all the users should freedomly choose the carriers. That means equal access. Third, also in the last year we established a broadband development alliance. Why do we establish this organisation? Because during those years as the development of Internet, many problems were raised by the users, so in order to improve the users' experience, this organisation was established last year in a model of stakeholder, the stakeholders are from technical community users, Government, applications, suppliers, and et cetera, many stakeholders came into the alliance and we tried to solve some problems. The mission of the BDA is research on the speed measurement criteria released some report, provide advices for the Government, release industry guidelines and coordinate the interest of stakeholders in the field and provide some technical training. You will see one of the results of BDA's work. From this graph you will see the download speed increased quarter by quarter in every city of China. So what we will do for this year and in order for implementation of the national strategy, the Ministry of Industry and the information technology published a special action in 2014. This action, first, enhance broadband network capacity. Second, increase broadband usage. Third is improve broadband speed.
Also we proposed ten priorities. First, select some pilot cities. Second, promote FTTH. Third, we develop TB LTE. Third, we still want to promote the universal services, and fifth we encourage the carriers to share some infrastructures, and six, we promote the interconnected and interoperability. Seventh, we try to improve the users' experience. And eighth, commercialization. Last is focus on innovation and application. We want to protect the users' information security. So for this presentation I have three after thoughts. First, for China and even for developing countries, broadband has been developing fast, but the gap still remains, still there. Second, Government support is very important, but participation from all the stakeholders are also crucial. Third, information conception needs to be addressed in the process of broadband and Internet development. Thank you for your attention.
(Applause).
>> XINMIN GAO: Thank you, Ms. He, she made a clear presentation about the latest development of the broadband access in China. She mentioned last year China issued the national broadband plan, so‑called the broadband China strategy. The focus of this strategy including five major aims. The first one is speed up of the access speed of the Internet. The second is more balanced development in broadband, in the regional development, including the urban and rural areas. The third one is promote the broadband industry development. The third one is encourage a lot of Internet companies to develop more new applications, broadband applications, so including the contents creation industry. Last one is ensure the Internet security issues. I think it's a clear presentation. Thank you, Miss He again. If you have some questions afterwards to ask her.
The next speaker I will invite Miss (inaudible) worldwide applications, she has experience in the experience in the information technology and particularly he focuses on the network policy, so I would like to invite Mr. Khaled Fourati to make his presentation.
>> KHALED FOURATI: Thank you for the opportunity. It's good I came after the first speaker because I'm perhaps going to be suggesting with the situation of China focusing mainly on developing economies in Africa specifically, so I'm with the worldwide Web foundation, specifically I'm standing for my colleague Sonia George who is Director of the Alliance for Affordable Internet, and the Alliance for Affordable Internet is the Coalition that is working with local actors at the national, regional and global level, with the aim to develop and promote policies that promote affordable access, and affordability has become quite an important issue to increase access to the Internet and for broadband, and the Alliance for Affordable Internet produces on an annual basis an affordable index, and through that index they look at different type of indicators, specifically under one subindex, that focuses on communication of a structure, and the other index focusing on policies that enable access and affordability.
This is more or less the sort of sum of the results coming out, we are busy this year creating the 2014 index but some of the top countries that came out in that index, including Malaysia, Kenya, Nigeria, and so forth, but I'll try to explain why the type of indicator that makes this type of ranking.
So generally speaking as we look at the status of broadband, fixed broadband is sort of stabilizing or decreasing and there is high growth of mobile broadband, and this is across the board, and this is the case specifically for emerging markets or developing economies. When I'm focusing on mobility broadband, I'm talking about specifically the last mile because a lot of challenges in developing countries given the infrastructure is to develop policies that promote universal access, and when it comes to universal access policies, then one needs to have a certain marriage between Internet via mobile broadband and obviously had it bridges the gap of the unconnected. However, it's important to note, I would argue, that the fixed infrastructure is becoming the backbone of Internet broadband in specific developing countries, so it's not necessarily an either/or, but it's important that when you spoke us specifically on universe ‑‑ when you focus specifically on universal access, that we try to mention certain types of policies that enable the last mile.
