IG4D Transcript

 

 

Seventh Annual Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum
6-9 November 2012, Baku, Azerbaijan

7 November 2012

 

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The following is the output of the real-time captioning taken during the Sixth Meeting of the IGF, in Nairobi, Kenya. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the session, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.

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(afternoon session)

THE SECRETARY:  Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen, we are about to start.  Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen welcome to the main session for internet governance for development.

Our Chairman today is Mr Ishmael Ali Kaparov  sp head of the Department Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

THE CHAIR:  Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, thank you  for your introduction.  I know it sometimes not easy to get into the substantial issues straight after the lunch but we're going to try to smoothly get into the second part of today which is internet governance for development, which is one of the essential parts of our IGF forum this time.

Now we resume the meeting and I want to open the afternoon session.  Considering our overall theme this week, internet governance for sustainable human economic and social development.  I think the session is particularly important.

The session is going to be guided by two moderators, Ms Alice Munyua from the Government of Kenya and the chair of last year's IGF and Mr Carlton Samuels who is an academic and leader of user interests from Jamaica.

I am looking forward to go our discussion about these important issues that are at the heart of a dialogue for this IGF.

I would like to request the audience and participants for active engagement because there will be questions and answer sessions and there will be quite interactive discussions during the session.

Before starting up, I would like to give a little bit of context and the highlights about our expectations of today's session.

Actually, internet governance for development has been a cross‑cutting theme at the whole Internet Governance Forum since the first meeting in Athens in Greece in 2006.

Since that time there have been some developments and our aim is to ensure that the IGF continues to be relevant to the needs of developing countries and that is what we will discuss this afternoon because internet governance has been to a great extent recognised nowadays as one of the important elements in the overall development, particularly those who are exposed to the developing part of the developing regions in the world.

The topic of development is rarely covered in some cases, in many of the internet governance discussions taking place outside of the IGF; in other words, the internet governance for development be it discussed quite substantively in the framework of Internet Governance Forum, but elsewhere it has not yet received its deserved value or its deserved, you know, attention as well.

So that is why we want one of the strategies, I would say, and one of the, sort of, the vision that we want to create as part of this session to try to create and visualise this internet governance for development for wider community apart from the Internet Governance Forum.  At least we will try to start the process in this session.

The first topic we are going to discuss is going to be a good example of this which is the impact of new top level domain names on developing countries and what are the costs and benefits to the user.

There will be two set of questions.  Before that, let me clarify that there will be three clusters during the session.  Cluster number 1, as I mentioned, is called the pending expansion of the top level domain space.  Cluster 2 is called enabling environment and the last cluster will be infrastructure.

There will be two sets of questions for the second cluster and one question of course and then answers and summary sessions for the last cluster.

As I said, we are going to talk about more themes than top level domain spaces.  First, we are going to find out how to encourage investment in infrastructure and create an environment for innovation.

The second theme is going to be how can we open policy making processes to participants from developing countries and we're going to ensure that developing countries are able to participate in a meaningful way to internet governance processes.  Our moderators will tell you more on those concrete questions.

As I told you today, we will have two moderators, Miss Alice Munyua.  As I said, she is the Chair on the  Kenyan Internet Governance Steering Committee and the Government of Kenya and Mr Carlton Samuels.  He is a member of ICAAS at large  advisory committee and lecturer at the University of West Indies, Kingston, Jamaica.

The moderators' task will be to ensure you, the audience, are able to join the dialogue, so they will be intermediaries between the questions and the discussion processes which will be managed by yourself and the audience.

The moderators for remote participation, we have two moderators for remote participation, who are Ms Sylvia cadena and foowad by juwa  sp and we also have four expert panellists who will help us to understand the issues and we will hear from a number of workshop who have already held discussions on related topics and will share what they have learned.

We look forward to having very productive discussions.  Please bring forward the related questions for answers and for dialogue, for sharing, by the moderators, maybe some participants will have their own comments on some of the ideas.

Overall, we want to have a very interactive and live discussions which would help us as a wider IGF community to come up with concrete actions and follow‑up items.

Now I want to pass on to moderators.

Carlton, you can start now to moderate and engage panellists.  Thank you.

MR SAMUELS:  Thank you, Mr Chairman.

Good afternoon, everyone.  We are going to begin this session to set the stage by asking Professor David Souter to set the stage for the discussions.  Professor Souter, as you start you can probably spend a minute or two telling the audience about yourself and what you do and then you have ten minute.  Thank you, Professor Souter.

PROFESSOR SOUTER:  Thank you very much.  What I'm intending to do in this ten minutes is something slightly different from the rest of the session.

I want you to look at the platform behind me and look at the main theme for this year's IGF which is internet governance for sustainable human, social and economic development.

What I want to talk about is the overall relationship between internet governance and sustainable development.  I will start by saying something about what sustainable development means.  After all, it's a basic definition of development now in the UN system but it is often something of a cliche often misunderstood.  It is not about environmental protection.  I think that should be clear from the start.  It is about finding a balanced way forward which enables economic prosperity and social inclusion and environmental viability, environmental viability of a kind which enables the next generation to advance in development as much as the present generation does, which doesn't jeopardise that future generation's opportunities.  It emerged around the same time as the internet, say, 25/30 years ago and it is concerned with the world as a whole as well as with individual countries.  It is concerned with rich and poor, with north and south.

The threat to sustainability which was identified 25 years ago, and which remains now, is that many of the development models that we have are not environmentally viable into the long‑term.  They provide unbalanced growth.  They fail to deliver social inclusion and the object of sustainability development is to achieve something different from that.  The opportunity of sustainable development lies in the capacity for innovation, for doing things differently and that's also at the heart of what the internet does.

The starting point for this question is: firstly, what has sustainable development got to do with the internet; secondly, what has it got to do with internet governance?  One of the organisations I work with is the International Institute for Sustainable Development and that has been involved in the IGF for a number of years.  Today it has published a book, which I have in this form here and which is available from the APC stand in the village.  It is about the relationship between the internet and sustainable development over the past 30 years in which time the internet has become the most dynamic factor in global, social, economic, cultural and political development.

The principal concern of the book is the question whether the internet and the information revolution mean that we need to change our understanding of what sustainable development is and whether, in turn, sustainable development has implications for how we think about the internet and internet governance.

I will list some example of why this might be so and this is not the usual list of suspects of the ICTs are nice for development, it is about long‑term changes in global society which are taking place largely or substantially as a result of the internet: changes in the patterns of production, trade and consumption of goods services, who produces what and where; changes in the labour market, where people work and what they do; changes in access to information; changes in public services that depend on information like a health and education; changes in people's perceptions of their personal identity, of the communities in which they exist, virtual and physical; changes in relationships within families, between societies, between diasporas and home communities; ways in which people are becoming highly dependent on devices and intermediaries in the communications world to mediate their relationships with other people, with their governments, with businesses and so forth; changes in relationships between the citizen and the State, which we tend to think of in terms of democratisation and rights but also of surveillance and so forth; changes in the pattern of human settlements, where people live as face‑to‑face communications become less essential to them; and, of course, most of those changes have gone much further in industrial countries than they have in developing countries, which poses further challenges for developing countries as they seek to integrate into this very rapidly evolving global environment.

Now, I said these are not short‑term impacts, they are long‑term shifts in the way society works.  They reach to the nature of human society in a very similar way to that in which the industrial revolution affected European societies 300 years ago and that's why they're often called the information revolution.  They are changing the parameters of the feasible, the nature of opportunities and threats which face all countries.  They are not by any means all benign and they are not at all predictable in many cases.

They are deeply challenging, therefore, to governments that need to understand where they should invest for the future of their countries, where citizens are threatened.  They are especially challenging for resource‑strapped developing countries which have little margin for error when they are making choices about investment and planning.

So these changes in the nature of society and development and sustainability that I have described they are to a very large degree enabled by the internet.  Does that mean they are relevant to internet governance?  I think the answer to that depends on how narrowly we look at internet governance.  If we think that internet governance is merely technical, if we think it's about IPV6 and domain name management and so forth, perhaps your answer to that question would be "not much".  But actually issues like IPV6 and and domain name management do have substantial impacts on the opportunities that are available in developing countries and it is crucial for that and for other reasons, including reasons of equity that the interests and concerns of developing countries are heard more strongly an internet governance fora than they have been to date.

In practice, though, we don't actually think of internet governance that narrowly any more.  Much wider issues are involved in our debates around it.  Issues such as spam obviously cut across the boundary between the technical and public policy impacts.  Actually here we discuss far broader issues than that, such as the impact of the internet on rights or the role of the internet in public information or delivery of public services or the importance of access in enabling development and citizen empowerment.

That is not internet governance in any sense narrowly defined.  In fact, it is the governance of policy domains which are much more wide‑reaching where the internet is important but where primary governance responsibilities lie outside it very often in mainstream governance institutions.

So I will suggest three questions that that leaves us with.  My first question is this: it is about how far we think internet governance is concerned or should be concerned with the impact of the internet as well as with the workings of the internet.  If it is going to be substantively concerned with the impact of the internet ‑‑ and this is in particular an impact on sustainable development ‑‑ we need to engage much more substantially with policy makers and with governance institutions in other policy domain than we currently do in internet governance fora, including this one.  It will involve us thinking afresh about the boundaries between internet governance and the governance of other policy domains.  We could even, if the term wasn't already taken, call it enhanced co‑operation it seems to me.

The second issue that I'd raise is concerned with the relationship between technology and society and one of the essays in this book, the sociologist Robin Mansell talks about a tendency in the developing world to think about or in the ICT world to think about technology being introduced into societies as an external force and transforming them.  She argues that that is fundamentally wrong.  What matters is the interaction between technology and society which is a continuous interaction.  It is human behaviour is influencing innovation on the internet at least as much as innovation on the internet is influencing human behaviour.

So we need to grasp the complexity of that recursive relationship which is at the heart of the internet's contribution to sustainable development and that too points to greater dialogue with other policy domains.

