FINISHED TRANSCRIPT
NINTH INTERNET GOVERNANCE FORUM
ISTANBUL, TURKEY
"CONNECTING CONTINENTS FOR ENHANCED
MULTI‑STAKEHOLDER INTERNET GOVERNANCE"
03 SEPTEMBER 2014
09:30
POLICIES ENABLING ACCESS,
GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT ON THE INTERNET
MAIN ROOM
***
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: Good morning. We will now resume the meeting. I open this morning's session on policies enabling access, growth, and development on the Internet. Today's panel will discuss both access and developmental issues with a special focus on enabling policies. We have a number of well‑respected experts and high‑level officials with us here today to share experiences with us. Thank you for joining this session.
First of all, I would like to extend my warmest welcome to all of the distinguished participants, especially who traveled long distances to be present here today. I would also like to thank the organisers of this highly meaningful event.
Dear participants, I believe that this provides a unique ground for taking up many aspects of Internet, as well as for exchanging information and common interests on this topic. At this session we will discuss Internet economic growth from developing countries, perspective and policies to maximize benefits of Internet for all the people of the world with distinguished panelists and participants. I sincerely believe here in this meeting fruitful discussions take place on public policies to encourage high speed broadband connections and experiences of other countries.
There existed a billion of Internet users when the Tunis Agenda was conceived in 2005. In the next nine years, at the time of this year's meeting, according to the ITU report, there are approximately 7 billion mobile subscriptions and approximately 3 billion Internet users, half of which are in developing countries.
With a population of over 75 million, Turkey's economy's in transition and on track to go faster than much of the industrialized world in the coming years. There are approximately 50 million Internet users in this country. In Turkey, electronic communications sector has been growing year by year. The total revenue amount of all operators has reached to approximately 16 billion USD in 2003. As of the second quarter of 2014, the number of total broadband subscribers has reached to 37 million, whereas this figure was only around 6 billion by the end of 2008, meaning that broadband description has experienced a huge rise five times in the last six years. In this context, yearly increase of Internet subscribers is about 24%.
Other indicators, such as penetration rates, length of fiber cables, also contribute to the growth of broadband users. As of 2014, penetration of broadband is calculated as nearly 46% and length of fiber has reached 248,000 kilometers in Turkey, in addition to the policy of Turkey, regarding broadband, make this market grow more rapidly.
This policy of Turkey consists of providing high speed Internet access across whole country, making regulations to enhance competition and service quality of broadband, extending broadband infrastructure, and ensuring all Internet users benefit from broadband. Turkey supports the multi‑stakeholder Internet Governance, importantly the role of the IGF, urge that global policies over Internet should come through this body and all actors accept the outcomes.
We all support the principle should treat equally, not discriminating or charging differentially by user, content, site, platform application, and mode of communication. I would like to introduce the new concept of neutrality to governments. Google, Facebook, Twitter, are neutral to all the same manner. They have to be transparent, share the same level of information with all UN member states.
Turkey actively contributes to further revolution and improvement of the IGF, particularly the need of sustainable financing. We support discussions to do expected changing of the U.S. Government role in the Internet Governance. We highlight the improvement in the Internet Governance arrangements, and strongly protecting the freedom of expression, freedom of Information Society and network economy are to be balanced.
Lastly, Turkey supports the policy on freedoms online is modelled on the same frame as the universal human rights principles of freedoms of life. Turkey continues its efforts to develop its own Digital Agenda and to enforce laws in the field of electronic communications and media. We are ready to share our experience.
This morning session combines two key and interrelated items: Access and Internet as a growth and development. As you can see, we are holding this session in a roundtable format. We really encourage wide ranging participation from everyone here and participating remotely.
Our object of today is to strengthen the knowledge agenda by bringing forth these experiences, particularly on developing countries, to drive growth and development.
Now, I would like to introduce our two moderators. Alice Munyua serves as the project coordinator for access to ICTS. She is also from the Kenya Action Network. She's head of the TLD, the GLC, and was chair of the organizational committee 2011 in Nairobi IGF.
Martin, on the right‑hand side from me, has been involved in the TCP/IP world since the publication of the first TCP/IP RFCs in the early '80's. Born and educated in England, he moved to the States and worked for the last 25 years in the Silicon Valley. He has made major contributions.
We have also a remote moderator, Miss Anju Mangal, who will be moderating, introducing from our remote participants. Secretariat of the Pacific Community and also a MAG member.
Before passing the floor to Martin and Alice, I would like our speakers to introduce their names and their countries briefly, then I will pass the floor to our moderators. Please, we can start from here.
>> OMOBOLA JOHNSON: Good morning, everybody. My name is Omobola Johnson. I'm the minister for ICT in Nigeria, and I'm also here as a chairman of the UN Commission on Science and Technology for Development. Thank you.
>> GETACHEW ENGIDA: My name is Getachew Engida, Deputy Director General of UNESCO and I come from Ethiopia.
>> DOROTHY ATTWOOD: My name is Dorothy Attwood. I'm with the Walt Disney Company from the United States.
>> THOMAS LAMANAUSKAS: Thomas Lamanauskas, representing International Telecommunication Union.
>> JARI ARKKO: My name Jari Arkko, with the IETF, Engineering Task Force, and I'm based in Finland.
>> SALAM YAMOUT: I am from Lebanon, Salam Yamout, Government of Lebanon.
>> JOANA VARON: I'm independent researcher from Brazil.
>> DAVID REED: I'm David Reed. I'm from University of Colorado in Boulder.
>> RAJAN MATHEWS. Rajan Mathews. I represent the private mobile operators from India.
>> ROHAN SAMARAJIVA: I'm Rohan Samarajiva. I am chair of regional think tank, LIRNEasia, based in Sri Lanka.
>> MARTIN LEVY: Could you please continue?
>> DAVID SEPULVEDA: I'm Ambassador David Sepulveda from the United States State Department.
>> R.S. SHARMA: My name is R.S. Sharma. I work for the Department of IT, Government of India.
>> ANTONIO LONGO: I'm the commissioner for the Digital Agenda, European Union.
>> FUNKE OPEKE: I'm from Main One Limited in Nigeria, representing private sector.
>> RAUL ECHEBERRIA: I am Raul Echeberria, vice president of Internet Society. I'm based in Uruguay.
>> ALISON GILWALD: Research ICT Africa, University of Capetown.
>> ANTONIO LONGO: Member of the European Eco & Social Committee.
>> MIKE JENSEN: Good morning. I'm Mike Jensen APC, based in Brazil.
>> HOSSAM EL‑GAMAL: I am Hossam EL‑Gamal representing Africa ICT Alliance, based in Egypt.
>> GUO LIANG: My name is Guo Liang, independent researcher working for Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
>> EUGENIA MIGLIORI: Good morning, everyone. I'm Eugenia Migliori, from the Secretary of Communications of Argentina.
>> Alice and Martin, the floor is yours.
>> ALICE MUNYUA: Thank you very much. I'm very honoured to be moderating this very highly distinguished and high‑level panel and very diverse as well, just reflecting the spirit of the IGF, participants from the private sector, from governments, Civil Society, and academia.
I'll go straight to asking our first speaker, honourable Johnson from Nigeria. I would like you to share with us your role as a minister for ICT how has Nigeria worked towards creating the broadband framework in terms of expressing the intention of increasing penetration and increasing affordable access in Nigeria.
>> Omobola Johnson: Thank you very much, Alice. We have a national broadband plan, as with many countries, developed in collaboration with the private sector Civil Society and the major users of the Internet. One of the targets of this broadband plan is to increase our penetration fivefold over the next five years.
In terms of specific figures, we're about 6% when the plan was developed. We plan to move to 30%. So it's an infrastructure target in the national broadband plan, but it is clearly an infrastructure target that will have significant socioeconomic benefits as we all know.
What we have done in terms of implementation of that broadband plan is to set up, first of all, a broadband council, which I chair as a minister, and I have a co‑chair, which is a former executive vice chairman of the commission. Also, the council is made up of representatives of the network of operators, infrastructure providers, the private sector. One of the broadband council members is here with us on this panel.
What we have done, in terms of broadband council, is we're looking at monitoring the implementation of the plan, but most specifically, how we implement in this broadband plan. Like I said, it's an infrastructure target. So one of the key roles of the Council and of the Ministry of Government is to ensure there is an environment very much focused on rolling out fiber to all parts of the country. When you're talking about fiber, right of way is very, very important.
We have slashed the cost of right of way, making it cheaper. In Nigeria, prior to now, about 70% of the cost of rolling out fiber was actually on procuring the right of way from national government and subnational governments. At the national government level we have cut that by 85%. It makes it much cheaper and faster to do. We're working with state governments right now to bring down the cost of that fiber rollout.
We're also increasing the spectrum auctions, because in Africa a lot of the mobile ‑‑ a lot of the broadband is going to be mobile broadband. So ensuring there is spectrum to do that. Nigeria is a very large country. About 60% of the people in Nigeria live in the rural areas. The fund is actually focused on rolling out infrastructure fiber and also mobile broadband to those areas.
We've started making some progress. We have been implementing for about nine months or so now. We have moved from 6% to about 6.97%. Still very small, but the early days of the plan. And I think that as the things we're doing begin to get under way, right away, working with state governments, successful spectrum auctions, I think we can begin to see an acceleration in achieving our targets over the next five years. So good experience so far, but collaboration between the private sector, the public sector, and the users of the Internet.
Thank you.
>> ALICE MUNYUA: Thank you, honourable. I have a very quick question for you. You're also the chair of the CSTD. From your opinion, can multilateral agencies help hasten Internet access or is access almost entirely left to national policy and a challenge and by extension a challenge for developing countries?
>> Omobola Johnson: Could you repeat the question? Have the microphone so that the audience can hear it better.
>> ALICE MUNYUA: Oh, yes, yes. I'm sorry. Yeah. The microphone. Okay.
You're also the chair of the CSTD, Miss Johnson. I'm wondering if in your opinion multilateral agencies can help hasten and it becomes a challenge to most developing countries, especially Africa?
>> Omobola Johnson: Thank you. I think that the primary responsibility for facilitating access to the Internet has got to be at the national government level, because it's only national governments that can assure that we have the enable environment, the right policies are in place and all of that. And so policymakers need to ensure that we have the appropriate regulatory frameworks. We ensure that we have the commensurate level of competition to ensure access is available but also affordable. Having said that, it's also important for us to ‑‑ governments can't work in isolation. It's important for us to also collaborate and work with multilaterals in this particular instance. And if I can just very quickly give an example in Nigeria.
As I talked early on about the fact that in Nigeria we are working on licensing infrastructure companies and that will ensure that we have access in all parts of the country. Now, what has happened is the Africa development bank, multilateral organisation, has actually come to work with us and often offering guarantees of the companies that will invest and making it cheaper for them to finance and at an affordable rate. The ICT is another example of a multilateral organisation that can really help in terms of access in showing that the standardization in terms of ‑‑ ensuring that spectrum availability across different countries.
So it's important that we ‑‑ that national governments have the policies for access, have the policies around regulatory frameworks. But I think we also need to work very closely.
One of the things that the CSTD does is it brings together many, many countries where we share best practices, because we learn from each other. We look at what challenges other countries have had, other similarities in the challenges. There will be a lot of similarity in the solutions that we use to address those challenges. So it's very, very important for us to work with multilaterals, with CSO, NGOs, to ensure access.
For developing countries in particular, access is important. So we have of ‑‑ in a sense we have nailed the voice access. We have very high percentage of voice access. But the real challenge for us now is Internet access, where it's about 16% compared to developed economies, that's actually quite low. So it's important that fora like the CSTD, it's important for the IGF where we are at today. It's important to share best practices to discuss how we can move forward on this Internet access issue. But clearly, like I said earlier, the primary responsibility is for national governments to ensure that they have the right policies for access and they have the right regulatory frameworks.
>> Martin Levy: I'm going to give you a couple seconds from all Istanbul and myself as the moderators. This is a very distinguished panel. And there's going to be some fantastic information which will come out, be shared. Keep in mind that we will also have plenty of time for questions and comments from you as the audience, and also remotely through our remote moderator. So work on those now. Think about them, and we will have time.
One other point is, I know people may be a bit apprehensive about this number of people sitting up here. We will take a break. You won't be allowed outside the room, but we'll give you the time to stand up and take that five‑ to ten‑second break.
With that housekeeping dealt with, if I may now address Ambassador Daniel Sepulveda with the next question. And the question is, why is access in Asia in Africa and the Middle East, Latin America, an important issue for the United States? If you would.