So what is the solution for the last mile? Copper is not necessarily the viable solution, as my colleague has mentioned. Fiber is in the context of specific countries is quite costly. So wireless technology is the option. Why then because we're talking about lower cost of construction, shorter time of rollout and specifically hopefully lower cost for the end users. Sorry, yeah, I'm going too fast.
So how can this happen? I'm suggesting sort of a different type of policy that I'm going to be talking about in the business environment regulations and physical network practices. So in the business environment, I think one of the main challenges in developing countries specifically is to have a stable regulatory regime. Specifically for investments. It's not a matter that ‑‑ I'm going to be a bit controversy shall if I'm saying this, but sometimes bad policies are not necessarily the most worrisome when it comes to investments because at the end of the day, investors or private sector operators can either divert from that regulation or incorporating in a file or a cost, so someone like me or you would suffer. But what is actually quite stringent in terms of investment policies and certainty, so if a regulator, for instance, is not able of providing certain policies and stability over the long run, then that would affect the type of investment that we're talking about.
Infrastructure sharing is quite an important another element to reducer the cost of roll‑out infrastructure and find efficiencies, and the other element is right‑of‑way. So simplify the process of rolling out infrastructure from one municipality or one province area within one country to an area, and that is actually a lot of the costs that some operator might suffer related to the right‑of‑way or cost of rolling out infrastructure.
Innovative spectrum management, especially when we talk about broadband, wireless broadband, and not necessarily specifically in the context of digital migration, so have specific policies to open up spectrum options and so forth, but I'm also talking about enabling new entrance into the market. So young entrepreneurs who are out there, who are interested, to roll out community‑based infrastructure, and I think one opportunity around that is around unlicensed spectrum. I think this is an opportunity, this is an opportunity for regulator to experiment, this is an opportunity for new entrepreneurs to enter the market. What's important is not to lock in competition. Device affordability is another area, and finally universal funds, I think there has been quite critique of the universal response in the context of developing emerging markets, but it's important that we have policies not only on the demand side ‑‑ sorry, not only on the supply side, but also policies on the demand side through effective universal rollouts. That's all information through these links, alliance for the Internet and the Web index as well. Thank you.
(Applause).
>> XINMIN GAO: Thank you. Thank you, Khaled. He stressed the importance for wireless programme for developing country. I fully agree with you.
The next speaker I would like to invite Mr. Wu Lingxi from China Telecom companies. You know China Telecom is the biggest operator in China in the Telecom industry, and China Telecom already starts one project, so‑called the fiber city project. So Mr. Wu will make some presentation about the progress of this project. Mr. Wu, you have four, please.
>> LINGXI WU: Thank you, Mr. Gao. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. My name is had Wu Lingxi, from China Telecom. Here I would like to introduce our China Telecom fiber city development experience. In 2013 China state of Council suggested the structure and gave the guiding and development, and that by 2015 the next generation national information infrastructure will be initially built to economic and sociodevelopment need. By 2015 the gap between China backbone infrastructure and development and developing country should be significantly reduced. Citizens can have full enjoyment of economic growth and development opportunity through the network infrastructure.