My third issue would be to consider how internet governance can address challenges where the direct impact of the ICT sector and the internet is substantial and threatening to sustainability, most obviously in the contribution of greenhouse gas emissions from the ICT sector and the contribution of waste from the ICT sector.  In both of those, the direct impact of the sector on those negative forces in sustainability is substantial.  The growth in the ICT sector's contribution to greenhouse gas emissions is around 6 per cent a year, for example.

Now, of course, that results from thing that are very, very positive: the growth of networks, the growth of services, the growth of usage and access.  What that leaves it seems to me is a responsibility on the sector to address the problems that arise from it.

So the question is there are ways of managing of mitigating these negative impacts on the environment of the ICT sector.  Should we leave that to the private sector or do we see it as part of a role of internet governance?  Should environmental factors be incorporated in the engineering of the Internet, in network architecture, in the design of devices, data centres, applications?  Is that a kind of internet governance we're going to go for, we're prepared to take on board.

I will finish with a vignette from earlier this year.  In around June or July, I forget which, the Third Earth Summit was held by the United Nations in Rio de Janeiro.  It was a highly disappointing event and one of the great disappointments of it, and this is in spite of efforts by IESD and others, including the ITU, including OECD, one of the most disappointing things was the failure to address changes in the world since the Brompton report which started it 27 years ago.  There is virtually nothing in its reports about the impact of ICTs and the internet on the world in the period since sustainable development was first thought about, even though that is the biggest single factor changing world society.

Meanwhile, in the corridors of the conference centre there was a perfect example of the power of the internet.  All the delegates were there continuously on their computers, on the internet.  They were using the internet to e‑mail their friends, to plan their interventions in the conference, to co‑ordinate with colleagues about the negotiation of the conference documentation, to make dates for dinner.  Their entire behaviour demonstrated how profoundly the internet had changed the world but they didn't include that in the text which they agreed.  So the sustainable development world needs to think about the internet in new ways and we need to think about sustainable development too.  Thanks.

CARLTON SAMUELS:  Thank you very much, Professor Souter.  Now that the stage is set for us we are going to go to the speaker for cluster one.  If you recall, the cluster question is: how do the various actors in the developing world, governments, industry groupings and technical community, civil society perceive the relative costs and benefits of expanding the domain name space to the end user?  Are there any issues on which greater clarification and mutual understanding would be helpful?

The first speaker is the speaker for the cluster and I will give them a chance to go straight ahead and spend a minute or so to tell us about themselves but the first one is Mr Brian Cute.  Then he will be followed by Ms Carolina Aguerre and Mr Philip Grabensee.  So I turn it over to Brian.

BRIAN CUTE:  Thank you very much Carlton.  My name is Brian Cute.  I am the CEO for Public Interest Registry.  Public Interest Registry is the operator of the .org top level domain.  We are also supporting organisation to the Internet Society and thank you very much for having me here today to talk about this important issue.

In terms of the impact of new TLDs and the different actors from a development perspective, PIR (Public Interest Registry) has had what I would say is a very positive experience so far.  While we haven't launched new TLDs, in preparing for this, PIR made a decision to apply for .NGO string for non‑governmental organisations and .ONG for the Romance language equivalent of that string.

Our experience so far in doing significant outreach to the developing world in particular, where a large community of NGOs resides, has been of a positive reception of the potential impact of a new top level domain to serve this important community that operates in the developing world and, importantly in terms of observations, it wasn't just a positive reaction to the potential of the new string but how that domain in conjunction with other services could provide new opportunities for NGOs to connect, to be found, to be visible, to be connected to donors and foundations who want to contribute to their important missions.

So in speaking in the initiative that we have undertaken and I can't speak to the entire new top level domain programme ‑‑ there's well over 1,000 applications ‑‑ some of them are focused as generic strings, some of them are focused as geographic strings, some of them may be focused like NGO and ONG to serve in a particular way the developing countries and the developing parts of the world but I can at least as an opening observation say that our interactions with the communities has been very positive, especially down at the grassroots level.  There is a clear understanding of the benefits of internet access even where there is none.  There is a clear understanding of the dynamism of social networking and other services that can be accessed on the internet and that has been clear to us and we believe that this is indeed an opportunity to create some impact across the developing world.

But I will leave that as my opening observations and look forward to carrying them to further points.

CARLTON SAMUELS:  Thank you, Brian.  Next we have Carolina Aguerre.

CAROLINA AGUERRE:  Thank you.  My name is Carolina Aguerre, I am representing LAC TLD, the regional organisation for Latin American and Caribbean CCTLDs.  As top level domains operating in the region seen the late eighties, these are communities that have specialised immensely in what it means to deal with local internet communities and the fact that for example these days 72 per cent of domain names in the region that are registered in the LAC region account for CCTLDs shows the huge penetration country codes still have in the LAC region.

But looking a little bit at the figures that were released in June by ICANN for the applications for the new gTLD applications in both Latin America and Africa, it was not surprising to see that we had very few applications for new gTLDs and I am saying it is not surprising because if we take into account both Africa and Latin America and the Caribbean, we've got not more than a dozen ICANN accredited registrars which shows in a way there is not a very developed market for domain names in the region.  I think it a process that goes hand‑in‑hand with this very sort of weak demonstration of interest for the new programme.

Something I heard today in a feeder workshop for this session which I think was very relevant was the idea to create a particular gTLD programme for developing economies in if I can go again for a second or third round because ‑‑ I mean, these regions are already lagging behind and there is still a great opportunity and market and community opportunities to develop in both these regions.

Another substantive idea that I would like to raise regarding new gTLDs that was ‑‑ and I am recovering from this workshop from this morning ‑‑ is taking into account the developing regions are accessing the internet through mobile phone devices.  Shorter domain names is an asset that we will have to take into account and it is not something to look at lightly as internet access will be predominantly through mobile phone devices in these regions.

My basic idea for this first round of presentations is to think about how we need to think of intermediary organisations at this regional level in developing economies, in particular, so that these players are closer to the community of end users and they have more cultural and linguistic ties that are more proximate to the users they want to serve.  Just looking at new gTLDs from a consumption perspective only for these developing economies is not enough.  Thank you.

CARLTON SAMUELS:  Thank you, Carolina.  Next we have Mr Philip Grabensee.  Philip you have the floor, sir.

PHILIP GRABENSEE:  Good afternoon, Mr Chairman, good afternoon friends and colleague.  It is a pleasure to be here and an honour to talk to this audience.

My name is Philip Grabensee and I am serving as a Chairman of the board of Afilias.  Afilias, as a registry operator, runs the top level domain .info and .Mobi and also as a technical they can provide and support several generic top level domains and ccTLDs such as, on the generic side, .org and others and several ccTLDs as an example .in and we also support as a technical back end provider around 300 applications for new TLDs.

I think if you look at, you know, on the impact of the new TLDs one has to look a little bit on, you know, past experience on how TLDs are used and why they are used.  I think most people have their original experience dealing with TLDs or dealing with the internet, their original experience is using either e‑mails or social networks.  I think that accounts for the developed countries and also it counts for the developing world.  I think it is more even a shift from using e‑mails.  First access to the internet is more a shift to social networks.

Then, you know, there is a time when people start to shift from using social networks to use domain names for themselves and the question is why, you know, what make them shift or maybe not just shifting, maybe using domain names additional to the social networks for communication purpose.

We believe I think people at a certain stage when they run their business, when they run their blogs, when they run their websites, they want have a little bit more control over their own content than they might have just being involved in social networks.

What makes them, you know, what makes people do that shift or what encourages shift?  I think a major part and I think that the same counts for the developing and the developed world and that regard it's education but the other major aspect I think where there is a significant gap is availability of domain names.  This counts for the existing domain names as much as it will count for the new coming, new domain names to come up.

I think in developing countries you have much less registrars and, therefore, much less from a very practical point of view much ‑‑ the access to domain names is very difficult for people.  It not really the price.  I think generally of course price is an issue but domain names are ‑‑ it depends a little bit of course on which domain name, which purpose the domain name serves, however, the price is relatively cheap and, however, even if the domain name itself is cheap, if you don't have registrars in the country, you need to go to foreign websites, foreign registrars, you need credit cards, you might need credit cards from that foreign country, credit cards which don't work, so I think the penetration of registrars in the developing countries is a major aspect of the access to domain names.

In preparing here for that session I have looked at some statistic and it is really, you know, this thesis, it is really supported by the numbers.  If you look at, for example, India where the domain name has grown from, you know, very few domain names in 2005 to nearly 2 million by now and at the same time the number of registrants has grown from 32, now around 90 registrars.

What needs to be done to have registrars in the country I think, you know, first part is there has to be an environment in those countries, first of all, for local companies to attract or to see that is the business and then the next step is of course that probably global companies will not just serve the country with their website from their own country but well, you know, what we see, for example, from India and what we see a little bit in South America but not to that extent, coming into the country and opening operations there and giving the people direct access in the country.

I think that is very important for the access to the existing domain names and also for the new domain names to come because if the people don't have access to the domain names, then all the domain names wherever  and we have seen the relatively poor or humble number from South America and from Africa but even so, you know, if those were in the next rounds a few more and there would be programmes to encourage such things, it's still a problem how people could get those domain names.

That's something I think Government can help in that regard to set the framework for those registrars to establish themselves and also, you know, by ‑‑ and another step for that I also think is important is to deregulate this the national ccTLDs because that is, usually, you know, on most of our experience the first step, the first step people take in using domain names instead of just using a social networks.

Then last not least I think what Brian has mentioned probably new sales channels are also important, than just registrars but it has to be seen how those new TLDs, maybe NGO is as good example for that, you know, how that will be distributed not just to the already existing world of registrars and maybe you know would introduce new opportunities to have access to those domain names.  Thank you.

CARLTON SAMUELS:  Thank you very much.  We are going to ask for the next half‑an‑hour or so for interactions from the audience both here in the room as well as from the remote operations.

There are also some feeder workshops that are in play here and this is an opportunity for the leaders from those workshops to add their grist to this mill and bring in as much information as possible from the workshops into this discussion.

The floor is open now for audience participation and interaction and of course we would love to hear from the feeder workshops.