>> Daniel Sepulveda: Thank you very much for the question. For the United States right now and for all of us, there are some real serious and heavy challenges around the world. And a lot of them have to do with a lack of access to opportunity, lack of access to information, lack of the ability for the individual to reach his or her full attention. We strongly believe in the United States that having access unfettered, and all the tools that enables human empowerment, is critical to the development of both individuals and economies and societies around the world. So we have made access our top priority because of that.
At the end of the day, we believe that it's mutually reinforcing; that due to network effects, we all benefit from each additional user on the network. We all benefit every time someone in Nigeria or someone in China in any part of the world comes onto the network itself. That is why we have focus on this particular effort. That's why we have put together the Alliance For Affordable Internet, which we would all encourage you to participate in.
That's why we have out of USAID assistance programmes for countries that are constructing programmes in order to have the necessary internal distribution and delivery of services, particularly rural and poor communities, as Minister Johnson pointed out. At the end of the day, there are many ways in which we are working to collaborate particularly focused on those parts of the world where the Internet cannot only act as an end in itself in which people can use the tool to become stronger individuals themselves, but also as a platform for development.
At the end of the day, the benefits of the Internet spread to everything from the healthcare sector of your economy to agriculture to the multiple ways in which it is used. So we want to make sure that it is ensuring that it's as close to universal access as quickly as possible through an enabling environment that Minister Johnson talked about that encourage this investment in deployment. We think at the end of the day that will have great returns for everyone.
>> ALICE MUNYUA: I'd like to address the next question. I think we are Internet linked to GDP per capita to income, even the rate of employment. Is that universally acceptable? Could that linking the Internet to social development norms, could that act as peer pressure, especially among developing countries?
>> GETACHEW ENGIDA: Thank you very much. Let me make very, very clear that the UNESCO's position is a longstanding one and fairly clearly articulated. We consider that effective application is included for effective sustainable development. From this angle policy of intervention to support access, infrastructure must go well beyond infrastructure and connectivity. International goals, we need a holistic perspective that takes into account context, content, and competencies.
The important shifts are taking place in the ways by which they access Internet. In some settings broadband and ICTs are viewed as luxury items or subjected to high taxes. We need to consider policy balance to participate in all networks with reduce digital divides.
To meet the needs of the remaining 3 billion Internet access, we must continue to promote policies that support public access at schools, libraries, etc. We must also have capacity of developing countries and institutions, policy resources like the ITT competent role for teachers and media information for frameworks we believe are very important. UNESCO has been developing policies for open access, open education resources, free and open software, free and open source software in order to address these challenges and widen access opportunities for quality education.
It is important ensuring that people with physical and cognitive challenges can also participate in education.
At the wider level, research work by UNESCO points to the important and complex relationship between access to networks, the development of local content and information knowledge flows. This work shows a strong correlation between growth in local content and the development of network infrastructure. Open government and open data policies around the world provide the strong examples of how developers in the public are able to leverage public to generate new services.
Supporting and sustaining environment depends on user competencies. This includes media and information literacy which all range of competencies. It is critical that we craft policies on media and literacy integrity in the formal and informal and life‑long learning systems. To this end, UNESCO and partners have been developing a global media and information literacy assessment framework, and we are undertaking country‑wide readiness on the ability of national education services to roll out and implement curricula.
Technology alone doesn't empower, as I stated yesterday and the day before. For this, we need the right context, the right content, and the right competencies.
Thank you very much.
>> Martin Levy: Thank you. I'll reiterate my comment. I've already got some notes here on questions I want to ask, but this is your session. So keep thinking about that. The next question goes to Mr. R.S. Sharma, India. It's the world's second‑most populated country, with 1.2 billion in population. Nearly one billion need to be connected to the Internet. And that's a quarter. That's 25% of the total unconnected world population. These are big numbers.
Let's get your perspective on where India is on this planning, sir.
>> R.S. SHARMA: Thank you very much. I think you also made this comment that 25% of the world's unconnected people live in this country. Actually, this is a challenge. It's also what we have done thus far, in the telecom sector we have 800 million telecom subscribers. Therefore, they are connected to the net, connected to the telecom back end. However, all those things can be converted into an access points for Internet in case we are able to locate the broadband infrastructure. We have a new government led by Prime Minister Modi, and he has come up with a programme of Digital India. What it seeks to do is increase the access to the Internet and resources in such a manner that every person in this has access to it. A couple of the steps that have been taken are one is to improve the infrastructure we have taken of the various programmes of laying out optical fiber network, which reaches a collection of a couple ‑‑ we have 250,000 in the country, and there we are going to lay the optical fiber network. We are going to universities, school, health centre, and that kind of thing. So essentially what we are going to do is we are going to lay out an infrastructure which will provide access to the Internet to every person in the country. So that's number one.
Secondly, we will also take other steps. We have ‑‑ Mr. Modi has visualized that we have cradle to grave digital to every person. That's important. If you want to have services made available from the Internet, you need to have an online identity. Now, that identity was created a couple of years back and now we have as many as 700 million identities created. And these are all identities.
He also has said that every person must have a telephone connection and a bank account, which will actually include the person financially and be able to communicate. Essentially this will ensure that every person is able to participate in the financial space, in the digital space, and in the information space.
Then another issue which comes in the way of access is the availability of the content in the local languages. So we have taken up a programme called eBhasa, which essentially means eLanguage, which will seek to create digital content in Indian languages. We have 22 of them.
So then in order to ensure that every person may not have access to the service points, may not have access to a computer. So what we have done is we are going to provide common service centre to each village where a citizen can download and get services. Electronic service delivery is going to be sort of made legal requirement. So we are going to have an electronic delivery of services built, which will mandate that all services shall be delivered electronically.
Of course, we will use the Internet for various services: health, education and other kinds of development. The whole purpose of the Digital India programme is to convert India into a digitally empowered society and economy. That is what we are proceeding for. We believe with all these policy frameworks in place and all the infrastructure development being done, we think that India is going to become the fastest growing economy in terms of ‑‑ fastest growing Internet numbers in terms of numbers. And I think out of one billion, which we have unconnected people, we'll be able to make every one of them on the net.
Thank you.
>> ALICE MUNYUA: Thank you. Commissioner Kroes, Europe has highest penetration of Internet in the world, currently at 75%. Do you believe that you still have unique challenges to access? And what would be the policy approaches to those as well as what ‑‑ especially at the multi‑stakeholder level, what would be the challenges?
>> Nellie Kroes: By the way, it's tempting to bombard you with a lot of facts and figures of where we are in Europe. We are talking about the biggest economic market on earth. 500 million, and even more nowadays. Citizens and 28 member states. Rightly said by you, it is quite well covered. Still, there are a lot of challenges. For me, it's always very important in the communication to all the outsiders, that it's not only about facts and figures. We all are aware what it makes it happen when you are talking about broadband penetration and just enlarging broadband penetration, what the effect is on your economic development and so on and so forth.
For me it is also taking into account the personal stories that are behind. If we are indeed able to give more opportunities to more people and rightly said by then, it is about access. It is about giving opportunities for people to get education, to get health services, to get a better situation in jobs and what have you.
Having said that, and that is indeed one of the challenges in Europe, European Commission, is focusing and prioritizing the investment in broadband rollout, and it is diverse. It's not only fiber. It is also satellite. It is quite diverse, so to say. But what is really challenge me and what is pushing me is that, indeed, we shouldn't have a society with the haves and the have nots. And I'm not talking about money. I'm talking about opportunities in the digital development.
It shouldn't be the case that certain groups in our society, because they are not aware what's in for them or because they are not able, because there is no connection. That is of main importance. Especially talking about the rural areas and about those areas where normally spoken governments don't have a responsibility to come with public/private partnerships, or also public investments and just giving them the opportunities for what is at stake, and that is for me quite important.
The Internet is borderless. And that is what we pretend with the digital single markets that it is a borderless market. We are quite active in that field. We are not yet finalizing, but still a lot of push. Anyhow, our approach is definitely neutral. It's focused on no devices issues in our society, and pushing all those opportunities for the citizens and for, of course, also the businesses.
We are talking globally, and it's not only an area on the globe, but it's globally. Then, indeed, 3 billion use the Internet. 3 billion people. So that's quite a number. But that also means that 4 billion people are not connected. And that is our main challenge that we have to tackle. And then it is a win/win situation. And I'm impressed what is happening in Nigeria, what is happening in Kenya, and sometimes leapfrogging in those countries is stimulating also European efforts forward.
Then we are just going for, at the end of the day, those personal stories where you can enrich people and give opportunities for their education, their finding jobs, and discovering a new world, so to say.
Thank you.
>> ALICE MUNYUA: Thank you very much, commissioner. You mentioned Kenya and Nigeria. I come from Kenya, and we still have very low Internet penetration. My region has the lowest. As a follow‑up question, why would increasing Internet access in our countries be important for the European Union from a global perspective? Especially from the European Union. If you could just elaborate on that for us. Thank you.
>> Nellie Kroes: I don't get your question.
>> ALICE MUNYUA: The mics are not working that well. My question was, you've mentioned the great various challenges in Europe and also mentioned the great things that are going on in Kenya and in Nigeria. I come from Kenya myself. Internet penetration is only at 11%, or perhaps even less from my last statistics. So from a European Union or global perspective, why is it important for Europe to get engaged in increasing or to get engaged in increasing Internet access in developing countries?
>> Nellie Kroes: It is important because the countries and the continents are not living in isolation. We need to take care of each other and we need to cooperate and communicate with each other. The Internet for me is the clearest example of the interconnected. It's almost without borders. So when we can be of help, then I'm talking about personal empowerment. I'm talking about economic development, then we are on the same page.
>> Martin Levy: Thank you. The next question is for Miss Opeke from Nigeria. This is probably one of my favorite questions out of this if I may address this to you. Most developing countries governments have announced national broadband plans. Who is funding those plans? What is the stage of their implementation? Will they need revision during the next two to three years on account of emerging technologies? You, yourself, are from a technology company. Can the lack of local content become a barrier to meaningful access and meaningful access in the use of the Internet? If I can help that question a little bit, I saw you interviewed, I think, about a couple of weeks ago and you talked about building a new data centre inside Nigeria. And I think that local content becomes very much a subject that you are interested in. If you would address that question, that would be fantastic. Thank you.
>> Funke Opeke: Thank you. Who is funding national broadband plans and what role does local content have to play in that? I would say building on what the ministers and various multilaterals have already said, Nigeria, indeed, most of the companies making significant progress for growth in Africa have now established policies and national broadband plans to foster that growth. The implementation, however, is largely private‑sector driven because that has been deregulated in those progressive markets. Therein lies the opportunity and the challenge in terms of local entities who know the market, who know the challenges, who for the most part are at the forefront of making those investments in driving infrastructure buildout.
We build submarine cable. We're building data cable, terrestrial fibers. Therein lies the issues with respect to accelerating the rate of deployment and the rate of growth and deployment into the rural areas.
As the minister said, for example, the African bank is stepping in again to help in Nigeria with respect to fiber infrastructure buildout. They also assisted when we were building the first private cable, submarine cable, down the coast of West Africa. Clearly the role of international agencies in assisting with better terms or better access to capital plays a key role.
Moving into local content, there is a challenge. However, as access and infrastructure becomes more widely deployed, what we're seeing is an explosion in terms of the opportunities and local content applications, eCommerce models being rolled out in our market.
So I think the infrastructure facilitates that. Africa has a very young population. Technology improves educational outcomes, and people leveraging that. In closing, I would say one area of challenge is probably developed countries private sector engagement with local private sector and working in the collaborative and sustainable way to actually drive that growth.
>> Martin Levy: Thank you. Can I quickly just take a little extra time? Could you give us an idea of just how successful local content has been in a particular area in the film industry in Nigeria? I think this is one of the unique stories which needs to be shared.
>> Funke Opeke: Nigeria has large film industry, I think. It's number three just in terms of productivity globally in terms of movies being created largely in the local industry. What we find is a lot of that content is being distributed globally. Prior to now, probably even at the current time, more of that content is available online outside Nigeria than is available locally rather than on broadcast television because Internet access and broadband access is not as affordable and pervasive.
So what you do have are these companies, largely local companies, local TV, Spinlets, Chocolate City are putting it out to a population and Africans all over the globe. We are starting to see a buildup of capability where that content is also becoming available locally in Nigeria as Internet access improves.