In 2011 China Telecom's first initial broadband China fiber city charter, it is planned it should cover 13 million households, all in urban area in China should have a list of 8 mega BPS, 30% of which should reach ‑‑ 80% of urban area is China and capital city of Midwest China should be covered with 20 mega BPS. By 2013 customer urban area in south China should reach 20 mega BPS. China Telecom shall cover 18 million households by 2015, achieve complete coverage of household and enterprise in China, China Telecom shall cover 100 million households. China Telecom's achievement in fiber city is one of China's largest operators, China Telecom is the force structure in China and continues. In five years it is rapid development, the China had broadband network. Total investment reached 15 million Chinese yen and assess point reach 110 million lives with 68 million broadband users in the network, including fiber to the home, coverage of 10 million home, the coverage of 4 mega BPS that reach 100% and 20 million mega BPS network assess reach 48% in 1,021 cities including countries. The backbone of ChinaNet, backbone, reached 20 space BPS and the Internet reach 440 giga BPS, become the world largest broadband Internet. During the past five years, China Telecom begun to focus on fiberoptic broadband structure. Promote structure in cities, newest structure, central building connected to a high‑speed fiber network. Priority is given to FDBP with FDP edge as complete for older buildings, reconstruction. In 2011 and 2012 China Telecom investment of infrastructure has reached 18 billion Chinese yen, the total number of FDP information in the past two years had reached almost 15 million homes in 21,000 **provides. As of now, China Telecom has over 100 million subscribers. Over 290,000 village in 21 providers in south China has had broadband line installed. Over 80% China Telecom subscribers has higher line 4 mega BPS network access. We provide customer with up to 100 mega BPS broadband access. In addition, China Telecom officially launched 4D service in February 2014 and is committed to better encourage for both mobile and broadband network. We launch a revolution of fiber and in and copper out. China Telecom has done construction of urban fiber optical broadband by permission, fiber in and copper out activity. Improvement, broadband China, fiber city structure and carry out light optical actively, leading the revolution of fiber in and copper out, at the end of 2007, China Telecom first stopped home technology based copper, switched into an optical fiber network construction. Thereto mode has been introduced to newly developed ‑‑ newly deploying residential area in 2008 and to the older area, transformation and reconstruction in 2009. In 2010 large scale of FDBP to be deployed through rigorous improvement of fiber in and copper out, the revolution of accessss network from copper to fiber has been greatly promoted and the access rate increased dramatically, through mass deployment of fiber optical network, accessed network backbone has been changed to fiber optical network. The improvement of home OLDTY from initially. From application and technology together this a systematic promotion of optical network construction. In 2008 China Telecom set up an e‑serving broadband project team to work in cooperation on development, productive development, network and construction, operating and management, IT support and other aspects of broadband development for a great working maximus of cooperation, technology together with a publication to promote and development of fiber city from different label. Carry out optical community activity. There transfer of information of optical communication in cities where China Telecom is a leading Telecom operator, becoming an optical community and can apply fiber broadband, optical community activity means when 50 household in a committee, submit application for optical community, the community should be upgraded to an optical committee. China Telecom will immediately, immediately start construction and promise to complete the transformation in 50 business days. China Telecom will emphasizes broadband and mobile service and run through a series of competitive package. For a new broadband subscriber is launched 100 to household, 100M to household, 20M above package, in an area where China Telecom optical network already has coverage, China Telecom will provide household with 100 access compatibility. They can select a new optical network package with more than 2M of bandwidth. 10M of Internet access, 10M of other Internet applications, such as high definition and other broadband service. The development of mobile service has also led to the development of optical network of broadband service. Free broadband is free to low subscriber can update from 3 to M bandwidth, 2M bandwidth subscriber can at least upgrade to 4M Internet bandwidth through fiber access or 3M Internet bandwidth plus 10 application band wythe.
China Telecom start to offer free WiFi service for its subscriber in airport, railway station, bus station, ferries, terminal and the other 14 public points.
China Telecom companies can participate in the policymaking through various ways, including activities seeking station support for broadband policies, activity carrying out basic data and briefing work, assist the department in charge to promote in the development of standard and broadband system evolution.
Policies recommendation on introduction of private capital. First net work should be stricter control when access network and construction permission to prorate capital investment, broadband network and metropolitan area network relate to the security of countries over all information infrastructure, currently relate to information national security and network security was strictly forbidden, illegal construction of area network and backbone network. Also it was suggested that the department in charge should seek out and unify the standard of network security operation and management. Finally, on the basis of open competition, step forward and open and sharing of had access network resource. Award duplication and enhanced customer experience. Policy proposal on the broadband policy for developing country, the first activity promote improvement of the telecommunication universe service compensation, to promote improvement of financial support, lending, and other broadband support policies. Pending trade of the revenue between the Internet content and the network. It is suggested that supervisor organisation, for the amount of publication. Terminal equipment and the under network through active inducement policy and realize the balanced development of the broadband introduce a trend.
Promote broadband evolution system standards, and follow up broadband technology and business trade, and the development of mobile broadband speed measurement standard improvement and broadband speed and the monitoring system.