You have standing microphones between the audience and there are also a couple of floating ones around and I see my colleague Tijany Benisima  sp making his way to a microphone.

Tijany, if you could introduce yourself and say a little bit about your workshop just to begin with.  Thank you so much.

NEW SPEAKER:   Thank you, Carlton.  My name is Tijany Benjema  sp I am from the At Large, the regional organisation, the African At Large regional organisation at ICANN and the ICANN Afrolo  workshop this morning focussed on the new generic top level domains and the question was will the new  gTLD programme be an opportunity for development or another mean for more digital divide?

Seven panellists from the five regions of the world introduced the subject and their different angles, for example, opportunity for developing economy, the impact of the regional gTLD and the development of the internet on the region, development opportunity brought by the IGNs, opportunities in the Caribbean islands, opportunities for the internet end users in various regions.

All the speakers recognised that the new GTLD programme, at least for its first round, cannot be considered as an opportunity for development for several reasons.

They all spoke about the future and what should be done to really make the GTLDs  serve the development.

Several suggestions were made such as not wait for the next round, for the second round, and make use of the second level of the existing TLDs or those that will be delegated in the next few months.

Second point: start now preparing the next round in terms of outreach to raise awareness, in term of capacity building, in terms of creating an enabling environment for viable domain industry, also engaging with developing countries' business associations not by just delivering messages but also mainly by facilitating actions on the ground, empowering the ccTLDs in those regions, improving the process for the upcoming rounds.

Another idea that was very much appreciated in the room was to conceive a special round before perhaps the second round to be oriented to further applications from developing economy.  I will stop here and let my colleagues continue.

NEW SPEAKER:   Good afternoon.  My name is renalia dorahim  sp I am the designated moderator for workshop number 122 which is on the new generic top level domains, implications and potential for community engagement  (inaudible) doc and development.

This workshop has yet to happen.  It is designated as a feeder workshop but it has been scheduled for Friday 11.00 am room 8 and I would like to see all of you there although I am not an oracle and I cannot predict what will be said at this workshop but I can explain to you the rationale and the thinking behind it which actually has connections with some of the things that the speakers have mentioned today.

In the pending expansion of the top level domain space 1,930 applications have been received by ICANN.  Of note is the low number of the top level domain applications categorised as community‑related.  There are 84 applications representing only 4 per cent of total applications.  It should be noted that 7 overlap with IDN category and 11 overlap with geographic names.

There has been much discussion about factors that could have contributed to the low uptake of the new generic TLDs for communities.  Generally, it is believed that few measures have been taken to facilitate the participation and engagement of communities, particularly those from developing world, but in the Afrilo  workshop that was mentioned by Tijany just now the other factors touch on time, in terms of the time that is given to apply, the expertise that is needed and also the financial requirements.  These are the barriers.

Now, the workshop on Friday will pose the following key questions: what is the value of proposition of new TLDs for communities if at all?  If there is value, what kind of support is needed to not only increase uptake but also ensure sustainability?  What are the unique issues that apply for cross border communities and how would this affect their ability to mobilise or receive support?  Such community include, for example, the community of children around the world or the gay community or even the African community which includes the African diaspora.

The hypothesis is that the following would apply for demand stimulation: awareness raising, capacity building, financial support, technical capabilities support, management capabilities, partnerships for viability and sustainable business models.

To address the questions the workshop will feature perpectives from representatives of various communities who have applied for new GTLDs .kids, .asia, .africa .gay and they will involve discussions with panellists that bring in views from all regions.   thank you.

NEW SPEAKER:   Thank you, Chair, I am not talking about a feeder workshop, just a question to the Panel to the first cluster.  With or without?  My name I Olga cavally  sp.  I am from Argentina.  I am representative of the Government of Argentina.  I am a member of the MAG I am also a university teacher.

My question is to our first cluster Philip, Brian and Carolina.

Carolina, you mentioned that you heard this morning in a workshop that perhaps it could be good to have a programme for new GTLDs for developing countries.

In a way I think it interesting and in the other side I think that which is the need of a developing country to request for a TLD and, at the same time, the second question comes to my mind and this is what I would like your comments about: how relevant is it for a developing country requesting a TLD and at the same time it looks like developing countries should be looking at the new GTLDs programme because, if not, some relevant names of the communities could be taken by, for example, commercial brands.

In a way I see it as a stress situation for developing economies in also not only facing the challenges of developing life of our countries but also at the same time trying to understand new things that are happening in the internet that could be somehow problematic for handling some relevant strings that have meanings for the community.  Thank you.

CAROLINA AGUERRE:  The proposition that was made in this morning's workshop for developing a particular programme for developing economies, a new GTLD programme for developing economies, was greatly concerned at dealing with, firstly, the issue of costs which was initially perceived as extremely high but also everything that is associated with the presentation, what was associated with the presentation, the submittance  of a new GTLD proposal which wasn't only the USD 185,000 plus the back end provider, et cetera, so that amounted, as we all know, to nearly half a million dollars.

This is something that emerged as one of the main arguments but this is also something with regards to your question that is centred in how we need to develop greater awareness inside developing countries in terms of governments, in term of civil society and in terms of market structure, the industry that is concerned with ITCs and web content, et cetera, on the impact of these new GTLDs because, as you rightly mentioned, there have been problematic cases and problematic strings for particular community.

You are very much aware that in your own country and you have been one of the advocates for this new GTLD programme in rasing awareness about it but it is the passiveness of certain local members of the community, even Government, who have not engaged appropriately with this new issue.

This poses many challenges both for the national communities, also for ICANN which needs to engage much more in disseminating, in enhancing awareness and promoting a greater dialogue and co‑operation amongst the different stakeholders involved in developing the internet in general.

Domain names to me are ‑‑ one, it is a very important factor but it not the only critical factor in developing internet content and elevating the standards of emerging economies and their access to information but ‑‑ yes, that is my point.

CARLTON SAMUELS:  Ryan?  speaker

BRIAN CUTE:  Thank you.  To follow up Olga to your question but also with Ms Abdul Rahims's question about community based TLDs to begin with.  I think that is a very important issue and whether there is a particular special round for developing countries in the future or just a second round.  On that point, it is critical.  We applied for .ngo and .ong as a community based application to serve the global NGO community but if you have reviewed the requirements and the definitions of the community within ICANN's first round of TLDs, it's a challenge.

I think one of the challenges for communities in the developing world as they approach this question the next time is think very carefully about your community, about how it is bounded, about its definition and how it can be well‑served at the end of the day by the TLDs, so this is a critical point.

I also ‑‑ and I understand there may be some concern or disappointment about the opportunity that was presented in this round for developing countries and actors in particular ‑‑ but I want to come back and highlight a couple of point in the first part of the discussion.

Where there is genuine opportunity in this round.  Philip, Carolina, the question of distribution, of the lack of registrars in Latin America and Africa, this is a clear opportunity how the domains are going to be distributed in the developing world to users.  In this round you have vertical integration.

Now, you have the ability of a registry to be a registrar.  This is an opportunity for local players.  Finding a local partner to distribute your name is an opportunity for local players.

Also, specifically, this is about more than just domain name.  What really can be the benefit here is connecting users in the developing world to the internet, to value added services, to social networking and I believe you're going to see those types of services offered as a package.

How is that an opportunity?  In particular, we are looking for and have found in India, for example, a local service provider who currently serves the NGO community, who offers a cost‑effective package of web design, web hosting, who offers training in Word Press  so importantly the NGO user can control the content that it puts out onto the internet.

Those services, as an offering, is an opportunity within this current round.  I want to underscore that there are existing, I believe, important opportunities that shouldn't be overlooked but very important going forward that we all focus in on the issues such as community definition and other aspects of expanding this opportunity as we go forward.

NEW SPEAKER:   speaker Maybe one point to add.  I think I agree with Brian.  I think it is more a point of really distribution is the issue than really where the application I coming from.  It doesn't mean that an application which might not come from a developing country might not serve the local community but the issue is more if you cannot get that domain name, if you don't know about this domain name, if you don't have access to that domain name, that is first a more significant issue.

Then you know of course it nice then if you have also application from that very specific place but if you don't have access to the domain names it doesn't matter where the application form comes from.

CARLTON SAMUELS:  Can I ask the Panel a question.  Maybe you could ‑‑ Professor Souter said a couple of things that I thought made some kind of impact, at least in my mind.  The first one, he said that the internet is changing the parameters of the feasible.

He also said, which most of a agree, that innovation is central to the idea of sustainable development and because the internet, where I come from, in my part of the world, the internet is seen as a paradigm for development, social, economic development and also for innovation.

The idea that maybe the internet governance framework need to be expanded beyond, just as he said, the mechanics of the internet to more about impact.

Would anyone care to say something about that specific framework?

CAROLINA AGUERRE:  I think ‑‑ I am going to tie it in with an idea I had when I was thinking about the impact that this might have for end users and to think about sort of not the end user as such but the organisations involved in this development.  In that respect I am very interested by new GTLDs, community GTLDs, that are proposing some kind of ‑‑ they are going to invest back in their own communities with their new domain names that will be registered and the .africa proposal is an example but we have previous experiences with .cat  ,.asia and there are many other cases.

I am sure many other local NGOs that will register NGO names in the region will also benefit from this greater exposure.

I think that in some way looking at new GTLDs and the new domain names that might arise can also generate these new organisational opportunities, these new revenue opportunities, fund‑raising opportunities to expand the internet for their communities.

CARLTON SAMUELS:  Are there any questions remotely from audience members?  Yes, sir?

NEW SPEAKER:  Thank  you, Mr Chair.  I would like to propose a different approach.  The way I see the discussion is evolving, from ‑‑ well, first of all, I am from Brazil, from the Brazilian Government.  I am the Director of the department in charge of Science and Technology at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

My sense of this discussion is I think we are departing from an assumption that GTLDs in itself are good and so we are discussing why developing countries are not engaging these, why there was such a weak response to the call for new GTLDs and then we are trying to see what are the problems to overcome this in regard to costs, the lack of registers.