>> Martin Levy: Thank you.
>> ALICE MUNYUA: Following up on that, especially regarding the film industry, I'd like to ask Miss Dorothy Attwood from Walt Disney. Now, the creation and availability of locally relevant and quality local content is very critical to driving adoption and growth of the Internet economy. How can we encourage innovation in a robust service industry in all communities, particularly those new to the Internet?
>> Dorothy Attwood: Thanks so much. I really want to follow up on "locally relevant" and what does that mean? I think we have to look at a broad interpretation of "locally relevant," because we have to look at what is content that is interesting to local people? Now, a fantastic example of locally produced content in Nigeria, also the Walt Disney Company has multiple partnerships with local producers, both producers of rich media that you're describing as a film industry, but also producers of short‑form video. We recently purchased a company called Maker Studios, which is on YouTube.
The largest producers ‑‑ the makers of short‑form video are coming from international locations, all built on the necessary broadband infrastructure, of course, but remarkable amount of creativity around the world that actually maximizes the value of the broadband investment. It drives broadband growth through adoption, also drives the purchase of equipment. You don't buy tablets in order to have better e‑mail. You buy it for rich media. So you see a real virtuous cycle that occurs by having people interested locally, local people interested in the content that is being delivered.
And I think we've sat back and tried to figure out from a policy perspective in working with UNESCO, for example, on a number of studies, what are the criteria necessary to build that local community of local content community. And I think it comes to there are lots of enablers, but it comes to a series of elements that are necessary. The first of which, of course, is an environment that supports expression. Expression is creative expression, but it's also social expression, using wonderful platforms, also a feeling that there is an ability for political speech. All of that drives the generation of expression in a community which builds the creative ‑‑ local creative fabric.
You also need an environment based on trust and rule of law. So you have an eCommerce can flourish. You need protection and privacy for children where we're focused on, but consumers and electrical property, protections around the ability of distribution platforms to benefit all of those, both the users and the creators.
You also need naming resources and addressing resources so that you can enable the use of all different languages. That's been a huge advance, certainly, for the Walt Disney Company. We revision. Finally, you need skills assessment, a capacity building that we're very involved in as well. So I'm happy to talk more about that later.
Thanks.
>> Martin Levy: Thank you. Raul, you're at the Internet Society. Raul caught me doing something. I was looking at the wrong direction when asking that question. That was my mistake. I do know you, yes. Okay. Just because of that, I'll find a hard question for you. No, we're fine.
Public policy question. How important is access in ensuring this widespread access to the unconnected, especially to the ‑‑ as it relates to responsibility of actors regarding human rights, disadvantaged groups, Information Society and how to ensure the continued focus on areas that need this special attention. If you would address this question, please.
>> Raul Echeberria: Thank you, Martin. There seems to be many questions in that. But it gives me the opportunity to address also the issue of the relation between Internet Governance and relationships. Internet Governance the debate is very important, but is more important ‑‑ even more important if we see Internet Governance discussions for achieving the ultimate objectives that are related to development and transforming Internet as a platform for improving human socioeconomic development and also for being a platform for improving the situation with regard to the promotion with respect and exercise of human rights. And so I think it's important that we see Internet Governance not an objective itself, but as a vehicle for achieving those ultimate objectives.
I think I will mention four things that I think that are very important. In that sense, in order to get this link between what we are doing here and those objectives that I mentioned before, one of the things is that how to get an impact in the development and human rights. And this is having something where the Internet Society having worked for many, many years, and not only in getting people connected, that this is something very important, but also in having infrastructure that could evolve because the needs evolve continually. We need to get people connected, but also working on, as I say before, on the social impacts.
We work a lot in building infrastructure, IXPs in many regions. How to use the technology for improving the situation regarding the human rights, how to favor small communities in partnership with other organisations we have funded. And we fund and support education obligations for elementary schools, communities, and projects. I think the other important topics is the capacity building. Capacity building not only for getting sustainable development, but also for having a meaningful participation. We have many projects like ETF fellowships for bringing people to ITG, IGF ambassadors. We bring people to participate in the IGF at local levels. That gives more power to the people in order to transform the Internet Governance debate and something more concrete.
My last comment is with regard to the need of developing the national mechanism like IGF. I think that's the only way that nobody ‑‑ no group has the monopoly of the wisdom and the expertise. So I think that's only having this kind of mechanism at the local level will give us the opportunity to have a real impact of this Internet Governance debate in the needs both the debate of human rights aspect at the local level.
Thank you.
>> Martin Levy: Thank you, Raul. Now, probably the most anticipated part of this is now we're going to take a slight break, but it's not a real official break yet. As I said at the beginning, we've split this up into three sections, purely to collectively let us all breathe, get some questions, if there are any from the audience, to come forward so far, and to pace ourselves appropriately, as the gentlemen with the microphone in his hand, I get the opportunity to ask the first question. That is my prerogative.
From UNESCO, you said one word that made me write down and smile. That was "competency," about getting people competent and to understand. Everything else you said was important, but this one word which deals with not just education, but even the step further, making people competent with the use of the Internet, the ability to build Internet infrastructure and access. Could you just give us a couple more thoughts on the use of that word and why it is so important from your point of view.
GETACHEW ENGIDA: Thank you for that important question. Certainly most of us who are carrying different gadgets in our pockets or on our desks know how much of those tools we actually use for its potential. I don't know about you, but I probably use about 10 percent of my iPhone's capacity. And I struggle most of the time to make the best of it. If my kids are around with me, and there are huge skill gaps in different parts of the world in using the tools, the technology that's becoming available that would make our life easier in terms of accessing information, acquiring knowledge, etc., etc. For this it is a changing world.
We cannot carry on with an education system that has been designed for the 17th and 18th century. We need to teach and build new competencies so people are comfortable with the tools and use it properly, from the children to senior citizens. It is for that reason that UNESCO is insisting that we need to work very hard in building capacities, both to teachers and users at‑large, to acquire the necessary literacy skills. I hope that answers your question.
>> Martin Levy: It does, absolutely. As a parent of a teenager, as painful as it is dealing with a teenager, is where they excel is knowing how to use the power of a Smartphone.
We have questions ‑‑ okay. We have questions from the audience and one on a card which I'll deal with first. This is for Ambassador Sepulveda and Mr. Echeberria. Sorry, you're right here. I was trying to read the question from here. The microphone is yours.
>> AUDIENCE: Thank you. This is a question for Ambassador Sepulveda. I'm from the United States. My name is Angelica. In the United States, 19 million people don't have Internet access at home. 14.5 million of those people live in rural areas. At the same time, we are seeing corporations like AT&T and Verizon pass laws in each state to take away basic telephone service. For those people that don't have Internet at home and are at risk of losing their basic telephone service, how can the state department become involved and ensure that they retain at least one form of connectivity and communication.
>> Daniel Sepulveda: Through the 1996 Telecommunications Act, there is access to service up to the 99% of the population has access to telephone service. The numbers that you cite relative to broadband service at home is a separate question and something that the FCC is addressing through a Connect America challenge programme, in which the eventual goal is everyone in America have access of 1 megabytes down and 4 megabytes up. It will be done through both wireless and wired delivery.
The question that you ask relative to individuals who are right now served as a carrier of last resort, so the AT&T and Verizons of the world, have obligations to ensure that everyone in the delivery area receives service, are still the law of the land. There is still some question around relative to the transition to an Internet‑Protocol‑based communication system how carrier‑of‑last‑resort obligations will be met. Our values, as Tom Wheeler has stated, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission have remained consistent. We will continue to have access to a universal basis.
>> ALICE MUNYUA: Commissioner Neelie Kroes, you have the floor.
>> Neelie KROES: Just to at one line to the UNESCO representative, what we are stimulating at the moment in Europe is the coding into the curriculum of primary schools. For you are not only talking nowadays about the learning skills for writing and reading, but it is also even more important to be able to code your own programmes and understand how it's doing. So talking about skill development, it is extremely important that we add that in our educational way of thinking.
>> ALICE MUNYUA: Thank you.
>> Martin Levy: I'd like to recognize in the audience Dr. Acarer. He's the chairman of the ICTA. Quite frankly, the IGF is very grateful for your efforts. We are here partially because of the work that you have done, and also because of our interest. These are both important things. And I know that you have a question, and if you would like to ask that ‑‑ but before you do, if you have your headphones, the question will be in Turkish. The various channels ‑‑ they were on the screen. But if you have your headphones, then please go ahead. Thank you.
>> Dr. ACARER: Thank you. Now, actually, I wanted to say that we need a standardization, vis‑à‑vis the Internet and the broadband, because the Internet's importance is self‑evident. There is no need to even dispute the importance of the Internet.
As for the broadband, it is a signifier of development, and that is also something that we all know. But mobile penetration is not a signifier of development. I do not accept that, because in Turkey the population is 77 million. Everywhere across the nation there is mobile communications. Like I said, 77 million people have mobile communications in Turkey. But mobile penetration is 93% in Turkey. And the reason is as follows: Almost all of the subscribers use one single SIM card. The reason for that is that the number portability and other tariffs work really well in Turkey. That's why people do not have to call another carrier, another operator at a higher fee. That's why everyone uses one single SIM card. So mobile penetration is not a signifier of development. But broadband is a signifier of development. It's a testimony to the fact that a country's developed.
Now, my question is, how do we calculate broadband penetration in countries? Because in many countries there are different means of calculation. There's fixed broadband at homes and individuals have mobile broadband on their mobile devices. People live in the same households. Some subscribers have more than one single SIM card. As such, they have more than one single device and one person may end up being the subscriber of more than one description for broadband. So how do we calculate this? In European countries, in Asian countries, when they do the calculations? People, perhaps, try to favor themselves a little in order to show broadband values high. I think we need some sort of a standardization about this.
Thank you. I wish you every success.
>> Martin Levy: Thank you very much. Wow. This is a really interesting question, because it's a numbers question. And if I go to a government person to answer this, they will favor themselves. This is nothing against anybody from government. This is ‑‑ this seems to be happening. So I'm intrigued at picking somebody from the academic world who wants to answer this question about how we measure the difference in broadband versus mobile. And so I'm going to open this up. This is somewhere where I'm intrigued at who wants to answer this and who wants to address this question. I guessed. Please go ahead.
>> Thank you for that intervention. I think it is a critical issue. I think a lot of reference is being made to these billions of people still not connected, etc. The truth of the matter is we don't really know that figure, because there isn't sufficient data in developing countries to understand what is really happening with the Internet. Precisely some of the issues that have been spoken about in the intervention. We know that the supply‑side data that's provided to the ITU, particularly for broadband, has some findings in order to supply data, and it's clear that the figures are really quite to come to. We do know that broadly there is a big gap, a big challenge. I suppose if we ask a million here or there, it doesn't really matter.
Of course, these are ongoing problems around capacity, institutional capacity, gathering the data from operators, but it's also far more complex than it used to be. In the past it was just an issue of trying to establish who was using those SIMs, number of duplicate SIMs, but now you've got a conflation of sorts. Operators themselves only know in retrospect how their data ‑‑ whether the data is being used, what kind of traffic flows are only telling us, what kind of broadband use there is.
And I think that's actually the point, is that the big issue beyond access is not just about the accessing of the data and the connectivity issues, but really going beyond that. Quality and inequality measures in terms of digital divide and in terms of public policy are really increasingly about use, people's ability to use this fabulous technology, etc. And we know the effects that we do know is on the demand side and the countries that we have data, is that those figures are far below the kind of figures that are supplied by governments supplied by operators.
And looking across the continent in 2008 and figures about 85%, and some countries 1 or 2% now gone up to figures of 15 to 25 outside of South Africa at most. So these figures are way below the figures associated with the network effects, the critical mass required in order to see the economic development and the gains that we see in many countries.
But I think it's really this use figure that we'll have to look at because we see increasingly your ability to use the link to income and education. That's why in terms of these broadband plans we need to move beyond infrastructure. The infrastructure problems can be addressed and I think they actually have to be addressed by both the public and the private sector. There simply isn't the resources on either side to deal with it on their own.
And that the real issue is actually a human development challenge in terms of driving demand, getting those prices down on the one hand, on the demand sides, but on the other side, actually developing the human capacity in order to exploit these technologies equitably.
>> Martin Levy: Thank you. We have a question at the microphone on the far side. Would you please introduce yourself?