Thank you for your attention.
(Applause).
>> XINMIN GAO: Thank you, Mr. Wu. You know he raised the principal issue for broadband is fiber in, copper out. So it's a very clear principal are pell for broadband projects.
Thank you again for your presentations.
The next speaker I would like to invite Miss Neves from the information of science and technology in Portugal. Miss Neves, please.
>> ANA NEVES: Thank you very much. So I think I'm going to tackle this issue from another angle. From the Information Society's point of view. So as you can see, I have as a subtitle investing people knowledge and ideas, so I think that we have already information about the technological part of all this process of the promotion of broadband access, but there is an important point here. Why do we need the broadband? Why? So the main parts of my presentation will be as an opportunity, and you can get it through the broadband access. Why broadband access and to make it global? Policies to promote infrastructure in developing countries, the bottom‑up and top down approaches, to strengthen infrastructure construction and capacity building, the best connected research and education network at worldwide level and finally had the best practice. In the case of Portugal where we promote several policies to develop the broadband access, because broadband access, it's not only a problem of developing countries, it's a problem of all developed countries as well because in all developed countries you have regions that are very similar to developing countries.
So I would like to call your attention for this interesting sentence that I found this report on science and technology indicators from the European Commission. Economic growth is not a by‑product of a general policy of fine‑tuning financial and macroeconomics balances. In the long term, economic growth is both defined by technological progress and the accumulation of human capital. I think that this part is very important and interesting.
So globalization is an opportunity. So through the broadband, you can have access to a more internationalized knowledgeable, creative and skilled workforce for knowledge‑based industry, so it develops these kind of skilled workforce, and not only on your country, at worldwide level. It builds international knowledge networks as is the case in European and it is connected with all the countries in the world. It enables networks of competition to reach global markets, new knowledge base, small and medium enterprises have global reach, attracts for an I‑tech industry and research and development investment and at the same time helps to retain talents and labor force. And you can do that through broadband access if you have access to the broadband.
So why broadband access and to make it global? It leads developing countries out of poverty by allowing better and robust access to healthcare, education and basic social services and by fostering economic and social development, so it means that through the bandwidth, if you enlarge bandwidth, you can have more robust access to healthcare, education and basic social services. It enables job creation through three main channels. So the first one direct jobs. The second, indirect jobs. And the third one, additional jobs. So direct jobs created to deploy the broadband infrastructure. The second one, introduce jobs from IT connectivity, that is possible because you have access not only to the Internet but to the bandwidth with the broadband, and additional jobs created as a result of broadband network, so as manufacturing, certain industries, financial services, healthcare, education, you name it.
On the same page, so I would like to call your attention to this graph that is very interesting. It's from 2007 until 2014 and so you have the curves of developed, of the worldwide, and developing countries. So which are the main conclusions that one can have, can take from these analyses? So most developing countries are at the early stage of broadband development, so they can have a leapfrog effect and which allows a higher impact, a very fast impact. Mobile broadband is the fastest growing technology in human history. Mobile broadband remains the fastest growing market segment. In 2013 and 2014, growth rates are expected to be twice as high as in developed countries. So you see that we expected to see this, 36% compared with 11% of growth rate. And more and more people are coming online.
Here is something about the bottom‑up and top down approaches. First you make market work, so to make market work first, first you have network providers trying to guarantee various prices and quality. Then you try to increase investments of the private capital. And then you realize that public investment and infrastructure is needed so it starts as a top down approach. So demand and stimulation is done by a top down approach, Government services, access to public services such as schools and libraries, to promote support to enterprised, to local Government, to raise capacity through the country for instance through the digital regions, and here you can start again about the approach because you gave the tools, you gave the resources to the population, to the region, about the approach again. So the point here is always to mobilize the society and stimulating global networks, align communities through multiple content formats and delivery devices, so it's not only the contents that I'm talking about here, it's about the proliferation of the devices.