Then we resort to developing cultural representatives themselves and we see there is a lack of interest and a lack of demand.  I have pointed this in the intervention this morning.  I think the TLDs does not respond to our demands or does not ‑‑ I am speaking for Brazil.  I am not speaking for the collective of developing countries but does not respond to a need that was previously identified.

I think it should be the other way round.  What are the needs of developing countries?  The GTLDs addressing them.  It not our assessment that GTLDs addresses the most pressing problems of the developing world so I think if we start discussing it is a lack of awareness, it is a lack of this and that, this does not help in the way of trying to assist developing countries in overcoming their difficulties.

I do not mean to be rude but I think it would be rather artificial once a decision is made that was not responsive to someone's demand then to come back to this same person and say, "We have this decision.  Why are you not you participate ‑‑ what can we do for you to participate".

At the same time there are more pressing problems.  I am glad to see that in other parts of this discussion we are discussing infrastructure, we are discussing things that are really pressing for developing countries.

Again, I think the discussion around GTLDs is not something that addresses at least my country's concern to a large extent.  Thank you.

CARLTON SAMUELS:  Thank you very much, sir, the gentleman from Brazil.

You have another gentleman can go ahead please.

NEW SPEAKER:  Thank you, Mr Chairman.

This afternoon we discuss how the developing the internet can contribute to development.  This is a very important topic.

I listened with interest to the statements by the panelists on the podium, I listened carefully to the questions or the comments from the floor.

I very much agree with the comment made with the delegate from Brazil.  I forgot to introduce myself, my name is renshan  sp, I am a diplomat from the Foreign Ministry of China.

I support the comment made by the Brazilian delegate, that is to say, when we talk about the purpose of discussing the governance of the internet it is not simply to discuss questions like the distributing, distribution of the domain names or the resources coming from GTLD.

Fundamentally speaking, the internet has greatly promoted economic development and changed our lives; however, not everybody has automatically benefited from the development of the internet.

On one hand, the internet has promoted our social development and progress.  At the same time it has also widened the divide between the developing countries and the developed countries at least in the digital world.  Therefore, the most important question we should discuss today is how to understand this problem.

But of course, in terms of promoting the MDG goes  and in the narrowing the digital divide, and in realising sustainable development the internet has played an important role.  Therefore, first of all, we should from a political level approach the development of the internet and it's governance, secondly, we should also seriously discuss how we can develop the internet so the internet can achieve more balanced development so that all corners of the world and all regions of the world and all people of the world can more equally benefit from the development of the internet.

I also participated in other workshops this morning.  I heard many, many comments which are similar to the comments by the Brazilian delegate.  Therefore, I venture to say that I hope the experts on the podium and our audience can focus our attention more on this kind of discussion.  That is to say, we are only 15 years away from the MDG.  The time line for the MDG is 15 years.  We are only three  years away from the dead line.  Therefore, the time is very pressing.

I have noticed that many audiences have raised many practical questions, for instance, how do we enable people from the developing countries and developing  countries to have access to the internet technology because through this technology they can have access to knowledge and information which can promote their economic social development and improve their lives and change the destinies.  Many people have talked about this.

Because today we are having international conference, therefore, we cannot ignore this fact that is to say how can we carry out beneficial international co‑operation, for instance, in areas of financial support, supporting infrastructure development and also awareness raising and also the building of new partnerships.

In fact, more specifically we can do more, for instance the internet can through online distribute, disseminate knowledge, information, and also it can also disseminate the different civilisations so as to promote the understanding between different peoples and the understanding of different cultures, therefore I think when we discuss the governance of the internet, in the long term we should talk about the future of the development of the world,  this is also sustainable develop.  Therefore we should discuss our topic at a higher level, of course domain names are important, GTLD are important, however I think our discussions should be beyond this level.  We should talk about questions at a higher level.

I don't have specific questions, I just express a wish.  Thank you.

NEW SPEAKER:  Thank you, sir, the next speaker, the microphone.

NEW SPEAKER:  Well, this morning I took part in a workshop.

I am sorry, I am Christina  from the Telecom regulator in Egypt and also representing the Arab IGF Secretariat.

Okay, this morning I took part in a workshop that I think raised some interesting points about capacity building efforts that are relevant to the questions we are asking here on enabling environment and IGF.  The workshop was best common practice for building capacity.  The Panel included representatives from both public private sector speaking about a range of capacity building activities from technical  training through to policy mentoring, to funding, and awards programme.

The goal was to identify areas where those organising these different kinds of activities could learn from each other, either for proving strategies for success  and discuss challenges that remain.  The themes that emerged from the discussion, include the following which I would like to share with you.  First the importance of multistakeholder approach to capacity building.  Speakers pointed out through co‑operated efforts through the public and private, the capacity can roach what it needs to, but such corporations, challenge aj often requires a willingness to go outside the conference zone of either sek store and find new ways of working and developing projects and reaching out to the right people.

Secondly, capacity building requires a blended approach, so the discussion was about combining elements of technical, political and dit plo mattic dimension in the training and the capacity building and this is evident in events like internet governance summer schools or i net conferences that speakers described.  Also activities like the IPV6 road shows and more technical elements that has helped to build the relationships between the technical community and private sector as was shared by the speakers.

Finally identified the need to eng gauge youth activity and cross regional coordination of youth and activities and input into the internet governance discussion, beyond this it is vital that we reach out to those with capacity building education and capitalise on their experience and expertise in mentoring new participants that is maintaining the link with them.  Thank you very much.

C SAMUELS:  Thank you, any other questions, interventions from the audience?

Do we have anything from the remote participants?

No?

Okay.  So at this point I guess what we will do is ask the chair to summarise the conversations up to this point and then we will get on with the second part.

Thanks.

CHAIR:  Thank you Karl ton, I would like to thank the distinguished panelists for their comprehensive and brief outline of the subject topic and also I would like to thank participants, the audience, those who asked very valid questions and provided very interesting and topical comments on the topic.

Before giving the summary of what we discussed and what we are, I would like to briefly comment on the interesting point as stressed out by the Brazilian and the Chinese delegates that discussion around GTLD's are important but, we need, this does not address the concerns of development and we should not discuss domain names rather concentrate on the discussion points like being internet promoting our social development and progress that we should also discuss how internet can help us, all the parts of the, all the regions of the world to go through the development transformation.  It is a very interesting and very useful comments actually, I would take that.  But I want to just a little clarify, that we are we have got 5 questions as part of 3 clusters and this questions are part of the other four first coming questions, in this part of the question we have been discussing, this I want to remind the delegates that we have been discussing the pending expansion of the top level domain space and how it, the, how the, from the technical community perspectives, from civil society perceiving the relevant costs and benefits for the development and how expanding the domain name space to the end user and how interaction works and are there any issues on which greater clarification and mutual understanding would be helpful.  This is what we have been trying to achieve.  I believe to a large extent we have addressed those questions by the panelists and by the comments from the audience.

Overall, I want to go back to David Souter as the introductory remarks, that internet governance, at a very high level is not seen as narrowly down narrowed down but rather it is more, much broader process.  He was trying to give more global context to the internet governance and, so, our take overs from this introductory remarks were that how hard we think internet governance is concerned and the relationship between technology and internet governance is also, of the essence now here that we have to make sure that we do have a continuous interaction with definitive knowledge and technological movements and the internet governance and how the internet governance can address challenges which have direct impact to sustainability, that is the question, that is the area we have to find out and concentrate on.

I like very much the green house emission stuff having an interest in this process.

Also the other, the at a very high level the outline that the brains, the comments that interaction with communities have been really positive that is the message that we take over and there is a clear understanding of [inaudible] Carolina, made clear in the terms of the new GTLD needs for developing world and that great market there is an existence of great market and community opportunity for Latin America, Caribbean and Africa regions and that, that the, there is a greater, great opportunity for more interaction and more interface between those regions and the Phillips, the [inaudible] comments at, what makes people to makeshift from new domain names and price being relatively cheap and but in more, in a developing countries, penetration has been an issue, not because of the issue, that is something new we have heard this afternoon, that is really really interesting that and also the opportunities for introducing additional domain names also exist.

They were very interesting questions, from tee January knee and others, that new generic top level domains, the workshop and other workshop, the outlines of the other workshops and I believe that those, side event workshops are going to contribute to a great extent to the overall success of the IGF forum this time.

Now this is more or less the summary of the discussion item as part of cluster one on pending expension of the top level domain space.  I want to remind the audience, 4 other questions as part of two clusters, those questions raised by distinguished delegates about internet governance and liking development and the developing part of the world will be to a great extent discussed in the forthcoming questions, I want to give the floor to Karl ton now to continue.

C SAMUELS:  Thank you.

Thank you Mr Chairman, I think we are now going to move to the participants from clusters two and three.  I turn now to my colleague Alice Munya, to take it from here.

ALICE MUNYNA:  Thank you very much Karl ton and thank you all the other panelists who had spoken on cluster one and to the chair and for this session.

Cluster two and three are the first of two, is talking about enabling environment.  What it takes to attract investment in infrastructure and what the challenges and opportunities are.  As you all know I come from a continent that has quite a number of challenges in terms of meeting development goals but I also come from a country that has found very yee Yative and innovating ways that develop some of the challenges we face, so we have seen quite innovative solutions emerging to address the various development challenges and we continue to see and witness a lot of transformative potential of the internet.  So I would like to link it back especially what David Souter mentioned in terms of the idea of broadening what, how we are defining enhanced corporation to including co‑operating and collaborating with other sectors, for example when you look at the transformative impact of the internet in African countries, let's take for example in Kenya where it is used for banking; where the internet is used for agricultural information; for health; also sorts of other development applications.

So you know, the issue here is engaging with other policy makers an other policy domains; health, agriculture, it will be fantastic to see innovative roles for... and collaborating.  I would like to have a certain level of discussion around that.

Anyway, going back to the questions awrnd this cluster, question one:    what does it take to... encowrng innovation and growth of IT services including mobile technology and how these technologies can be best employed to address development challenges.

Then what are the challenges and opportunities for participation of stakeholders in developing IG policy and regulatory approaches?