>> STUART HAMILTON: Can you hear me now? I'm Stuart Hamilton from the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions or IFLA. I have a question for our distinguished colleague from India who talked about the Digital India plan. We are very concerned with public access to ICTs. We think it is a way of supporting digital inclusion and getting everybody online. And our position is that when governments are looking to implement public access policies, they should very much consider the resources that they already have when they're rolling out these plans. For example, there are 320,000 public libraries worldwide, 230,000 of which are in developing countries. And they can play a very strong role. So my question is, when I hear about the plan for common service centres, I just wanted to ask our colleague if he was considering using any of India's 45,000 public libraries? Thank you.
>> R.S. SHARMA: Thank you very much. In fact, while the Digital India plan will ensure that the fiber goes up to the village level, it is also important that we create these wifi hotspots so that in the universities and the libraries and the schools and the hospitals, so that the public places are able to access Internet and thereof. Certainly, so much so that even the schools are going to come within the digital access part of it.
We also add the total outlay for Digital India of 12 billion USD. This programme is going to be completed by December of 2016. We are looking at accelerated timelines to ensure all the institutions are included into it. I hope this answers your question.
>> ALICE MUNYUA: Thank you very much. We have a question from remote participant.
>> REMOTE MODERATOR: This is a question from Ganella from Australia. There are one billion people with disability globally. Many are unconnected. We heard that UNESCO has inclusion policies. I'd like to hear from other organisations about the key digital divide issue.
>> ALICE MUNYUA: Raul, would you like to take that? I see your hand up? UNESCO? Yes. Okay.
>> ANTONIO LONGO: I represent the European Economic and Social Committee, which is the institution where there are employer representatives, unions, but also consumers and also handicapped individuals. For the committee, social inclusion is a key issue. It's very, very important. Many included in the digital world is key, according to the right for all citizens, regardless of their place in society or their country.
Access to broadband should be recognized as a universal right. Also, since 2010 the European Commission raised the issue of digital inclusion and broadband inclusion as an obligation for universal services. I think we need to answer this question very quickly to ensure that our citizens enjoy this right. In the case that was raised, we think that there is a special problem for individuals with disabilities. People with disabilities who use ICTs have easier access and have access to society on an equal footing with others. The domain remains the same. We have to ensure that training is available. I'm referring in particular to systems of intelligent transport. We wanted to highlight the role of the service before the digital culture. We think this is particularly important for people with disabilities.
Now, each type of handicap is different, but the rules of NGO should be to recognize and coordinate with the public authorities the best way to deal with it. We think that the universal approach, if possible, should take into account the needs of various kinds of users and give preference to targeted approaches based on individuals, handicaps and disabilities. In conclusion, we think that the digitalization, the alphabetization, inclusion, are all linked and really do correspond to a nondescriptive holistic definition of inclusivity to all society. Thank you.
>> Martin Levy: We have one more question we'll take from the audience before this break. Sir, you can use my microphone.
>> Audience: This question is to Minister Johnson and Miss Opeke. On the coast of Africa, probably available space through satellite, how can we ultimately bring this to the Internet to enhance affordability and increase penetration for basic Internet? Broadband is there, but basic Internet. Thank you.
>> OMOBOLA JOHNSON: Thank you very much. I think the national broadband plan addresses that question where we have significant challenges on the various coasts of Africa. We have significant challenges in actually taking that capacity inland. What we have, when you look at the broadband plan, the greater proportion of is how we build terrestrial fiber, how do we make it easier for infrastructure providers, network operators to build that fiber. It's an issue of cost, issue of regulations that are present in the state governments and national government. In terms of the bottlenecks in right of way and state regulations are different than national regulations, in terms of the different agencies that manage the telecoms. We remove all those bottlenecks. We make it cheaper to roll out this fibers. We're signing MOUs with many state governments to bring down the cost of this rollout. I think that's what's really helping us to increase our penetration.
What is also important is that in Africa, in general, for countries like Nigeria that have a coast, we also need to collaborate. This is where the bilateral or multilateral agencies come. We need to collaborate with the non‑African countries, with Nigeria, for instance, in bringing that coastal capacity into those landlocked capacities. That's very important if we're talking about a connected continent in terms of connected countries.
If I could take my last minute, I'm sorry to take us back, but the question by the representative of the ICT I think was very important about standardizing broadband. In our national broadband plan we have ‑‑ every country will define broadband differently. And I don't think that we can never have a standard definition for broadband. In our national broadband plan what we have defined as 1.5 megabytes for everybody.
It will vary from state to state. For instance, in states like Nigeria, which is the most popular state, broadband penetration there is hyper than 6%. Download speeds are many, many megabytes higher than 1.5. We need to define broadband really in the context of the country in which you're trying to ‑‑ in which you're trying to connect. So it's going to be very difficult. I know you didn't want to ask a government person, because the notion is we tend to inflate these figures. But you need to look at it really from the context of the country and what we're trying to achieve with that broadband. For developing economies, it's about inclusion.
And really, when you talk about mobile penetration, I use Nigeria as a very good example. Internet is important, but that mobile penetration is also very important. We've been able to achieve significant objectives with our mobile penetration, financial inclusion. We have 100 billion subscribers on mobile phones, only 24 billion bank accounts. The mobile phone is a bank account. We are saving lives by using SMSs for pregnant women. That mobile is still foreign as well as mobile penetration. We need to define broadband in a manner that is relevant for the country to develop that broadband. Thank you.
>> Martin Levy: Raul, if I can just do this. Miss Opeke, do you want to also address this question from Nigeria?
>> Raul Echeberria: I wanted to make a comment on the previous question.
>> Martin Levy: We'll come back to that one. Thank you.
>> FUNKE OPEKE: Thank you. In addition to what the minister said, I think there are two perspectives that I bring to it. One is we need to build more infrastructure. But I also think opening up proprietary infrastructure that exists and creating frameworks for sharing commercial access for both the investor and the people who are trying to access that infrastructure is really critical.
Unlike in advanced economies where most of them went through an unbundling process of wholesale and retail operators, there's just not enough infrastructure. And so the regulators' constantly juggling, trying to encourage more investment and infrastructure and also trying to encourage open access. I think we need to get that balance right, because we absolutely need to share infrastructure and it needs to be open. When you look at the economic capacity of most of this developing economies, without shared infrastructure and open access infrastructure and common carrier frameworks that work in the real sense, practical sense, then you really cannot afford driving access to most of the population at prices they can afford.
>> Martin Levy: Okay. Thank you. We're going to go back to the previous question, which I do apologize for missing this one. Mr. Engida, from UNESCO, you wanted to speak to the previous question? I know Raul does as well? Sir.
>>GETACHEW ENGIDA: Thank you very much. I just wanted to go back to the access and inclusivity. We all seem to agree that access goes well beyond simply connectivity and infrastructure. It is about social inclusion and including people with disabilities, not generalized groups and multilingualism. The first global report for ICT for persons with disabilities last year, and I think that would be followed up with the first Internet conference of ICT 4, persons in New Deli, November 26 of this year. So you're all invited. And I think we all need to keep this absolutely firmly in mind that when we talk about access, we continuously need to emphasize with policymakers and policy stakeholders that it should mean social inclusion. Nobody should be left out of the tremendous opportunity for growth and development.
>> Martin Levy: Thank you. Raul, you wanted the mic?
>> Raul Echeberria: Yes, thank you, Martin. I think obviously by using the access divide and social inclusion is something of
extremely important for Internet Society, looking for solutions to those things. There is a note one size of the solution for all the situations. In some communities we're working more, for example, with developing wireless networks in communities. And sometimes we have our own programmes like in Asia‑Pacific and some other times we are supporting or recognizing projects that are being run by other people. In other places, the solution comes through the shared access. It is also related with the previous question about the possibility of using libraries. I think that's we have to use all the battery of solutions that we have available. And this is one of them. In many countries there are implementation of processes like this one.
In other cases, the projects like having very important in the sense of achieving great access in terms of inclusion. Not only the child, but also their families. I think it is also a very important workable solution in many cases.
The Internet Society, as I said before, in some cases we run our own processes. Now we are recognizing and supporting projects in partnership with other organisations, in many cases, for example, with the regional register industries, like Latina, America, Asia.
We have other community‑run projects. In terms of disability, I think this is a really important market. We have been discussing that for many years in IGF. We don't work directly on that issue, but we are supporting many projects. And following up the process, and we are able to follow up, I think we have to work more on that. There are a lot of organisations doing things, but this is an area where some more work is needed and we are trying to engage more with all organisations in achieving.
>> Martin Levy: Thank you very much.
Miss Kroes, you wanted to make a comment as well? And I'm just going to both ‑‑ if you may, a little bit of housekeeping here. We looked at the time. We're running, surprise, surprise, a little behind schedule. This actually means that there is interest and that this is good, but we're going to, for the second half, keep things nice and tight. I apologize for being so frank about that, but that's fact.
Miss Kroes?
>> Nellie Kroes: I got your message and I will be short. Just talking about the standardization, I think it's not talking about standardization. It's talking about statistics. And we all know and certainly politicians know that you can lie like hell with statistics. So we have to be aware that indeed investment in the broadband infrastructure is of crucial importance. But it's also a matter of the digital inclusion, the social digital inclusion, but in general. And then I have to admit that, for example, in certain member states ‑‑ just let me pick out one member state of the European Union: Italy. 35% of the people have never, ever visited Internet. That is nearby unthinkable in this audience. So my worry is, and my drive is, on one hand in large on the investment, no doubt, but on the other hand make them comfortable in knowing what they are missing.
It is about also cybersecurity. There are a lot of stories that they don't feel comfortable to join. So the library issue is of extreme importance, for there are so many libraries also in Europe, and there is an excellent example in Romainia talking about using libraries together with the Bill Gates Fund and the digital Champion of Romania. Thank you.
>> Martin Levy: I said we're going to do this. This is the quick 10‑second physical break. No leaving the room. But if you feel like you want to stand up, this is an open to everybody, including the speakers, and just stretch. It's 10 seconds.
It's now down to 9, 8, 7, 6, I've never run an exercise class, down to 2 seconds. Please sit down at this point. We will continue. Thank you very much. I appreciate that.
I hand it back to Alice.
>> ALICE MUNYUA: Mr. Thomas Lamanauskas, what are the key enablers for bringing access to the Internet to everyone at the national and international level?
>> Thomas Lamanauskas: Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to share my views on that. Of course, I think before talking about that, I want to also emphasize that while we have other challenges, we've also gone very far with Internet penetration and developing world. If you think about that, we have 2.9 billion people online, the fastest accepted and fastest spreading technology that ever was.
In the last five years, 2009 to 2014, Internet penetration in the developing world doubled from 974 million to 1.9 billion. This is huge. We are really ‑‑ that may be that we are all governments, private sector, Civil Society, academia, it's something we can't rest on our laurels.
One thing we work very closely with the United Nations and the bigger family of the United Nations on that, is the sustainable goals. We need to make sure on the Tunis Agenda, that the ICT is available for the next phase of development as it was for the first phase. We understand that ICT is not one infrastructure as some say force multiplied.
We also need to continue to work on international level on international solutions. One of these are, of course, global resources, such as radio spectrum. We have a world radio conference, together with radio assembly, which will generally gather all the country's member states together with other experts together to decide what's next, how we allocate the special resource, and how we deal with the mobile broadband, how we deal with the satellites.
Next year we'll also plan to improve provision for five generation mobile broadband, or so‑called IMT 2020 and beyond broadband, which promises to bring every user at least 10 gigabytes per second on the wireless. That means what you today get on a fiber, you can get on a wireless devices. We know already with the mobile broadband, being technology that's been growing 40% a year. That, again, gives a very huge opportunity for everyone, for all the countries to leapfrog into this device connectivity.
We also the same is similar to, again, when we talk about standards, still wired standards. In 2013, ITU community approved the G standard that allowed to squeeze one gigabytes per second out of steel copper lines. That allows to bring the connectivity closer to the people in terms comparable across the world.
It's still important, however, and started with the sustainable development goals in that regard. It's still important to talk about the agenda. So we have ‑‑ for example, this year we have local development conference which was a big impact on the member states. We set a very ambitious agenda of how we should develop a programme coming forward.
We have our WSIS, and this year we had a WSIS high‑level event and announced commitment in the multi‑stakeholder fashion in the consensus‑based environment, how we want to go forward together on that. And, again, so this is just a few examples. And I'm conscious of the time here, how I think on the international level we can all work together and create those ‑‑ I saw the time. So how we all together can create those enablers for the Internet. And there's a lot ‑‑ I won't continue on the international level, but we had suggestions here from other countries, but a lot of us to work together, and we are ready to be part of that work.