So now I'm going to talk a little bit about the role of ‑‑ it's a research role to connect the world and connect research components. Currently the best research in the world. Let's see some numbers. It provides access for over 80% of users across the service area to point to point circuits of up to 10 giga bites to capacity. It represents a collaboration between 41 partners representing in total 43 national and education network, from Europe and nations, the support of the framework programme that supports research and development in the European Union. Now we call it Horizon 2020 because we started a new programme and FP7 ‑‑ and in December of 2013, but this kind of support continues.
So it reached nearly 85 million users worldwide, so 45 million outside Europe. Within its network and activities, with both external and internal communications, promotion, international liaison and business development had. It extends its global reach to countries beyond Europe, through connections with other international networks. 50,000 kilometers of network infrastructure installed including 12,000 kilometers of fiber across Europe. Network migration programme was completed, meaning users could be offered multiple 100 gigabyte links, supporting 500 gigabytes and supporting up to 8 terabytes, it's immense, it's huge. So here you have the map of the connections, so you have the connections, the connections all start in Europe as you can see on the map and they go to North America, Latin America countries, the Caribbean countries, North Africa, Middle East, subSaharan Africa, central Africa and Asia‑Pacific so it's an enormous collaboration and with the capacity that I just mentioned in the slide before, you see the potential.
So now let's go to the final part of my presentation, it's the best practice indication. So the case of Portugal. So I have like three slides about Portugal since 2005 until now. So we had this problem immobilizing information and society with different stakeholders 2005 and this is to show, to demonstrate, to show some evidence that we, along with other countries, developed countries, very similar to developing countries. The point here here was to promote connectivity, with national impact. We want to transform education and developing competencies, priority to the use of Internet and computers in schools or the connection of schools to the Internet and to generalize the computers with mobile broadband for students and teachers. We developed a multiprogramme approach to foster skills, open training, Internet space network, provide free access to all citizens and nationally skill certification system, basic ITC competence diploma. By the way, these are actually two main components of the national programme that should be launched during this year, during next year, early next year. We developed ICT academies in the polytechnic universities, professional training and certification in partnership with industry and we developed a visual campus, higher education wireless network and social inclusion with what we call the solidarity network, connected people with special needs to the Internet.
So through this programme, this policy, this endeavor, we had these networks and local stakeholders and community services. So I can talk a little bit about the free access and guidance, training and awareness activities, focus with limited literacy, Internet connected devices for individual use. So these are the main components that we were able to achieve with the broadband access. So through the free access and guidance, we were able to make people more empowered, so the capacity building. And it allowed people to participate in a democratic way in the society, which is called e‑participation and e‑citizenship. The training and wearness activities were very important for the talent development and for literacy. We developed content oriented for citizens with limited literacy, through videos, spoken voice and images, so we are nowadays doing this and developing, and the same with online communities and Internet connected devices for individual use.
And the last slide and my last message is what we achieved with international knowledge network, through the broadband access. So it was possible for us to build the international partnerships with MIT, with Carnegie Melon, it was possible to develop e‑science, e‑strategy through several things that I put here. So the national research and education network as a next generation network, so it's presently fiber of FCC, that is a department of the Commission ‑‑ of in Portuguese science and technology, it covers at 10 gigabytes and it is scalable. Had we have this open access scientific repository of Portugal that in the last IGF it was possible to present. We developed the knowledge library online, we developed something that was open repository with licensing and digital rights management and another thing that's national grid initiative integrated, with part of the European initiative. The point here is to show that ham indication projects in areas such as meteorology, evolution of maritime coast, geophysics, seismology, high energy physics, health, forest fires and civil protection were possible and were very developed, we also developed the voluntary computing for science, and finally we were able to have an inclusive and active participation and International Governance Forum such as this Internet Governance Forum and ICANN. Thank you very much.
(Applause).
>> XINMIN GAO: Thank you very much, Miss Neves, you gave us a very interesting presentation, that we should take a combination of the broadband policy design as combination of the top down and bottom‑up approach. I think it's a very good idea and also shared a lot of practical experience with us in Portugal and in the project. Thank you very much, Miss Neves.