I have got three distinguished panelists that are going to speak to this issues,er caman,... I will let themselves introduce themselves and then start with tissue, start wither caman.

Thank you.

E MANN:  Thank you, I work for Facebook based in Brussels, I have been in the European parliament for Germany 200 t so I have a good understanding about college lative challenges and what the important and relevant for governments, I covered external trade issues for 15 years in the European parliament and worked on many issues which  Audio OK from here  relate to developing countries so let me maybe point out few areas which I think are important for our discussion.  The most important one I think it is really there is not a single solution.  We sometimes think that there is one single solution but what we have understood at Facebook and the way our business functions for example, that there are many different opportunities and many different regions of the world and many many different countries in the world.

It always depends on what you want really to achieve locally and it depends on your business opportunity which you have available in the country like Germany, or in a country like Kenya or in a country in Brazil, so there are many differences.

I think this is something that the internet teaches.  On one side it is global, so the global opportunities.  On the other side there are still very different national and regional and even local environments.  We have to understand.

This is something I think which really relates back to the question just raised, what can governments actually do?  I think governments have a huge opportunity and chance to understand actually how to attract investment relates back to understanding your own business environment.

We always think this is natural, but I can tell you from our own Facebook, from our own data we collected.  We collected data about how our own business functions and how much we contribute to the growth, the economic growth in Europe and the United States recently.  We haven't done the investigations yet for other countries because to collect this data is highly complex.  It looks very simple but all the new internet economies and all this new internet business and all these new internet markets are highly complex so you really need to collect data.  You need to understand how your local market functions.  You really need to know what you want to achieve.

This is important for governments really to invest, to get the knowledge, to get the data about your own market, to get the data from the own business partners, to get the data from the start up companies,to get the data from the business schools so you can really connect the dots between what you want to achieve and your very local market and your national market and how you want to connect to the global development.

The second I think it is important to understand is that these new markets, these new internet economies are very particular.  They are not very hardly comparable to the older internet development we have seen for example, in the software environment and the telecommunications environment.  They are very different.

They can start in one country and they can become global.  Give you one example.  Spotify,  sp a music, online music distributor.  It is typical example, born in a small market in Sweden, then became European and now it is international, so it is very important to understand this.

Really, the particular needs for particular business models how they evolve and they can evolve  nowadays everywhere and then they can move to the global market.

Another issue it is important what Alisha  just said, it is really to understand the particular environment for certain sectors because they are all connected nowadays to the internet environment and to internet trends and to internet cycles.

For example, if you talk about the health sector, now what are your strengths in your particular countries?  This is interesting for investors, for foreign investors to come into the market.

Is there a connection you already have in your country between different, the way business works between a particular health care provider and maybe certain internet services which relate to each other.

The same is true for logistic companies.  The same is true for many other companies so I think it is again important to understand your strengths and then connect it back to the particular internet environment and what you want to achieve.

My final, my final comment would be, really to understand that we are in a very early phase.  We are all still pioneering what is going on, at least when we talk about the most recent internet development phase and recent business models which are evolving.

We all experienced and don't forget all of us sitting in this room, we all experienced the first telecommunication wave  , we experienced the mobile wave and now social media, search engine, everything what comes next, we are part of this movement.

We have to understand it is still a very early phase which gives us a great opportunity because it is really possible that with the right support from governments, with the right support and understanding of the new data, the national data and the local datas and the global datas, it is possible to influence the business evolvement in the right way in your respective countries.

I don't see , and we see this from Facebook our growth rate extraordinary in developing countries.  So there is no way ‑‑ and this is true for business opportunities as well.  There is no disconnection between what can happen in a country like Brazil, which can happen in a country like India and what is possible in other countries.  But you have to get, you have to get the environment right.  You have to lay the groundwork right, you have to keep markets open and I think you have to understand ‑‑ and I said this before ‑‑ that you need to support your local markets well.  On the other side, you need to stay connected globally and do not disrupt markets, thank you so much.

ALICE MUNYNA:  Thank you  ‑‑  oh, okay, thank you very much, Erica,  very good points there, especially ensuring we understand the context and be able to address some of the challenges.

I would like to welcome Rohan Samarajiva to give us his opening remarks.

MR SAMARAJIVA:  Thank you very much.  I will be looking at the first question, that is what is needed to attract investment and encourage innovation with specific emphasis on mobile applications.

I will also in this process touch on some of the infrastructure issues.  I am a former regulator, a former director of Telecom.  For the last eight years I have been running a think tank, dealing with ICT policy and regulation issues, primarily looking at infrastructure matters so in this particular presentation I will be looking at the interface, where that lowest level in the way you think about the internet, the bottom level is sort of creeping up and threatening, I suppose, to do some damage to the upper levels.

Given that I run a think tank and one that does policy relevant research, let me begin with some research.

One of the things that we have been doing since 2006 is to run a very large 10,000 sample, representative sampled survey across 6 countries, 12 languages, basically focussing on the poor or the bottom of the pyramid; not representative at the country level but representative at the lower level.

In the course of this research and our sister organisation in Africa, Research ICT Africa,  sp does this similar study in African countries, what we found in the most recent iteration in 2011 was that people were beginning to talk about ‑‑ we asked a standard question,  how often do you use the internet?  Do you know what the internet is  kind of question.

We get a large number of people who say,  I don't know what the internet is.  I don't use it  and so on.  Yet we were beginning to see people who said that and then a few minutes later would be saying that, they are using Facebook.

Now, for those who know, this would be somewhat curious?  How could you use an internet application such as Facebook without using the internet?

What people were doing was that they were jumping ahead and they were talking about the applications that they were using and they were communicating and they were doing things with rather than talk about this abstraction called the internet.

What this story illustrates is the importance of attractive content.  In Indonesia, our survey was unfortunately limited to the island of Java, where the great majority of the Indonesian population lives.  We have the highest participation of the internet among the poor and among these people, obviously, Facebook was very, very big.  It was driving smart phone adoption; it was driving a whole lot of things.

What I want to emphasise is that content is king.  Attractive content is what will bring people on to the internet.  It is not how much subsidy government gives.  It is not how much money telephone companies extract from various parties in the eco system.  It is demand.  It is content that creates demand.

Once you have demand, and you have companies that are capable of developing the appropriate business models, you will then be able to serve these people and for some mature people in mature markets where they are not used to changing business models, this is a puzzle because the kind of demand generated, for example, my people, the people that we study, are those who will at most give two or three dollars  style  a month in revenue.

Now for most European Telecom operators they cannot even understand how they can make money from people who will give that kind of revenue a month but in Asia we have plenty of companies that are making good money based on these kinds of revenues per customer but very heavy minutes of use, so they are making revenue on minutes or bits rather than on customers.

With these kinds of business models we have incentives to bring more and more people into the system and with more and more people coming into the system, there are more opportunities for the expanding or I would even use the word exploding numbers of young people who are developing applications; particularly mobile applications.

When in Columbo,  sp the city that I call home, we have android developer conferences.  We don't have halls or rooms big enough to hold the crowds.  People are beating down the doors wanting to get in because they have a sense that barriers to entry are lower; the opportunities are higher in this new mobile application space. sheryll editing from here

So, the issue is we see a lot of reason for hope.  Ten years ago, I was fortunate enough to be in government as a regulator, when the mobile wave was catching and we were beginning to connect our people at unimagined rates onto voice telephony.  That story is over.

We are, now from our research, we can see that people are beginning to move into the internet into what we call more than voice applications.  Are there dangers to this?  There is a clear and present danger proposed by the proposals before the WICT conference next month.  That clear and present danger is the proposal that was even extricated today, this morning at the main session by Mr Luigi Gambardella of ETNO and which is written into the proposoal for example of the Arab States of some kind of access charges that would be levied from entities that send data to a particular network.

Now this is all abstract but let me explain it, let me explain it using an example.  Lets's assume there's a young kid who is trying to download, who sends a query saying I want to see such and such, youtube video.  A small amount of data goes out to wherever that is and that is not necessarily in a particular country and that content may not necessarily be from the United States in many cases, the youtube content they are looking at is from their own country.  It will go to wherever the survey is and in return there will be a large flood of data that will come back to let's say Sri Lanka, where the kid is.  Now according to the ETNO proposals, according to the Arab States, the government will get involved in setting appropriate access charges for the data that comes in.  Now just recall the example.

Some kid in Sri Lanka asks for the information and the entity Facebook or Google or whoever, that is somewhere else that is responding to this request is being asked to pay.  I think there is something fundamentally illogical and irrational about this, but I am just explaining to you what the proposal is; it is not my proposal.

So what is this likely to do?  Now the ETNO proposal and even the Arab States proposals talks about commercial agreements.  Now we know that today pairing agreements are mostly done without paper work; hand shake agreements.  We also know that these kinds of commercial agreements that these people are talking about between thousands of networks.  We are not back in the old bilateral monopoly days.  We are in a liberalised environment; in this liberalised environment we have thousands of countries.  So we are talking of thousands upon thousands of bilateral commercial agreements.  Can you imagine the transaction costs that are involved?  Then in addition, we know again from the past that this companies will be setting their prices; they are not cost oriented.  There is no particular benchmark to set the prices.  The governments will set appropriate prices that are appropriate for their budgets I suppose.

So, at some point, there will be this content providers, this applications providers, who will say, well, I am sorry, we would like to respond but, the transaction costs and the payments we have to make are too high and we will no longer provide information to Indonesia; we will not provide information to Bangladesh; or not provide information to Liberia, etc. etc.  What we will have is a Balkanised internet.  What we will have is a drying up of the attractive content that is driving people on to the internet.  What we will have is that some of the preconditions for the young people who are now developing this applications; the preconditions will be gone.  Because now they have got an internet with less users on it.  Because remember, the sequences content; drives demand.  Demand leads to business models.  Business models leads to investment.

I agree, I agree with Mr Gambardella and everybody else in the sector that we need investment but in the past decade we have seen enormous investments coming in.  We have seen the cables that didn't exist around Africa now existing.  We have seen new cables coming across the Pacific.  We want more cables; there will be more and more role out is being done in all our countries, but investment is not done as a fix percentage of revenue as we are told.