Thank you.
>> Martin Levy: Thank you. For those people that may have noticed, as much as I mentioned, we were short on time, our time disappeared at that point, our timer disappeared. Ironic, quite frankly.
You are the chair of the ITQ, Mr. Arkko. Talk to us about policies and support organisations that can help improve Internet access globally around the world.
>> Jari Arkko: Thank you. I'll answer that question and I want to briefly go back to the numbers question a little bit. To my day job is actually with Erickson and some of my colleagues have been adopting the mobile broadband. If you look at mobile subscriptions, 6.8 billion today, or end of Q 1, that is for about 4.6 billion people. There we can see the difference between counting people verses subscription. I think we actually need to count both, because the Internet development doesn't stop when we connect everyone. We go beyond that with the Internet of Things and so on.
Anyway, so 2.4 billion of those subscribers today are for mobile broadband. That part of it is growing incredibly rapidly: 40%, even 60% in some years. And the number of smartphones the people bought in the last quarter was 65% out of all phones sold. So it's clear that the number of Internet users is growing very, very rapidly through the Smartphone revolution and exchanging the devices into new ones. Most of them will become broadband Smartphone user subscriptions by 2009, the adoption numbers, they also have the highest growth numbers.
Ladies and gentlemen, these are very, very good news. I don't want to minimize the challenges we have. But access to the Internet for the people on the planet, I think, is within reach.
I have three observations to make. First I think we should focus on access, but a little bit on other things, access, connectivity, and the situation is in place to fiber backbones and to be built and the creation of services and local content as many of the speakers before me have noted.
It's also important that communities can build local applications. Some of these things, of course, fall in the regulators. Some would benefit from participation of nongovernmental organisations from around the world and all need. Some of the developing economies are entering the Internet Age much later now than other countries, but there is no need to follow the same steps for all of these countries. In a sense the developing companies have jumped generations of technology relying far more on various fixed connections. In a sense, you, not us, is now at the forefront of the new world and you should take advantage of that in all the possible ways, both for your societies and your businesses.
The processes that they can support the most challenging conditions, for instance, sparsely populated areas, are mostly resources or disabled users has been discussed. There is still a lot of work to be done. And I know we are committed at IGF. I know many other organisations around the world are also committed to helping this transition move forward.
Thank you.
>> MARTIN LEVY: I apologize to everybody in the room. A technical problem with the transcription has made that stop for the moment. And I do hope that that gets fixed. It got fixed.
>> ALICE MUNYUA: How important are public access policies in ensuring widespread access to the unconnected, especially in relation to responsibilities of actors regarding human rights and disadvantaged groups in the information society?
>> JARI ARKKO: First, I just want to address a point on the data and the concept of access we are addressing here. I think access should be understood and access to affordable and high quality broadband connectivity to the Internet as potential. Projects and strategies to narrow the digital divide have passed through different steps from focused on initiatives, such as laptop from child to public funded, government funded public spaces. More recently focusing on mobiles. But sustainabilities, evaluation of be considered when goals are being set and evaluated and when data ‑‑ when access is being conceived.
In that sense, an important step we should recognize that as powerful and it can be, just having a mobile connected is not equivalent to being fully connected to the Internet at its full extent, as it is when a broadband is provided. Particularly in the context where generations for programming is becoming just as key as to merge developing gaps as promoting literacy, for instance.
On the other hand, the other point I wanted to make is that besides considering how and where access is made, the device question, we should also consider what we can access. In that sense, besides the discussion on access to local content, which is quite important, we should also consider that having access solely to single platform such as what is being promoted by zero rate initiatives, cannot be considered the final attempt to close the digital divide.
And I'm very worried about policies that are focused on that to promote access to the Internet, because quite on the contrary, policies that go to that do not respect the principle of net neutrality. And I think connecting the discussion of that brings about to qualifying access is fundamental. And because of the divide, even when you consider access even in developed countries. We might be constructing just another layer of digital divide in reaching Internet in its full extent is only possible to very few resourceful people.
As NETmundial multi‑stakeholder statement states, the Internet is a global resource which should be managed in the public interest, and I think we should reflect about the meaning of that notion of global resource and public interest, as it shall include at least the respect to the principle of net neutrality and the fundamental human rights.
Thank you.
>> ALICE MUNYUA: Thank you.
>> Martin Levy: Dr. Attwood, you have already given us some interesting insight into the earlier question, and instead of me asking you a specific question, I think I'm going to just give you the microphone and let you talk about the research that you do and specifically what you think is relevant with inside this session. Please go ahead.
>> Dorothy Attwood: Thank you very much. I'm just pulling together some of the things already made, because I've already talked on some of the research challenges. I think in speaking about Africa, as opposed to the whole developing world, which I keep feeling we need to speak about, is not this big homogenous group, and we really require case‑specific solutions. Across the developing world and particularly across Africa in our research is a very different evolution of broadband connectivity, from the Northern Hemisphere. This really challenges all the assumptions of trickle‑down diffusion models, of business models around getting broadband out there. Indeed, of usage by the poor.
What it's challenged is the regulatory interventions, regulatory frameworks we use in order to address these problems. We continue to use assumptions for more mature markets and more developed democracies that I think as soon as we are connected, as soon as we begin to deal with realities on the ground, we experience these challenges.
Just as I said, I think we need to really look on an individual case about how are we able to enjoy the benefits of these technologies when we've got these very low penetration levels. Despite these figures on growth, these growth figures are of very low bases. They are still very small figures. They sound big, but across the globe these are still relatively small figures. As I said, the real issue is what happens beyond connection? How do we ensure that people are able to use these technologies, access to the Internet more effectively? I think the two main issues, as I mentioned from the research, as we see, is that it's not really just around the infrastructure that we need to focus on in terms of broadband policies. And I think we can create the correct broadband environment and we have spoken about the need for open access policies that can leverage public and private investments that are already there.
That's obviously absolutely critical. But what we do need to look at is the demand‑side stimulation issues. The key issue there, before we get onto the long‑term intergenerational issues we have spoken about are the issues of pricing. We have seen pricing come down significantly. Obviously, we can learn a lot. Instead of looking at broadband evolution in the north, what we should be looking at is mobile evolution in average and some of the lessons we can learn there. What we do know is people will be connected by mobile. The backbone issues can be addressed. Last mile can really be addressed with mobile. That is where people will be connected. And how do we ensure that the use of that Internet then is more equitable than it currently is?
>> Martin Levy: I have a question, but I'll hold off for the moment. I'm aware of time. But thank you.
>> ALICE MUNYUA: Thank you. Miss Salam Yamout, would you tell us what the government is doing in Lebanon in terms of policy regulations to create universal and affordable access, and what are the challenges?
>> Salam Yamout: Well, actually, I'm going to take a larger look into the Middle East as a whole and tell you that my region is an uneven region in terms of access. So average is 45%, but we have countries like the gulf countries and the United Arab Emirates and you have countries like Iraq that you will see the broadband penetration is not broadband; it's narrowband. We don't know why the broadband penetration is low. It could be because of the absence of policies for broadband deployment. It could also be because of technical reasons, lack of technical know‑how.
The telecom market is liberalized. Most countries have national telecom regulators that are independent. However, the market is still dominated by the incumbents that are controlled by the government. We see activities of local ISTs that are trying to merge in countries like Lebanon, Palestine, Turkey, and Iran. Two things to take from this analysis: Governments are still large, big decision‑makers in the Arabic and the Middle Eastern countries. And the second result is that the market is still not very competitive; so not saturated. So there is room here for more competition, more private sector investment.
The important thing about the region is that it shows 16% growth rate on Internet penetration. This is the highest in the world. However, again, it's not necessarily because of policies. There are two reasons for that. The first reason is that the market is not saturated. And the second reason is because the whole region is very young. Half of the population is under the age of 25. And 28% of the population on average is between the ages of 15 and 29 years old.
So, unfortunately, youth employment rate is the highest in the world at 25%, twice the world average. So it makes us think that lack of representation of youth in government and the unemployment are important factors in that cause youth unsatisfaction and destabilization. And I think for Lebanon and all the other countries around Lebanon, the government is putting more efforts into deploying broadband strategies that aim at spurring economic and social development. Such policies can go a long way into bringing stability and rest into the whole region.
>> Martin Levy: Miss Varon, Argentina. I want to bring up one of my favorite subjects and put you, if I may, on the spot. Argentina has followed other countries in building excellent Internet exchanges, both done originally ‑‑ as private endeavors, but has improved dramatically the connectivity, the Internet access in the country. Can you talk about how things have changed in Argentina, but also give us some ideas on some of the things coming out of your department that are relevant in the policy side of things? And also in just the growth and the connectivity in what is a very ‑‑ the right word ‑‑ you're a very sparse country in a large percentage of the ‑‑ very sparse area in large percent of the country, but then also some very dense cities, such as obviously Buenos Aires and the like.
>> JOANA VARON: Thank you. I will speak in Spanish. Indeed, as you say, that's what's happened in our country. And finding access through policies and telecommunication is one of the guiding actions of the Internet. Since 2003 to date we have a federal plan for access to ICT. This was based on improving access. As you said, our country has 40 million inhabitants over an area of approximately 2 million 800 kilometers squared and 22 provinces. We are the eighth largest country in the world. This is an amazing challenge for us in terms of designing our public policies and making sure that we achieve access for rural zones, which have very little access to telecommunications. In that regard, our country has set up various policies for dealing with the digital divide and making our policies as inclusive as possible. In order to achieve this, we have the Argentina connected plan, which is for fiber-optic networks, which will be across 40,000 kilometers throughout our natural territory.
In this programme we have been able to achieve access for 15,000 localities in Argentina, which did not have access to fixed telephone lines. In that regard, this plan, amongst other objectives, seeks to set up hubs in different cities of the country which are places for people to meet and which will stimulate education, improve health, and entertainment possibilities.
Currently we have about 160 of these hubs throughout the country. The idea is to continue throughout 2015 installing these and making this an area for people to meet. Furthermore, in Argentina, we have a programme which is based on equality of access and making sure that each child will have a tablet and four and a half million of these netbooks have been given. This is the most inclusive in the world. We have received many prizes for its development. Finally, since 2003 to date, one of the main principal access is to improve communication across Argentina. In October of this year we had our first satellite setup, SAT 1. And this has been entirely produced in our country. The major part of the work was carried out in Argentina.
In our region, in terms of the number of users of telecommunications, we have access Internet and various technologies. And to conclude, the federalization has been one of the pillars in taking Argentina and prioritizing development and inclusion.
>> Martin Levy: Thank you.
>> ALICE MUNYUA: Thank you. Rohan, we have extensive research, especially on regulatory best practice. Would you share with us what the regulatory best practice to enhance and encourage and increase Internet access penetration?
>> Rohan Samarajiva: I was fortunate to be both in regulation and in public policy when mobile really took off in Asia, southeast Asia in particular. As has been stated, some of the largest numbers of the unconnected.
One of the things that I think the key lesson that we can take from that is that government at that time focused on the important issues of issuing the licenses that is allowing entry, giving out the frequencies, and ensuring a connection. It didn't try to get into things that it is not competent to do. One of the concerns that I have listening to today's conversations about the Internet is that we are, perhaps, asking governments to do too much. Governments are the only people they have given themselves the monopoly of dealing with frequencies, with spectrum. Unfortunately, we have a large number of cases where spectrum is not being reformed. It is not being efficiently managed. It is not being given for the most optimal users by the people who can use them.
We have enormous numbers of cases, including India and Brazil some of the largest countries in the world, where universal service taxes have been levied. Money has been taken from the customers through the telephone companies, and is not being spent effectively. We are talking about billions of dollars stuck. I'm talking about very broad broadband plans that have been envisioned and proposed but not implemented. The Indian national optical fiber network is two years behind time. Two years behind the time not we gave, but the time that the government set for itself. And I'm actually not confident that even that deadline might be met.
So I think that the really important thing is the government should focus on spectrum, making sure that the operators and even decentralized users inspect environment have the adequate spectrum that they need, because nobody else can do this job.
I think government should focus on backhaul issues, which have become more and more important within countries as well as regionally and internationally. We are working with UN ESCAP for supporting the need for terrestrial backhaul, and some of the services that are going on in undersea cables. What I think the government should do is give regulatory certainty, do not things like retroactive taxation, and create the environment for investment on one hand and ensure that all their policies create space by decentralized as well as nonprofit entities. The mobile telecom question, the mobile telecom issue that we are all very proud of, including those, was not solved by government solution making alone. It was solved by ‑‑ it was solved by decentralization by the private sector and by government and by nonprofit entities. I think more important is we preserve the space for decentralized innovation in broadband access. Thank you.