Next speaker, I would like to invite Ms. Selli from AT&T. Ms. Selli is Director of the European affairs for AT&T. I think Ms. Selli has some broadband policy design in development. Ms. Selli, please.
>> CLAUDIA SELLI: Thank you very much first of all for having me here today. I'm delighted to participate in this panel. And I wanted to touch in my remarks mainly on the technological evolution that has been happening in the last few years, as well as on the policy that can promote investment in the network of the future, and so to share with you also our experience in the U.S. As you all have noticed, we are in the middle of a wave of global wave of innovation that is transforming the way we communicate, the way we connect and the way we operate our business. There is not one industry that hasn't been touched by the technological evolution, and there will certainly not be even more other industry that will certainly be even more radically affected over the next few years by the technological revolution. Technology can help address many of today's economic and social challenges. There is research and studies that show that in the emerging market, for example, 10% or more of internet penetration can help add 1.2 percentage points in the capital GDP growth, so this is really important, and technology drives economy and wireless drives technology. Certainly we can all recognize that different countries might need different policy tools, although we can have the same objectives in mind because there are different factors that influence certain geography, but with that in mind, I wanted to share with you AT&T experience in this respect, and in 2007 AT&T has been the first carrier to offer the IP phone, so in literally five years or six years we have been witnessing an increase being in the data growth to equal 50,000% so it was really incredible and we had an experience to see all the changes that had been happening in the years. In particularly in five years we have been moving from 2G to 3G and from 3G to 4G space LTE and certainly this access has also been due to the strong belief and long‑standing belief in the regulatory approach from the U.S. Government that's helped drive investment, and the U.S. Government has certainly invested a lot during these years. I mean, you have also been, for those who were here yesterday, there were some of these remarks during the high‑level speaking event, and AT&T as well has been investing heavily. In the last six years we have been investing $190 billion in the network of the future ‑‑ million in the network of the future to expand different uses and different application. The investments are essential to maintain and expand telecommunication infrastructure that is needed, but at the same time we have to keep this investment going, we need to have a leadership that is committed to constant innovation, to constant reinvigoration of the business and to constant and persistent investment throughout good and bad times. In order to attract investment, you do need also a policy framework that is conducive to investment, and so what do I mean with that? Well, basically two main conditions. First of all, the spectrum. Certainly as you have been hearing also from other speakers, it is essential. Not only bold and allocation of spectrum that is more and more needed, provided all the services that are arising and all the different applications that we are using, but we also need a spectrum that is harmonized and to allow Telecom operators to be able to invest with the spectrum that they have at their disposal. The other condition that is needed is a regulatory approach that is high level, that doesn't catch up with technology but that paves the way for technology, so also a regulatory approach that takes into account consumers' need, Consumer Protection and certainly the market. So this industry, you know, is key in terms of bringing in more jobs and growth and to help the economy to grow, but in this respect we really need to have the policy framework well established and also to have that in place. Thank you very much for your attention.
>> XINMIN GAO: Thank you, Ms. Selli. I think we have our last speaker from Kenya, but he's not here. He will make a presentation remotely. Is it ready for remote transmission? Is it ready? Mr. Mwendwa, you have four. Please start.
>> MWENDWA KIVUVA: Thank you very much.
(Speaker is off microphone)
>> XINMIN GAO: Thank you, Mr. Mwendwa. Please keep online because maybe some of the audiences asks you some questions. Now I think the time has run out, but still I want to ask the on site audiences and the remote participants to raise some questions that you have and make some comments. Please.
>> AUDIENCE: I'm from Chinese association for science and technology, I have a question from Kenya to the speaker, this topic, we need in developing countries, last month we have a training session in Kenya for the open resources. Online there's a statement about 250 megabytes around this number. However, it's hard to download the raw data resources from Kenya, so only about one megabyte takes at least five minutes. So 250 is impossible for use for developing country people to use the raw data resources. So I think this workshop, the topic is really, really important. So the broadband, how to develop the broadband in developing countries, this is excellent. So I want to have the question to the Kenya speakers, do you have some national strategies how to develop broadband in Kenya? Thank you very much.
>> XINMIN GAO: Mr. Mwendwa, you catch the question from the audience? You can answer?