Investment is done based on business models, otherwise how would companies that don't have revenue still be investing?

So, this is the absolute condition; rolling back these kinds of misguided proposals is the necessary condition for investment to be attracted to the developing world and for the conditions to be created for the young people who are now developing all sorts of mobile applications because what they want is a seamless internet; not one that is either Balkanised or in a less troublesome scenario, but which is still a troublesome scenario.  One where more and more content retreats behind pay walls.  Because if for example, a network in Sri Lanka, is asking a network in Italy or France or some place, for payments for the data that they are sending back.  They will turn around to the application providers; to the over the top players and say, hey you give us some money because we have to pay those people in Sri Lanka.  Where does the money come from?  It doesn't come out of the sky.  They will then retreat behind the pay walls and tell us to pay.  Now the issue is, for those of you in the developing world who take credit cards for granted.  That is not impossible, it is inconvenient; it has transaction costs, but it is not impossible.  But for that young kid who doesn't have a credit card.  Less than 10% of my people have credit cards and even those who have credit cards don't have internationally accepted credit cards.  The pay wall is not a pay wall, it is a insurmountable barrier.

So the bottom line is, some of the proposals that are before WICT are ill considered and they will cause harm.  The first principle of public policy is do no harm.  I think the most important thing we need to do, is to make sure that harm is not caused both to attracting investment and to encouraging innovation by rolling back these ill considered proposals thank you.

ALICE MUNYNA:   Thank you Rohan very much for sharing with us some of the challenges and especially some of the proposals in front of, to be considered in front of WICT.  But another challenge and I think that I will want to link with the issue you have mentioned here of demand, is the way some of our countries are going on especially well, I will share my own experience, the Kenyan experience, where we have gone ahead and initiated an open data project, of course, in the hope of encouraging new services and applications and all of that, but as, but looking at it also from the perspective of supply of what the government is supplying rather than what the citizens are demanding.  We found that it is quite challenging and one of the biggest frustration is the lack of uptake and realising eventually that what we need to have done in parallel to implementing the open data initiative was to create awareness and also create a certain level of digital literacy.  So governments really do have and all stakeholders really do need to have, really do have a number of challenges and have to come up with very innovative ways of dealing with them.  I think the idea, back to what Erica was saying, that you know a fast understanding what the environment is and then understanding of you know of what the demand is, is extremely important.

I would like to welcome, to give the microphone over to Mr   [first name?] Nakaya‑San from Japan. ... please.

 

NAKAYA-SAN:    Thank you Alice, I am the [name] Head of Research Institution, attached to the Ministry of Communication of Japan.  I would like to touch on a question one and question two of cluster two, very briefly.

The first question to talk about investment which was touched upon by the previous speakers, actually this is also an issue for Japan and I would like to just highlight three key words for attracting the investment.

The first one is profitability; second one stability of society; and third, transparency of society.

Well, profitability; it is no doubt that company will not invest without having profitability in evidence and it is not, how can I say, prerequisite.  The company can create a market or a profit if the society fulfils the following two elements and that is stability and transparency.  Stability of society that is, related to the predictability of the plan or the business.  So once company invests in a country, they have to keep their business for a long time.  And to sustain their business they need a sustainability of society otherwise, they sometimes have to kicked out of the country before making enough profit to cover the cost.  So it is really necessary to have a stability of society.

The third word is the transparency.  Well, as Erica Mann mentioned and it is necessary to create a kind of sound environment for investment including, how can I say, proper regulation and it doesn't have to be over‑regulate the business but should be in a proper level.  But I would like to put more stress on the implementation of those regulations.  Well, there are many regulations which are not implemented properly; or sometimes are not implemented at all.  So, whether the legislated regulation exists or not, does not directly relate with the existence of their transparency.

So, if companies do not know who does what in the government and how they act to regulate, it maybe difficult for company to keep investing in a business because sometimes they also requested by the government to go out of the country and cease their business.

Those conditions are the same for any country even for Japan; this is a big agenda.  As I introduce at the beginning of the afternoon session yesterday, Japan suffered from big earthquake last year.  That means sometimes well, Japan proved that Japan has a kind of risk of big earthquake.  That affect stability of society because even though company invest in Japan, if big earthquake occur, company lost its asset and also we suffered from lack of electricity supply after the mass disaster and that affects the behaviour of the company a lot.

There are many atomic stations, atomic power stations in Japan and residents or Governments around the power plants realise that there might be a risk of losing electricity supply aftermath the earthquake.  That means that company may have to stop their operation even though their preparedness for the earthquake is very good.

Keeping the stability and transparency are very important to attract companies not only for the developing countries but also developed countries.

I turn to the latter part of the question, that means how can these technologies best be employed.

I think it is up to what you want to get from that investment but lesson I learned from that disaster is that we should not throw away all the technology.

What was useful after massive disaster in the devastated area was audio broadcasting by radio station, not internet and not mobile phone.  Those infrastructures are totally damaged by the earthquake and tsunamis.  They washed away everything.

However, only radio stations were still available because those power stations were spectrum anterior  stations are located on the top of the mountain and people can receive those broadcasting by a small packet radio and the radio's power is supplied by dry cell.  It doesn't have to come from the power plant.

So still we need to keep all the technologies to survive or to sustain the society and I am moving to the question 2.  So the challenges and opportunities for the participation of the stakeholder.  I think this is partly attached on by Dr Souter at the beginning of this session and actually there is no doubt that internet governance is more and more important than before and we do need to incorporate many stakeholders in a discussion of internet governance, there is no doubt.  I tried to do this, to bring many delegations from Japan for this conference but it was not successful.  I asked why and I got the answer just five minutes ago.  Maybe I was a bit internet centric.  The intervention from the Chinese diplomat reminds me of this.  For many people outside of the ITU or ICT still domain name is difficult to understand.  They may not understand how much it is important for their life or for their business.  So we have to transpose the importance of our wording to another phrase which could be understandable for those people and persuade them to understand how much it affects their own domain.

In other words, we have to go out of the ICT field and let them or have them understand in their own way how internet governance affects their life or their business.  So I want to propose that maybe next year or in the following year, rather than having feeding workshops and this conference hall, let us have some meetings outside of the ICT domain such as a conference on education, conference on medical science or conference on business and let us try to persuade and understand how internet governance affects their own domain and let's have a feedback on this matter and discuss again.

Then we will get to know how we can best address these issue because these issues are cross‑cutting and we do need everybody to understand the importance of internet governance.  Thank you very much.

MS MUNYUA:  Thank you very much for sharing your views on that.  I would like to move ‑‑ before we move to cluster 3, that is looking at specifically infrastructure, I would like to see if there are any comments from other panellists here and then from the floor.  Any other panellist?  Do you have any comment?  Brian Cute, please.

BRIAN CUTE:  I would just like to echo that last point, that we in the domain name industry have known for years that what we do is not easily understood; so I find that last suggestion particularly provocative in terms of taking this education exercise that we're in the middle of out to other fora may in fact do some good.  The questions are heard and well understood that there is broader impacts here, there are broader policy issues, the questions from the Chinese Government and Brazilian Government officials are duly noted, but we do tend to live in this world of domain names which is unique and bounded and under the ICANN umbrella but the effects are clearly well beyond that.

I think that was a very provocative point and one we should consider carefully.

MS MUNYUA:  Thank you, Brian.  Any other panellist?  I will go to the floor now.  I see the Brazilian ambassador, please.

NEW SPEAKER:  Thank you for the opportunity to comment.  When I saw the title of this workshop, I was very excited about participating in a discussion on issues of interest of developing countries.  We are convinced of the importance of internet governance of course.  We have been participating in many dimensions, as Government, as other stakeholders in Brazil participating actively.  So we are pretty convinced of the importance of internet governance.

It is important to hear on examples, successful examples, in countries that have already in place instruments for internet to develop fully.  It is important to hear, although we can read in economic theory, I think it is very important to listen to Japan, their experience, it is useful.  But I somewhat was under the impression that we would have a kind of different discussion here and touch on the issues from a perspective of developing countries.

I think it is important that in the table we have two representatives from developing countries that have expressed themselves ‑‑ not majority but at least we have someone.  I think it is kind a debate.  But, again, I think I came here with a very open mind.  We want to engage more, we want to see what kind of bridges we can build between what is being done here, what is being done elsewhere.  I am convinced that the value of the discussions here is, I am ‑‑ this is my first IGF.  I am coming out of here fully convinced of the value of IGF and I really think IGF meeting should ‑‑ we should devise ways for it to resonate more in the outside world.  I think it is important to discuss among people that meet every year, they know each other, but it is important also for these results to be taken to other spheres of the world, although maybe it is not exactly in the mind frame of some that other parts of the world should participate because maybe they are not knowledgeable enough, not illuminated enough.

But, again, I think it is very useful to discuss but from the angle of some difficulties of countries that have had an experience, historical experience, that differentiates their situation.  I think it is not only a matter of learning how to do it, it is ease of getting kind of assistance to devise policies through which those countries can be assisted to the largest extent.

Of course, being from a Government and representing talking to people that have the responsibility to design public policies, we are concerned about what can we take from here to bring there?  I think it is very important that also not only from the angle maybe of some technical aspect to be considered, some experiences that are successful, I think they are very important, but what kind of thinking can come out of these meetings that on a global perspective take into account different situations, different experiences, how can these assist further in this endeavour?  I think this is the kind of discussion I was looking for.

We had some of this but I would really encourage that the focus we have is not only to try to replicate some other experience because we know in the real world it is rather difficult.  So when some instruments are in place that are benefiting some institution, some companies and not others and then it is not just a matter to blame those other countries that are not benefiting, collectively what can we do to assist these to work for everybody's benefit?  I think this is the kind of discussion I would like to see from at least my Government's perspective.  Thank you.

MS MUNYUA:  Thank you.  I will take two more questions and then allow the Panel to respond and if there are any remote participants, just let me know.

NEW SPEAKER:  Hello everyone.  My name is Desiree.  I'm from the Nenmisham  programme in Hong Kong and I would just like to reiterate the Japanese delegate's comments about internet governance and how it is important for people who are not involved to also understand it.