>> ALICE MUNYUA: Thank you, Rohan.
>> Martin Levy: Thank you. Mr. Mathews. There you are, sir. Mr. Mathews, you are specifically in the mobile business from India. We've already discussed ‑‑ we actually had the question of measuring broadband versus measuring mobile penetration. We've heard different numbers. We've heard interesting information from different countries of how mobile is so important. It's an open question. The numbers have said it's more important ‑‑ the question was asked it's more important to measure broadband, but from you mobile would presumably be more important. Can you talk about this? And also talk a little bit about spectrum and policy associated with providing spectrum for this massive requirement for more bandwidth anywhere the world.
>> Rajan Mathews: As far as Indian is concerned, talking about the private sector point of view, where 85% of the telecommunication network is provided by the private sector, there is going to be a massive explosion of the optic as far as this is concerned. Our Prime Minister has headlined ‑‑ it's "Come see what is happening India."
What we'll be seeing in terms of mobility is from where we are at about 65 million unique subscribers to go to 100%, which is about 1.1 addressable market, 1.1 billion subscribers utilizing voice services. Today we have about 125 million unique folks who access the Internet in the urban areas. We expect by the year 2020 we will have increased that to about 630 million subscribers. So, again, you can see the scope of the opportunities that are available India.
One of the unique characteristics that you'll find in India is the fact that mobility and mobile networks are the dominant networks, the landline networks only cover about 7%. Cable networks are almost insignificant in terms of telecommunication stability.
The issue whether broadband or data services, we look at it more in terms of data optic. What subscribers want to use their data connectivity for, whether it be Internet or other applications, is really up to the consumer to decide. The things that we see driving usage on the data network is principally government activity. The government of India has articulated that and shown that the types of services that are going to come from the government and governance, what we call governance issues, where customers and subscribers and citizens access government services over the network, banking, education, 400 million children and adults under the age of 25‑30 that have to be educated and skilled. That will happen over mobile networks because that is the most ubiquitous access in our country today and which we will build on.
The second thing is health. Again, we have to be able to provide services over our networks. Again, this whole issue of statistics and coverage will be principally driven by our mobile network which will increasingly become digital networks. So the issue of whether it's broadband or narrowband or whatever, I think will increasingly become not that much of an issue as far as the consumer, because it's going to be the consumer that's going to define the type of services that then want off of our networks.
>> Martin Levy: I'll ask you a quick question. 7% India has just broadband access only? Is that a number that has changed much or is it stable at 7%? Is it growing? Is mobile really going to just, like you say, become the absolute dominant player there?
>> Rajan Mathews: As far as our networks are concerned, it will be the absolute dominant access protocol that's going to happen. Principally, if you look at the last several quarters of results that have been disclosed by our operators, the growth in digital connections is in the order of 15, 20, 25%, quarter over quarter. Yes, we are at 7%. We are now expecting to grow that to 25% over the next two to three years. Very, very rapid acceleration in terms of digital access. 3G, 4G networks are rolling out even as we speak. It's taken about three years now to kind of roll this out. That is kind of internationally kind of the benchmark we see that we will not lag behind that. Significant amount of investments to the tune of about 200 billion USD will have to be made. So that goes to the whole issue of the private networks really being able to raise that type of funding to make that a reality.
>> Martin Levy: I understand. Thank you.
>> ALICE MUNYUA: Thank you. Alison, do you want to ‑‑ yes. Alison.
>> Alison Gillwald: I wanted to respond on the same point. I think it relates to the point that Rohan was making in the earlier section. I think we keep coming back ‑‑ we keep being posed this question. So it's more mobile, not broadband. I think the point that was made right from the intervention that the point that was being made is it's certainly in Africa we're talking mobile broadband. That is the primary measurement. That's the problem that are household measures, old broadband etc. That's not the primary use.
It's the issue that the alternative platforms, etc. But in terms of the actual conditions on the ground, the issues, the regulatory challenges, the policy challenges, we're talking about mobile broadband. As I said, a whole lot of assumption that we carry from the north about quality of broadband and the price of broadband and all of these things are turned on their head. And in South Africa you can get cheaper, hyperquality mobile broadband than you can get ADSL and you can get fixed line. All of them suffer from the same latency problems, because they all are through London anyway, instead of regional connectivity and stuff. So these are the regulatory challenges now. As I said, what we need to do is learn from the mobile environment, not the broadband‑fixed environment in Europe. The competition and the reduction in termination rates in mobile that brought down those prices and got people on board and playing the game. What we need to look at now, what are the bottlenecks in the broadband environment? What are the problems around peering and IP concentrates? How is it affecting the ability of ISP competitors to come in and offer services, etc.? Then, of course, how does that relate to issues ensuring you get the necessary investment in order to continue to roll out these services?
So I think it's really a false juxtaposition to think about are we talking broadband or mobile? In the developing world we're talking mobile broadband and then the other issues that go alongside of that. What are the challenges of getting fiber out there in greater quantities, etc.
>> Martin Levy: Yes. Thank you. I have to remember that when you are talking and you say "from the north," that you actually do mean the Northern Hemisphere. And I remember that in context. But talking of the Southern Hemisphere, Raul, you wanted to say something? Can I just ‑‑ I wanted to just keep you nice and short and sweet and tight so that we have enough time for questions at the end.
>> Raul Echeberria: Yes. I want to add complexity to the discussion, because I tend to agree with my colleague from South Africa. I think we have to consider the differences between different parts of the world. I am from the South Hemisphere. And I have many times I have felt that the definition descriptions, the standards that are developing in the North mainly in developing countries doesn't fit exactly the needs and situations on the developing countries.
I want to add complexity, as I said before, because we should also try to develop a common understanding of what we understand by Internet access, because we are speaking about mobile broadband. But broadband is something. But what is important is what we use ‑‑ how will we use the broadband? What do we do with the broadband? And I have seen in some countries, especially in developing countries, that are coming up and popping up with services offering mobile access, but not full Internet access, but access just to limited set of services. And while it is very good that people access to those services or have access to the social networks, I think if we really want to have an impact on access to the knowledge that is one of the things that are more important for the developing countries, we need people accessing full Internet. And this is something that we should consider very seriously. Not only speaking about broadband, but speaking about what we do with the broadband.
>> Martin Levy: Okay. Mr. Sharma, you wanted to make a comment?
>>R.S. SHARMA: I just wanted to say that these not look at access only from the perspective of infrastructure. Because in our country, for example, while the private sector is putting up Internet 3G, 4G, and really getting with us now in the rural areas. On the other hand, government trying the fiber optical network which would provide broadband to more or less everybody in the rural areas. I think two or three aspects are very important. One is that access should not be confused with individual access.
There are many situations where one would like to access digital resources, but maybe they'll need something more than just access. They will need printout staff and some kind of resources. So the common service centre, which I spoke to you about, that is very important in our prospective to providing services to the people. So that becomes very important. And what we are doing is we are having 2.5 common centres and then using the Indian postal service network, about 1.5, about 150,000 post offices. So that is one.
Secondly, what we are trying is digitize the entire sort of system in the government, which means the digital certificates, the land records, and other kinds of stuff. It's huge work. That will actually enable this law on the system, having just the information is not really good. You must also generate content. And that should be able to provide services to the people.
Lastly, and most importantly, there is a very huge problem which has now been undertaken of digital literacy. People should not only have access to resources, people should also have the capacity to access those resources, and that digital access promise goes hand in hand with other parts. Essentially infrastructure, content, digitalization, capacity building, all of these things together to really think about kind of competence and capability of the people. I think everything, as somebody previously said, it is each country specific. In some countries you have other strategies, and other countries you have to fine tune the strategies for the conditions there. Thank you.
>> Martin Levy: Thank you. I have one other piece to fit in. Before I do that is correct I want to make a comment. We're about 45 minutes ‑‑ 44 minutes until the end of this session. And if we continue at this pace, we will definitely have time for questions and that's good. I've already got some that are in the queue. But I want to address the speakers for a second as well. Start thinking about how you want to summarize in a classic Twitter 140 ‑‑ let's say 140 words, not 140 characters, in a very short, sweet, important sentence. Think about that now. We'll do the round at the end before we finish. As to how you want to sum up this session. So I'm giving you a good heads up on that.
Jari, again, because of what I just said, I'll keep you to a short time, please. You wanted to make a comment as well on this point?
>> Jari Arkko: Yeah, just a quick follow‑up on this question of mobile broadband versus other things. Someone mentioned that in the developing countries this is the mobile broadband is often easiest available option. It's not just developing countries. For me personally, I can get faster Internet access from mobile broadband than with the ADSL that I get in my area. It can happen other places as well.
But to sort of put a stop to that discussion, I think we should not worry too much about a different technology. It's a good thing that we have multiple types of technology to access the Internet. What is really mattering is that we have broadband in the sense of high speed, as well as open Internet role mentioned already that we can actually access everything that we need. Those things are the important factors. And that is what we should focus on. Thank you.
>> Martin Levy: Miss Opeke.
>> Funke Opeke: I wanted to speak on digital inclusion. Jari also touched on this, because I believe for digital inclusion to happen in Africa, as he said, there needs to be a focus on building up the local Internet ecosystems and the local Internet economies. And what we find is there is significant multilateral collaboration towards policy formation. Once those policy also have been put in place, then implementation becomes largely driven by the private sector.
When you look at the private sector now coming into these developing markets, I think a lot of what we find are what I would call helicopter actions, where some of the actions are not really engaging the local economy, and not creating sustainable solutions to drive the long‑term objectives. So by coming in on the purely commercial basis, targeting that 5% of the population that's already oversold, and not really able to drive more value. We're not looking at collaborative solutions that get into schools, public institutions, really benefit the consumer and drive the kind of usage and growth that sustains itself and builds on any investment.
So for everybody that's invested to facilitate communications or Internet access for that other three billion, a lot more could be achieved with engagement of the local Internet ecosystem and really driving penetration in that way. And I really think in terms of that private, where we're spending the time and money, because some of the initiatives from the developed world really are not sustainable because there's no support system in most of these countries to help stand the test of time. Thank you.
>> Martin Levy: Thank you. Just hold up one second.
If you would like to comment also, I know you requested, Mr. EL‑Gamal?
>> Hossam EL‑Gamal: First, I would like to comment that I wanted to have more balance that some people didn't have enough opportunity to comment. This is very important. I'll be quite short. We have been talking a lot about access, access development and growth. So from our understanding and I talk about developing countries, Africa and Egypt, Internet is not the aim. Internet, like energy, like electricity, is the power for enabling our future. And so I can take from Jerry and from Mr. Sharma, we don't have to follow the same road to achieve the result. Also, it is not about access, but sometimes we can achieve a lot by enabling people and enabling different sectors. It is important to have local Internet access points sometimes.
It is very important to have local content with local access. It is very important to have access for disadvantaged groups. And it is very important to look at the access strategy as part of a holistic national strategy in ICT. This is what Egypt is doing. I'm a private sector representative, but I appreciate a lot the way it has been implemented and the multi‑stakeholder approach to put the national strategy. Among that is the access broadband. It is important for developing countries to think about creative ways of having access faster and enabling services, applications, and content faster.
We ‑‑ in Egypt we took a triple P approach, where private/public partnership to achieve that result. We are talking about investment of 45 billion Egyptian and only government is putting 20% of this. The rest is private sector ROI for that. Again, this is only what a clear ROI comes from the fact that there are other strategy complementing this one to the enablement. We are connecting within two years 50% of the remote health units, 50% of the education and institutions, and 50% of the villages. And by 2021 we will be having every one of those connected with 25 mega fiber-optic connect. The same is applied for the homes.
Again, I wanted to make sure that it is all about digital society. It is all about enabling sectors. This brings me back to the fact that we need to bring between this and also IGN that we need more inclusion of other sectors. We are all here from the Internet somehow. We don't have people from automotive. We don't have people from financial sector. We don't have people from agriculture or government sectors, when those are the ones that will use the valuable position of having the Internet. Those are the ones that are facing the challenges. We need to hear more from them as well.
Thank you very much.