>> MWENDWA KIVUVA: Yes, we have a national broadband strategy, and this broadband strategy, for example, we are saying that by the year 2017 we want to improve our broadband to 14 megabytes and by 2022 we want to increase our broadband to 300 megabytes a second, and by the year 2030 we want to improve the broadband speed to 2 gigabytes per second. You find the companies have packages, but a net speed, for example, megabytes per second ‑‑ (Off microphone).
>> XINMIN GAO: Okay, thank you, Mr. Mwendwa.
Yes, you have it.
>> AUDIENCE: First of all, I would like to thank all of the panelists for their interesting presentations, and of course the moderator for leading the session. I have two questions to Mr. Khaled Fourati. Excuse me if I'm not pronouncing your name correctly. What technology do you see as most promising and cost efficient for last mile wireless deployments like 3G LTE, maybe YMAX or maybe some other? And the second question, you mentioned about universal service funds for basically the supply side enhancement of broadband accessibility, and you also mentioned about wide critique connected with USF deployments in a sense that they were not that successful in reaching their goals, and it seems that the Kenya example from our remote participant, remote speaker, supports your view. So can you please name a couple of countries with maybe successful USF implementations that have overall reached their aims? Thank you so much.
>> XINMIN GAO: Can you please introduce yourself first?
>> AUDIENCE: I'm Armen Garmumen from Romania, represent Civil Society, and I'm an individual expert, so my interest in participation in the IGF Forum is twofold. Impact on Civil Society development and maybe vice versa and also professional interest in the ICT area.
>> XINMIN GAO: Thank you for your question. Now please, Mr. Khaled, you can answer.
>> KHALED FOURATI: Sure, thank you. Two very important questions, thank you very much. I was actually in Mozambique a couple of weeks ago, three weeks ago, and talked with some of the service providers there in the context of the national IGF sort of meeting, and clearly in the Mozambique context, and this is not only in the Mozambique context, extending to rural areas, we are talking still about 2G, so we're not even on 3G level, so I'm assuming that over the next few years we'll get to 3G and definitely not to LTE. That's probably over the next, I don't know how much. I mean, I'm not going to get into the predictions of time because usually you're always wrong when you go into that process. And technology, things change so fast. What is most important for me is especially in rural areas and extending the network in rural areas is to not locking the market and enabling some experimentation on the ground with different type of unlicensed, in my view, unlicensed spectrum would be I think a good way to go and the technology with the spectrum is a bit expensive at this point but I think it will go down and there are a few experiments in the African context that can speak about the Asian context, but there are experiments in South Africa, Kenya that's more known but also in Malawi, Mozambique, also experimenting with TDY spaces.
Why I'm saying that, because I believe that in order to extend to rural areas, let's face it, the mobile operator, it's too costly at a certain point to be able to go there and the best way is to use some of the service funds mechanisms so subsidizing or innovating, innovating with new technology, allowing people who are coming in, entrepreneurs, local entrepreneurs who can build the community‑based network through these type of new technologies. So that's what I think the space would be.
>> AUDIENCE: So community access points, you mean?
>> KHALED FOURATI: Yes. On the other point on the USF, again, very important question. The problem of the Universal Service Fund is the problem of disbursement. So if the Government has had very ‑‑ it was very good at collecting money but not disbursing money, so it's sort of a tax on the mobile operators. And the problem of disbursing is I think my colleague from Kenya presented some good solutions of how to go about mitigating that. I think you need to bring in the private sector, private providers into the context. I think one could work through universal, I think one good way is to support the national education networks which in collaboration with the east and South African context, the alliance that you saw on that graph, it's a good way of disbursing money quickly and good value for money.
Some of the way that Malaysia has had a good experience with USF, Pakistan has had good experience with USF, there were good case studies in Pakistan, those are the countries that come to mind.
>> AUDIENCE: Okay.
>> XINMIN GAO: Thanks a lot for the very informative session.
(Internet interruption at 12:39)
***
The following is the output of the real‑time captioning taken during the IGF 2014 Istanbul, Turkey, meetings. 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.
***