I am talking about this from a young person's perspective and how to engage young people in the discussion of internet governance as well so that there is an enabling environment for this.

Again, we were also one of the feeder workshops that we were supposed to present our findings on what has been done around the world by young people in terms of gaining our understanding of internet governance but, unfortunately, our workshop is scheduled after this feeder session so I'd actually just like to invite members, if you're here and you are interested in finding out what has been done around the world in terms of helping young people engage in internet governance, because young people do make up the majority of the internet users around the world.  We have a workshop 119 called "defining the successful factors of different models for youth participation in internet governance" and this will be held on November 8, on day 3 on Thursday in room 1 from 2.30 to 4 o'clock and we would definitely like to hear your views especially if you have been doing some work in terms of youth participation.  Thank you.

MS MUNYUA:  Thank you very much.  Next, please.

NEW SPEAKER:  Thank you very much.  My name is Massano Buccato , a participant from the private sector.  I would like to comment on the importance of domain names because that was a part of the discussion why we want to have new domain names, especially for the development of economy or in developing countries.

I would like to go back why domain name was originally created.  It was an identifier to define who is using what IPs.  In the old days, we had only IP address.  There is no domain names.  Now we have domain names for everybody.  Why?  We have to identify the person or business or, you know, whatever people who are using the internet.  It is important to have such identifier but this identifier is more important in a case of a (inaudible)  age meaning people cannot see to each other but we can communicate.  To find out the right person in a particular manner who is confident, we really need a good domain names.  This is very important for business to find out who is your customer, who is your supplier, who is doing what kind of business.  It is very important to have a good identifier.

In addition to being an identifier, domain names are becoming more important.  I would like to say domain name is identity of the people.  If you say Facebook really it is not just a Facebook.com or in a case of Google, it is not Google.com, it is an identity of the company.  So if you have a good domain name for your business in developing countries you can identify the importance and the reliance of your product and service and so on.  That is why such identity aspect in domain names are important.

We have to again go back to this original meaning of domain names and see the reality and you have to again use those for business purpose or in all education, you know, Social Services and so on going back to the original important meaning of domain names.  Thank you very much.

MS MUNYUA:  Do you have any remote participant?  No, okay.

Panel?  Yes, Rohan, David and Erica.

ROHAN SAMARAJIVA:  I would like to respond to the comments made by the Brazilian ambassador.  I do believe that it is important to address development issues in the sense that I think in the United States when the internet came about there was a pre‑existing infrastructure that it rode on.  In many of our countries, there is no pre‑existing infrastructure for it to ride on.  So there are those who comment out to me about, for example, the country with the lowest telecommunication penetration in the world today, Myanmar, and talk about how internet can do this or internet can do that.  But when nobody has got any electronic connectivity, there is very little that you can do.

So I think it is important that you also address that lower level of infrastructure that, for example, we have been focussing on for the last eight years but these are not insulative.  There is interaction between these things.

So, for example, you know you can have many things going on in the internet that influence what is going on at the lower levels and vice versa.

The issue I think that we have to also remember is that in multi‑stakeholder platforms, such as IGF, will allow us to have this conversation.  I think there was an earlier comment about people living in their little silos and not talking across the silos.  So I think this is wonderful opportunity for people to talk across these different languages and different silos.

That does not mean to say that we need international treaties.   We don't need international treatee.  When I look at a lot of the proposals that are being made before WCIT for the ITRs I think what on earth are these things dog in an international treaty?  You don't need an international treaty to say that networks would be optimally utilised.  Those are all national matters.  Those are things we can discuss with the countries.  International treaties should be limited to what they and their alone need to do.

But instead we have the situation where people whose business model are not working are running to whoever and asking for international support or whatever to support their inability to innovate basically.

So I think we need more of these kinds of conversations and less of the kinds of conversations sadly that we will be having in Dubai next month.  Thank you.

MS MUNYUA:  Thank you Rohan.  Erica and then David.

E MANN:  Similar, dissimilar point to raise in just the previous speaker so just let me be brief.  I think the ambassador has an interesting point and I've heard some situation about the way the discussion evolved in what you said.  So I think maybe we should when we look ahead for the next IGF maybe hopefully we will repeat something similar discussion like today but maybe we can be a little bit more precise on certain topics so that we have a clearer understanding what we actually want to achieve and how we want to come out of the discussion and maybe we can take on some case studies so that we look into different business models how they evolve and we take particular examples from different developing countries.

Then probably we get a better understanding and a clearer image what we want to achieve and the same may be we can turn to understand what should be done or what can be done on the national level, on what should be done on the international level.  I still have the feeling that to some degree like it was just said there some no real clarity about this.  Sometimes I have the feeling when you look at some of the internet governance‑related discussion there is the feeling that we have to be on the internet more precise and we have to get everything into ‑‑ we need to control everything on the internet.  Sometimes I have to smile to myself because I mean we all if we admit we can control our reality.  I mean, when you drive in a si wherever you drive you know you see you know how the road infrastructure I work asking and in some countries it is good in some countries it is less good in some cities it is good in some other cities it is less good.

I think if we do not have ‑‑ if we just relax to some degree ourselves that we do not, you know, have this desire to somewhat control the internet completely, it is this desire which some governments fear.  I am not talking about you ambassador and not about your Government.  This was not what I wanted to say so please don't get me wrong.  I am talking about our European governments that I true for all over the world so please don't get me wrong.

I would love to take your words and just see that we can you know for the next IGF that may be we can be more precise and can reply to the questions you raised in more concrete terms.  Thank you.

MS MUNYUA:  Thank you Erica.  David?

NEW SPEAKER:  David.  Can I make three comment I think two short ones picking up on point made which stem from recent work I have done in your country actually Alice.  One to do with domain names.  The one thing that shruck me in particular in work I was recently doing on the Kenyan internet governance endvent (inaudible).uk domains there are 750,000 dot ZA domains, and the next highest number in Africa is 25,000 dot KE Kenyan domains.  There is an issue around reputation and brand value and so on around the national domain which I think was missing from the earlier discussion I just thought it was worth mentioning that.

The second point was something which I think is in no sense specific to Kenya but is observable in other places the young APP developers entrepreneurs SMEs are not engaging with internet governance because they don't see it as being for them.  They see it for guys in suits like many of the people here.

But not as having direct relevant for their business needs.  But they are the next generation of people who have the technical knowledge so I think that is important to dram them in.  My general point I spent a lot of my time trying to bridge the gap between the internet world or the ICT world and other domain, other policy domains of rights, Government are development, environment and I think the image of silos which Rohan just raised what I kind of see is silos which are separated by paradigm gaps and there are people on the top of silos shouting to each other croathe paradigm gaps and that is not actually what we want.  I was very taken with my neighbour's suggestion of bringing the internet governance here into other fora which belong to other policy tomains or other communities.  One thing I would say about that I that the crucial thing is that it should not be about us going to them and saying the internet governance issues are important to you because.  It should be us listening to them about why aspects of the internet are important to them and why we should respond to their needs.  So we should be listening to them and responding to them.

I have ‑‑ I have a radical suggestion which is something I have all wanted to see that instead at the start of the IGF in stead of having 20 people making very similar speeches of welcome, we have two or three major international figures.  Will suggest to you amatia senwho come from different furls and we ask them to say as at the opening of our IGF why the internet maters in their found then we will have a starting point which is about outside not inside.  That I my radical suggestion for you.

MS MUNYUA:  Thank you David.

PHILIP GRABENSEE:  I would like to make one comment about the issue you made the point you made about brand value.  Maybe I misunderstood the point a little bit but I think it important to recognise you know the numbers obviously I am I don't know exactly how many Kenyan domain names but numbers seem to be right  but definitely there is an extremely large gap but I don't think ‑‑ I didn't understand really your point about the relation between brand value and number of domain names but I think it is important to understand first comes the idea of having access to the domain name and then the brand value of the specific domain name developed out of the numbers of registrations you have under this domain name and this is an access question.  So you don't just have few recognitions under the Kenyan top level domain names because it has (inaudible) more brand level by itself it is because it has been eashily accessible you have the more developed of course in access to this domain name and that and from there the brand value of the domain name come.

So it really I think it comes again down it is not that they have you know it a question of the access and how regulate the market is.  If you look at all the ccTLDs we have tremendous you have largedge volumes of C ccTLDs in not so regulated countries and in countries where ccTLDs are largely regulated you have much lower volume and you can also see that shift in countries change their relation regime on the ccTLDs in a more free registration form you see immediately a tremendous growth in the domain name.  Then also net increase in the value of the branding of the domain name.  This is my observation and I just want to share that.

THE CHAIR:  Group thank you.

BRIAN CUTE:  I just want to tie together a couple of points that were made along the way.  Earlier the note that in surveying users in developing countries some results have been a lack of awareness of the internet or using the internet but when asked you know they say I go to Facebook and this disconnect between the internet and Facebook and then the follow‑on comment just a minute ago about the youth segment and they are not caring about internet governance.  I think in fact these are the divides that we need to start bridging and the anecdote that comes to my mind is my 17‑year old son who's gaming all the time a typical teenager and he is on games and he's using social media and whether it is him or youth around the world on mobile phones in developing countries their very, very active and maybe they are not aware that it's the internet that underlying all of this but when in the US a legislative proposal called sopa was put on the table that might have had the impact of affecting the DNS negatively suddenly my son started hassling me with Dad what's going on with the internet why aren't you doing something about that it.  They to care it's how and when it come to their attention.  I think that this in a way is that divide that we are identifying that we need to start finding a way to bridge and communicate across so that internet governance where yourer and, however, you are using it is understood on a fundamental level.

CAROLINA AGUERRE:  I wanted to ray the importance once again of thinking about domain names as identifiers as it was rightly pointed here and identifiers to precise content belonging to particular communities and when we talk about new GTLDs and about the experience of some TLDs in the recent years specifically addressing non‑askicharacters I am particularly thinking is this not a relevant aspect for people who are 60 or 70 years old Chinese as I've heard today in this forum that want to access content on the internet and they have to if they don't ‑‑ if it is an askicharacter they cannot integrate with that content.  I think we do have relevant issues regarding new TLDs or TLDs that are related specifically to how community identify themselves with content on the internet and that is what makes the internet relevant for them.