>> Martin Levy: So you were the first person to use the words ROI, return on investment. In the commercial world that normally is a very hard number, a spreadsheet number that must be positive in order to show a company success. When you talk about the government involvement and helping, and you talked about health, for example, can you use the word ROI? And if you can, can you ‑‑ how do you use it? Is it in a soft way? Could you talk about that point?
>> Hossam EL‑Gamal: This is very interesting. Sure. We talk about health. Again, in Egypt we have 5,500 remote health units. If we connect those health units and use eHealth facility, two things will happen. We'll minimize cost of transportation. We'll minimize cost of time and cost for people, but at the same time people are willing to pay an extra fee to have the service in place. By this we are minimizing the overall cost for the government and whoever is going to provide the service in a PPP model is going to make profit out of it. The model is all profitable. It has to be profitable. Otherwise, we have tangible indicators, but we have KPIs that we can really assess and make it profitable, otherwise why is company making broadband on ROI if it is not profitable?
Alice, to you.
>> ALICE MUNYUA: Thank you very much. Mr. Liang, we haven't heard from China. It will be very interesting to hear from experiences in the Internet access at the international level and the role of Civil Society in that process.
>> Guo Liang: Thank you. I will be a member for three years of MAG and attended for three years. Hardly any Chinese voice heard. Now voice heard from Chinese government. Actually, it may misunderstood. China Internet project is not whole China. It's a research project about how people access Internet and what's the social impact. Is only my research.
Okay. So I had a question for long time about digital divide. Is that theory true, or is just so they IT company to sell computers? So actually, there's two levels. One is a state level. We've already get answer that according to recent McKenzie study that Internet economy do contribute to GDP. China is pretty good at the situation.
China Internet economy contribute maybe 6% or 7% to GDP. It's ranking 5th, better than U.S., Germany, France. What about individual level? I conduct a survey about Internet use and impact in 2003. It seems about one‑third of Internet users didn't use e‑mail, didn't use search engine. So I always ask question: What purpose for you to use Internet? Mostly for entertainment.
So I conclude you that Internet at that time for China is more like entertainment highway rather than information highway. But now things changed. About half population in China already can access. The eBusiness to buy things, the daily trading on Taobao is more than eBay plus Amazon. So it's quite huge. Also, for we have application we chat. Also many, many people, more than one billion users to use that. Only two minutes. Sorry.
So what happen, I think also in China there's mainly government driven. There's a Chinese government invented word, "informationization," meaning promote ICT for development. China but for central government to providence level to city level to county level, all have "informationization" office to promote ICT.
Also, there's a code in progress for government to spend lots of money in developing country. We don't have computer and database before the Internet. It is different from developed countries. China government also set up a standard. I think many cell phone users should set some government standard. I think my time is it run out. So maybe later to discuss.
>> ALICE MUNYUA: Thank you very much. Ambassador Sepulveda, you have a comment/question?
>> DAVID SEPULVEDA: I wanted to inject a thought. We have been talking a lot about some very important questions raised to national broadband plans and local solutions, ensuring markets that are not traditionally reached by the market but private sector are reached, people with disabilities and rural and disenfranchised communities. We have to ensure that solutions can migrate and you can build an experiment at the local and national level on the open platform internationally. So as we work to talk about these things, we need to remain committed as a community to ensuring that the platform remains open, that it remains global, and that there is few barriers to entry and basing in markets around the world as possible so you get the financing necessary to build out networks, cross‑policination, and different experiences taking place in other parts of the world. I think that's really critical.
The other thing that I want to say is that I want to make sure that we recognize that this is a glass‑half‑full situation, that the deployment and the growth of the Internet has been, as was mentioned from our colleague, unparalleled in the history of the world. That didn't happen by accident. We have to make sure that whatever we do relative to the continued deployment and growth of the Internet builds on what works, and then we need to continue to have conversations about identifying those mechanisms that work.
I think a lot of what the minister from Nigeria said about ensuring that they're competitive markets and an ecosystem that's healthy for investment, that there's a real commitment to collaboration and work across markets and ensuring that the opportunities and benefits of the Internet are available across the industry into various different sectors.
>> ALICE MUNYUA: Thank you.
>> Martin Levy: Mr. Mangal, I was about to ask you a question. May I get the answer and continue in one session? That would be quite different.
>> Anju Mangal: I'd like to raise the issue, at the risk of exclusion of small enterprises, because we haven't spoken about this. But it could be a significant problem, small enterprises when their principal activities are not digital, can find themselves in a situation of exclusion, the lack of time for initiation to the use, the traditions, the difficulty financially speaking, are all issues which can lead to exclusion of small enterprises and create a new divide, enough digital divide. Therefore, we must ask ourselves the question as to how to find the needs that are necessary that include small enterprise in the digital universe.
>> Martin Levy: Okay. Mr. Mangal, one question: Your committee in Europe has looked at access and could you talk about what you've learned from a very high penetration, very high penetration in Europe. What have you learned that would be useful for the rest of the world from this committee?
>> Anju Mangal: I would like to speak to an observation on what was by Mrs. Kroes about my country, Italy. True, it's there that 40% of the population have never had access to Internet, but Italy is the leading country in the world in terms of the number of smartphones and families. 140 million smartphones for 40 million families out of 55 million inhabitants. And I do not think that they have just bought these smartphones to take photos with. It's also to have access to Internet for their mail, etc. And so there is a problem relating to the statistics in terms of effective usage of smartphones and computers for the Internet.
The committee has designed many tools for the European parliament with regard to the use of the Internet and economic development and employment.
We have isolated the risk for exclusion and need for intervention for small and medium enterprises for the physically challenged, for those who have a limited level of education. These are the crisis situations in Europe, but I believe we have to intervene in all countries.
>> Martin Levy: Thank you.
Mr. Jensen, where are you? There you are, sir. Sorry, I did not notice that. Okay. You are a specialist in this area from the technical community. And you've heard a lot of people talk about policy. You've heard a lot of people talk about numbers. You've heard standardization. What have we missed from the technical side? What haven't we discussed yet that is important from actually getting the nuts and bolts and everything to actually work?
>> Mike Jensen: Thank you for that question, Martin. I think we really do need to unpack the access issue in more detail. We talk about it in general terms and in particular in meeting the needs of the next billion in terms of mobile broadband. But if we actually look at what it costs to get access, the latest Alliance For Affordable Internet evaluation found that it costs about 50% of someone's income in Africa to access mobile broadband. And then when we talk about these users accessing mobile broadband, what does it actually mean to access it? Many people are only just getting onto it for a few quick short e‑mails because it's so expensive. Or they're given world gardens where they can only access Wikipedia, or Facebook, for example, and they don't see any other part of the Internet.
I think we have to really understand better what it means by "access," and think of all these technologies as complementary and not focus on one single type of technology. We need that constellation of technologies. As it has been said earlier, public access is a very important part of that. We can't just depend on mobile access and then public access has fallen off the public policy agenda over the last few years, mainly because everyone has been thinking that mobile access will meet everyone's needs.
I think we need to look beyond that. At the same time there's no doubt that mobile access is a big part of the picture, especially in the interim phase while we develop other rollouts of technologies. We're already seeing fiber to the home in a number of Africa capital cities. That kind of process is going to continue all over the continent. And to think that we're just going to be dependent on one type of technology in developing countries is a bit patronizing. And I don't think it will be much different in the developing world over the next decade.
How do we achieve this best? We really need to open up the markets to more competition. That's the area where I think we need the most action. For example, in Africa, even in the mobile sector we only see about three or four countries with number portability, which will improve competition in the mobile sector. It's not the only way of doing this, but I think it's an indication of the lack of competition. Similarly, we see very few designations of significant market power to price control the dominant operators. So we need more strength in that type of regulation, too. So in general, we need to open it up also to different types of technologies such as TV White Space, and more Wi-Fi and allow fixed wireless providers to really start competing with mobile to develop an ecosystem where everyone's user needs are met.
Thank you.
>> Martin Levy: A quick question. You mentioned number portability. Do you have a number ‑‑ do you have a percentage of countries or how many actually exist, either continent‑wide or globally?
>> Mike Jensen: Out of the 53 countries in Africa, I believe only three and four have implemented number portability.
Now, the number of users in those countries have actually ported the numbers is very small. But it's an indicator of part of the whole ecosystem of the competitive pressure. I think you will find those countries, Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa, being the main three, and Kenya being the fourth one. Those countries have the most competitive environments, the lowest costs, the best coverage, and the highest speeds. But it's not because of number portability. It's because they understand that regulatory environment needs more competition. Similarly, I think a good indicator is the number of Internet exchange points. These are the places where networks exchange traffic locally. Again, they're very sensitive to this policy environment, the enabling environment and lack of competition. So we have about a hundred countries without Internet exchange points. If you look at that list of countries, you'll find that generally the ones that are the least competitive.
>> Martin Levy: Interesting correlation there.
Professor Reed. We all want a Ph.D. We only have two minutes and 30 seconds for you to teach us everything you know to get our Ph.D. in access. The microphone is yours.
>> David reed: I think as a technologist myself, I'll build on what Mike just had to talk about. I want to talk about a report that we recently published in working with Jennifer Haroon and Patrick Ryan. We researched the question of how broadband deployment might look for the next five billion. And the research question that we focused on in this paper was what technologies will be used and what are the most needed policies to remove deployment barriers. It's good going at the end here, because we are at the higher level. We have heard all these terrific case studies in all the different emerging countries. We tried to take almost strategic view of what are the best practices and approaches that we can synthesize in moving forward in connecting the next five billion.
Our report quickly zeroed in on the local access network as a major remaining barrier to extending broadband to areas in emerging countries without the Internet. The reason for this is the lack of a low cost. Bandwidth is not free. The lack of a low cost network solution in the last mile was lack of electricity, particularly in Africa, for important reasons.
We also identified significant policy barriers, such as restricted entry into the local access market, poor spectrum management, difficulty to pursue, infrastructure sharing to reduce cost, and lack of government leadership as other significant policy questions.
To address these barriers, we introduced the concept of broadband road maps to identify and describe the last mile solutions. I borrowed this from the private sector in terms of road mapping. To Mike's point, you do have to get detailed about what things cost. A roadmap is a technique used in the private sector to do strategic planning. What we identified and general insights from this analysis, number one is wireless over wire line in the near term due to the lower fixed cost. I would note there are wireless leapfrogging concerns, because mobile broadband and mobile service are not necessarily direct substitutes now. Unless you have a Smartphone, even with a Smartphone you don't have the same experience. There are some issues. That might tick at a time why those are separate categories for a while.
So wireless wins in the near term. There is a gradual extension of fiber from the core closer to the edge as local conditions permit, and cost. So fiber is being deployed and the network core. It will extend out to the edge. At the speed of the broadband is directly proportional to the population density. Higher density, higher speed. And cost is indirectly proportional to population density. Higher density, lower the cost, and vice versa.
On the policy front, we describe a policy approach to help enable the deployment of broadband road maps, despite these challenging business conditions. Shared infrastructure. Most of them have been mentioned today. Spectrum policy issues. Access and interconnection. Innovation and stimulation demand for broadband, and the need for strong collaboration.
I note we'll discuss these ideas in a workshop later on this afternoon at 4:30 if you want to go into more depth in some of these issues. That will be an opportunity to do that.
The next steps in this research are to use this notion of broadband road mapping in an actual area, particularly unserved areas in Peru. We'll use it as a case study. We'll look at the specific costs of different wireless options, microwave, satellite, wifi, TV White Space. These are all options. We can help to understand what deployment might be in these underserved areas, that might be useful for the next five years in the roadmap.
>> Martin Levy: We have another workshop until we get our final Ph.D., then, is the answer. This is a question that you're an academic and I want to ask this question. But doing research and writing this paper on access, I mean, was this an easy thing to do? A hard thing to do? Give us a guide for we've heard lots of numbers today. We've heard lots of ideas and we've heard opinions. But when you go out to actually do something analytically and do it as an academic, is it really easy to substantiate the numbers or do you find discrepancies as you go through different measurements? We've already talked about mobile versus broadband, but you started talking about delving into the amount of fiber as to the user. Give us an idea of the complexity of the work that you had to do.
>> David reed: In looking at the research that has been done to date, there has been a lot of research in breaking down the value chain for the Internet starting from the international access points all the way down to the end user. But there has been a lot of focus on connecting in the Internet core using fiber back bones. A lot of the high density areas. But at least in our research there was not a lot of detail associated with the local access options. It tends to be dominated in specific areas with particular specific approaches that have favored ‑‑ that are favored for one reason or another. But there wasn't just a straight‑out road mapping exercise that really did a good job and fair job at the costs associated with some of the different options. So that's what we're going forward to be doing before.
It's complex. It's difficult. A lot of this types of costs estimation in the past. It can be controversial. But the point is that you can get some general trends and trade‑offs that are more better understood. That's what we'll be working to do.
>> ALICE MUNYUA: Thank you very much.
Rohan, please.
>> Martin Levy: I was having a discussion about different researchers.
>> Rohan Samarajiva: One of the things we do is we conduct research among small businesses that he talked about. We are not actually sitting in the ivory tower. We go into remote areas, into tough parts of towns. We look at how poor they use these technology. We are not technology specific. We don't only ask with mobile or mobile broadband. We ask whether they get ICT. What kind of ICTs they use. What kind of electricity services they use. And I want to make just one point regarding access. Here at these levels we talk about access as though we know what it is. Governments talk about giving people electricity, when in actual fact they get one hour of electricity a day in many parts of India or Bangladesh.
Governments talk about giving people Internet or having Internet available. Companies talk about making Internet available. In actual fact, they get way below what the advertisers ‑‑ what is advertised. So we need to focus on what access actually means, which is something that small businesses or individual consumers can actually do something with. And there's a lot of research that we have done on the ground using big data, using the analysis, unpacking supply side data to answer these questions.
>> ALICE MUNYUA: Thank you Rohan.
John Walunbengo, and it was developed for a completely different challenge. What would you say the best practice from a society perspective regulatory ‑‑ both regulatory and best practice that has enabled this to happen at the national level?
>> JOHN WALUBENGO: Okay. Thank you, Alice. I would like to share the Kenya experience. It was access. I think it was in 2008 and 2009 when Kenya landed the submarine cable in Mombasa. Previously in Africa we had submarine cables against the West African coast along to South Africa. I think it's only from Mombosa that the actual model was actually implemented. You had people landing the submarine at the West African coast. They created a private member club. They decide who connects, and for the Kenya experience, we had the regulatory saying, it doesn't matter who lands the submarine cable, you must open it up. You must allow anybody who is willing to connect to connect.
And I think that has worked out pretty much well for Kenya. That was extended at the local level. When the regulatory decided to unbundle the last mile, meaning that the local operators would allow anybody the services today to the customer at the last mile as opposed to restricting it to whoever built the infrastructure. And the second point that worked for Kenya is the regulator came up with the unified licensing framework in which they actually restructured the teleco market. Previously it was in terms of the owners of the infrastructure were not allowed, for example, to provide Internet service, just the infrastructure. With unified licensing and framework allowed anybody, again, to provide any service, including those on the infrastructure. Local operators previously were walking through ISP to provide the service. Now we could do it by themselves. At that point, again the regulator came out strongly and managed to control the interconnection for the voice network. By doing that they brought down the voice communication and allowed most Kenyans to have reason to buy the mobile phone and then itself provided a platform for data services, because if that had not happened, there would be no business case for data services.
The last point I want to make is a policy calling new intervention policy. The regulator needs to know when not to intervene. And in this particular case I want to mention mobile money service that is globally acclaimed. The regulator allowed this financial service to happen in an environment that has absolutely no policy. They were attempt by the central bank to come in and clamp down on this development, but it was eventually agreed to let it grow and then the policies kicked in much later. Thank you.
>> ALICE MUNYUA: Thank you very much.
Martin?
>> Martin Levy: Okay. We have an extra ten minutes from the translators. This is very needed. I have two questions from the floor. And I'm going to take those two questions that have already been given to me and get the questions to be answered as one, and then we'll have to go to our summary.
There's only a limited amount of time with the ability to do this. I have.
>> ALICE MUNYUA: Perhaps you can start with your question.
>> SONYA GEORGE: My name is Sonya George. I'm the executive director of the Alliance for Affordable Internet. I'm proud to see the message that we've been advocating for quick comments that perhaps some of you could also follow up. First of all, I really appreciate focusing on the digital inclusion. We're really trying to focus on not just bringing affordability to the Internet, but making sure we include as many as we can in these environment. And that's the purpose of us being here and the purpose of our work.
With that in mind, I wanted to say that it would be very important for us as a group here at IGM and all of us individually and through our organisation and our policy ideas here with the sustainable development grows, advocacy work that is taking place at the same time. It's important that the message for affordable Internet and policy for affordable Internet get carried beyond this environment on the largest discussions on development where we want to have also support and the recognition that the Internet is more than a simple tool but it is indeed critical for development purposes. I think it's important to do that. With that in mind, I hope you will help us all carry that message to that debate and making sure the universal and affordable access to broadband Internet is recognized as a goal in the post‑2015 development agenda.
But that is not enough on its own. And access is just the beginning. But access is important and access to information is important because it's useful and it's beneficial for populations around the world equally, and the way to do that correctly is not simply to provide access, but, again, as many of you mentioned, Alison as well, we need to make sure that we educate users that do a lot of work for the stimulation, and that the right policies and regulations are in place for users to know how they can use, how they can benefit, and have the right cost, as you mentioned, Alison. So the research to make sure that we have the evidence to show it's important, but stimulating demand is very important.
With that in mind, with access to information, and again, with the context of the sustainable development goals, I would like to call on all of us to think about access, not just in the standard form, as we've been discussing here today, but beyond, including opening up government data, making sure that access is important for freedom of expression. Not just one access to information, but we want all of users in developing world to be able to express their voices by using the Internet. So having access that brings all those possibilities is critical. And, of course, having those diverse voices represented through many channels, including the media, is important as well.
So thank you. Can we just keep it?
>> SUBI CHATURVEDI: My name is Subi Chaturvedi. I teach at the University of Delhi at a women's college. We run this initiative where young women students go out into the community. We have 840 million mobile phones where the young women are trying to create their own connect. So when Mr. Sharma spoke, those words were music to my ears. Digital connectivity capacity building, these are really important in addition to renewable energy power so these centres can become centres of excellence and speak for those voices that are not here in the room today.
Two specific questions, one to Ambassador Sepulveda, and the second to Dorothy Attwood, who mentioned that she will speak more on the question of local content and dissemination. There are many barriers where you can take this content. Let's say, for example, that these women are producing, and we would like it to be disseminated. This is an initiative that has been launched in India.
Multilingualism remains a challenge. How is that they stand a chance against Disney? And I love Disney. It's part of my growing up experience. How can this be disseminated so we have an incentive to come online? When I spoke with yesterday's session, the minister from Macedonia made an amazing and inspiring. How is it that ICT and support communication are not here in the room? And how is that we can get more governments to understand that access is not just about infrastructure, but about making sure that we don't hog the spectrum, free it up, and have similar conversations? How is that he takes this message across to other departments and other government interventions? Thank you.
>> Martin Levy: Can I just get you to hold the response, if that's okay? We had one last question we want to get in.
>> AUDIENCE: Thank you. I head the Telecom Centre in India. Listening to all these points, there are a few things based on the national broadband plan of India. And I hope other developing countries are relevant. Broadband is one of the most complex universe that governments have undertaken, and recognize that, one that we get to see here is that most of these plans are supply driven, not enough user or demand driver. Therefore, how do we ensure that it's not only about public provision of funds, but also about private involvement. More importantly about community involvement. It should not just be public/private partnerships, but public/private and community partnerships.
Second, interdepartmental coordination. So many of the plans ‑‑ national broadband plans across countries and it will be a major issue. Interdepartment coordination have to be developed. Why can we not use that underdeveloped infrastructure as an opportunity? India has a very nice programme, but I don't see the national broadband plan of India talking about the rural road programme. The third aspect is on capacity building and institutional development for national broadband plans. For example, it's not just competence and capacity of user's side, but also policymakers and regulators who need to get the Internet exchange points is one example where we need huge institutional capability building in the policymakers.
Thank you.
>> Martin Levy: Thank you.
I apologize. Ambassador Sepulveda, you wanted a response to the previous question? Then I will hand it to the chair to summarize. Sorry, and I'm sorry. I apologize, to ambassador.
>> DAVID SEPULVEDA: We also have the question for our colleague from India. Relative to Macedonia, I think it was the minister that raised the issue. And it's absolutely correct that this questions of access, the questions of communications, and particularly the questions of global communications as they relate to the Internet are cross‑industry, cross‑sector, and all of these need to come together at the table. It will happen over time, and it's something we're doing domestically. Our Department of Education works very closely with our FCC, so that schools are being connected at a hyper‑rate, also working very closely with contributions to make those things possible. Our automotive industry, someone talked about earlier, in the Internet of Things, and the connection of cars to make sure that you have much more energy efficient delivery of driving as well as much safer driving when cars with communicate with each other. So I fully take that point.
I do want to address the idea ‑‑ and Disney can speak for itself, but the idea that the young women that you're teaching are in some form or another in competition with Disney, it's really not a zero sum game. The openness of the Internet and the creativity and communication and the story telling that will come from multiple different communities will be absorbed due to different demand within those communities and across the world. And there is no ‑‑ there is nothing but an incentive for distributors to access as much content as possible. And there's nothing but an incentive for creators to encourage creativity in others.
I do want to make sure that what we're talking about in promoting multilingualism and in promoting that sort of many‑to‑many communications where many creators and many storytellers telling their own story in their own voice, using the open platform, using the capacity of local cost technology to deliver their stories, is what we're all trying to do and we're trying to do that together.
So with that, I'll defer to Disney and to our colleague from India.
>> Dorothy Attwood: I'll take it a little bit different direction and say that increasingly it used to be that companies like Disney, the business model was an export model. It was built professional content and push that content to markets that were emerging to the 5% you were talking about, to find people who could buy that product. The Internet is change all of that. The Internet has enabled much more of a recognition that in order to be successful, sustain successful, they have to be successful. To actually sustain and foster the local creative industries, because that is actually in the business interest of a company like Disney. It's not just that we're always looking for great stories, which we always are, but it's also because that is, in fact, what the Internet affords the ability to create these communities that build up ultimately a sustainable, creative environment. That lends itself to finding different avenues, different narratives, different voices that can be supported by large companies in partnership developing sort of next new entertainment environment.
>> R.S. SHARMA: I would like to respond to the other observations. It is absolutely true that unless we have a demand creating this infrastructure, we have no use. Once we have the exercise of the natural fiber network and all that, but we will need to evolve business models at the local level. We are private players will have to come in and they will have to figure out new ways of using this huge bandwidth which is being released.
Now, obviously some areas which are there, you know, waiting to be utilized, the bandwidth utilized, is areas like health, education, deliveries, something called public service deliveries. That's one part. Entertainment is also going to be another area. Intervention systems, to the stakeholders about happening, so these are many, many areas which are going to come up. Now, in all these areas, it is not as if the government is going to through the service delivery for the delivery entity. The private sector will have to come in and many areas will have source in that sense. So, therefore, certainly there is a huge need to actually work with private partners to ensure that when we develop the broadband infrastructure of very, very high bandwidth, we need to leave the infrastructure for public good. That's one very, very important part.
Now, there are honestly, when we started doing this, we started doing this with largely public service delivery in mind, not really the entertainment and other kinds of things, but they will certainly come up. The very area where India had a very specific requirement is the area of portability of entitlements. In India we have 1.2 billion population and about 200 to 300 billion people are moving from one place to another place. When they move, we need to have a system where their entitlement, maybe food grains at cheaper rates at supported programmes.
>> Martin Levy: I'm sorry, I'm really out of time, both for the translators and all of the support side of this, but your point, I think, was well understood.
If I may return the microphone to the chair to close, and to make some final remarks.
>> Just as you asked, I would like the panelists and the participants to use the IGF hashtag and make your comments. That would be great. Ladies and gentlemen, I think this was an outstanding discussion that is truly enriched the idea of knowledge agenda. We hope you all take home with you the experience and examples of policies that have been successful until enabling powers of the Internet.
Having this chance, I would like to thank my sincere to the moderators Alice and Martin, and the panelists for the insight on the team, and the participants for variable discussions. I would also like to thank all MAG members for the outstanding efforts for coordinating and making this action happen. Also, special thanks to Mr. Janis for his guidance and Masango for his team and cooperation and great support.
Thank you. The last word is we have discussed Internet connects us in Istanbul where the continents of Asia and Europe meet. With these comments, I conclude the session.
>> Martin Levy: Thank you very much. One final. There is a feedback on the IGF website of which can be provided for the specific session. And I welcome anybody and everybody to that point. Thank you, and we are done.
(Adjourned.)
***
The preceding 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.
***