MS MUNYUA:  Thank you very much.  I have Rohan but before then I want to give the floor to chintra who has been waiting and then come back to Rohan.

NEW SPEAKER:  It is actually an ju.  My name is an juand I come from Fiji so it took me 26 hours or so to get here.  I would like to talk more about the small island states in relation to some of the issues that were raised here and also related to the infrastructure issues which I the next cluster but I am just going to say it in this.

Before that I would just like to say thank you to the UN IGF secretariat.  I have been working closely with chencatie and Markus and believe may understand the challenges and of course you know it is about making everyone happy but again if we work together then I am sure one day we will get there.

I would just like to emphasise what the panellists from Japan said that ICT is not only about involving managers or technologies or ICT managers or internet security offices or managers but it is about how we can integrate ICT within the agriculture, within the forestry, within the education and all the other sectors.

Our Panel discussion was on small island states and just to make a few comment on some of the things that were raised.  Small island states face a lot of challenges but we also have a tremendous opportunities for demonstrating the transformative power of the internet at the national level and also regional and international level.

There was a room full of participant that have addressed issues and challenges that they face but also, provided some great insight on the ongoing initiatives in the countries like Mauritius, Jamaica, Fiji, cook island, Sumatra Trinidad & Tobago St Kitts and other countries.  It is quite obvious that there is still insufficient appreciation of fundamental principle in terms of the internet and there are still limited coverage in assessing some critical issues in relation to access, privacy, content development.  Overcoming infrastructure is one of the key issues that were brought up and there is still limited technical resources and what we need to do in order to overcome some of the challenges, for example, having local content development and integrated within the different system that we have.  Identifying hot topic like climate change.  This is a small island state issue and it is a big, big concern and it is a priority for us.  So if you take, for example, the climate change perspective, there is need to find concrete and immediate adaptation solutions on climate change.  We can do this to the use of ICT and internet but the question still remains who is going to help us achieve this?  Some countries like piribus, for example, have a mygration plan already and they are buying line in Fiji to rilocate their people from kiribass to Fiji.  This is an issue about border control as well and for these rural communities and countries have access to traditional media such as radio is still very useful and this is the only hope for them.

Some of the igCT initiatives are now applied for implementing strategies and policy to combat this issue by sharing climate change information between countries and regional organisations but without of course the internet we will not be able to collect a lot of data or information on climate change adaptation, but of course to do this they need to be connected to the internet and there are a lot of issues again that were raised within this forum and how to work together as a state having a reasonable perspective and developing a framework maybe one solution but of course it is not over the entire solution because we all have to work as a team.  So new laws are already coming into place in relation to data and privacy laws and they are enabler of information societies, but again we need to look at the opportunities now rather than you know later and how are we going to address this issue is something that may be of a concern to the small island states.

What we need to do now is to find because in this IGF forum I we need to find out how to type into the ziting resource that are available here and to be able to provide some opportunity for countries that are under the small island state and how basically we can lobby for fund that would greatly assist some of the projects and initiatives that may not exist within the national context.  So this is a great forum and this is where we all come together but again a comprehensive (inaudible) action plant also research an may be one way forward to adapting some of the strategy and to receive traction in the territory.

But, again, in order to achieve this we need to work together and to be able to lobby for some support, so that is my concern.  Thank you.

MS MUNYUA:  Thank you.  Rohan please.

ROHAN SAMARAJIVA:  I began ‑‑ my intention was to present some of the discussions at workshop 142 that was held yesterday which was a feeder to this particular event and which was co‑ordinated by verena beba at her request coshe could not be here but of course there are many connection to what an jusaid and to what several other people have said here.

The topic of the meeting was inclusive innovation of the workshop was inclusive innovation and people talked about, for example, localisation issues which had to do with language, accommodating different languages, different fonts, different scripts and so on but one of the most interesting thing that came to some things that were discussed by my colleague here Nakaya‑San and David was this whole idea that these issue spelt out beyond particularly when it come to innovation of applications.  It goes beyond the conventional ICT ministry, ICT players, people who are in the ICT space and that you need to reach out to people in agriculture, in Government, public administration and varuother thing.  So just to give you an example, one of the issues that came up was the idea that given there is this publing enthusiasm among young people to develop new applications, what you need is for the Government to release and make available the enormous amounts of data that is sitting inside the Government with APIs so that people can develop application rather than do it in some sentriesed top‑down fashion where the Government will be commissioning people through procurement procedures and whatever to push out agricultural information or logistic or transport information.

So I think in a way what we used to say when we were wering in Government when I was working in Government was that dealing with internet issues particularly at the application level is very, very difficult for a (inaudible) ministry to do because it necessarily invades the territory of other ministries.  So when I was in Government when we were doing a comprehensive ICT development project we housed it under the Prime Minister and currently it is housed under the president because there is this need to co‑ordinate and work across these particular subject fields.

I am just bringing that up cothere was a desire to bring up some things from the feeder workshops.  Thank you very much.

MS MUNYUA:  Yank you very much Rohan.  I I would like to go to the last cluster that I focussing on infrastructure and the panellists who were meant to speak on that Erica, toll through and Rohan have already touched on that so I will open it to all the panellists to see whether we can perhaps enrich the discussions a little bit more.

The key concern here regarding infrastructure is how new technologies and the global internet governance mechanisms can adrethe limtation of opportunity and enable development and for me coming from Kenya an immediate concern is please if somebody could actually provide reliable electricity it would be a very good beginning but I welcome all the other panellists who make contributions.  Thank you.

ROHAN SAMARAJIVA:  Thank you.  I am happy to have a second run at this.  We did talk about infrastructure what I do mostly in my life I talk about infrastructure.  There is no question, for example, that we need the basic infrastructure in place and when we talk about the infrastructure needed for the internet, it even more than in the old circuit switch network days.  It is a long value chain that has to be looked at.

So the value chain if you wish begins with sort of the hand set and capabilities that the hand set haand then we look at the access network, which for the most part is wireless in the kinds of environments that I work in and then we have a domestic back hall network and an international back hall network because the internet in particular data service are in particular fundamentally inseparable almost international in scope.

Anywhere I mean in the same way that we talk about a chain and how strong I a chain, a chain is as strong as its weakest link.  So whatever the weakest link is, that is what how strong ‑‑ that defines the strength of the particular chain.

So when we are looking at infrastructure to support the internet use by people, we must not get hung up on one piece of it but we must look at all the pieces.  So, for example, when in our research we have come to understand that we need to start looking at it from the demand side.  That is why we have been studying demand for so many years.  From the demand side we see where the demand is coming up and it is demand and when the demand I satisfied with the kind of content that people want, that the people will then invest, for example, in the kinds of hand set that are more sophisticated.

So since 2006 in our surveys we have been asking the bottom of the pyramid Respondents what kinds of hand sets are you using, how much do you spend on it and so on.  We are now increasingly beginning to see more expensive ones the smart phones coming up.

One of the reason, for example, where they are the highest number of smart phone appearing among the poor is in Java in Indonesia and to some extent also in Thailand.  That I because they have the kind of content, they've things that they have to do with it that they will invest in hand sets that are like this but of course they don't have to be 500‑dollar or whatever.  We have smart phones going around in our part which are between 40 and USD 100 and then of course there is a very virent second‑hand market which has got its own problems but it really brings down the cost.

So this is not an area where we need Government intervention.

With regard to access networks, we do need the Government to do some important things; that is, to make available the necessary frequencies.  We need spectrum reforming we neat road maps we need that to be made available and to the extent that fibre is to be laid in the access network which I don't think is a major factor in our countries except in the most deny populated areas, there are some things that the Government can do to facilitate that as well.

But the Government's really important role comes with the back hall networks both domestic and international.  With the domestic back hall networks what we have is people going round building back hall networks, putting in fibre but not sharing and it only Government that can create open access regimes.

That I happening to some extent the Africa today but it not happening enough in a number of African countries that I work in Bangladesh Asian countries that I work in.

When it comes to the international back hall I was at some discussions yesterday one of the workshops where people are saying undersea cables undersea cables.  While this is true that undersea cables are important, I think with byres and earthquake undersea cable are not the only solution.  We need meh networks we need redundancy and one of the things that we are working with United Nations economic and social commission for Asia is to work with the highway people and the railways people to make sure that all those right of way are used to run (inaudible) cables.  I don't know this is one of the shores this is one thing that got me into this area was when I learnt that there are three cables aerial fibre cable going from India into Tibet over the natoola pass and into China and moving down into Hong Kong and moving up into the rostill concable going through the tranSiberian railroad.

Can you just imagine the political difficulties that these people would have gone through to run cable across from India into Tibet?  And secondly can you imagine the engineering challenges that they are working with to run over 100 kilometres of aerial cable and to keep it running to get this connection operational and not one but three companies have done it.

So what this shows is that we are going beyond just a Ryan on undersea cables but we are looking at redundancy, resilience and using undersea cables and terrestrial cable in a cohesive manner.

So there are a number of things that need to be done and as everybody says the data tsunami I coming people are going to be using more and more data, the chain the supply chain has to provide the element and each of the chain needs to be strengthened but again I would like to emphasise that without content, all the investment in the world will be of no use.  Thank you.

MS MUNYUA:  Any of the other panellists?  Mr Toll through.

NAKAYA-SAN:  I just want to add one more thing.  As I just mentioned lectrity supply I really important.  Without lectrity ICT is nothing.  Moreover, I would like to emphasise the important of main tenan.  Interaction of new technologies everybody I enthusiastic and I was company find profitability or a business opportunity they are happy to invest and the place the facility and services there but without a thought of maintaining that service to ensure the quality of service the service will not be supported by users nor consumers.  Actually, this kind of really steady effort is sometimes more important than interaction of new technology because people need time to get to used to a new service.  Then the new service has to be sustained for a couple of year or maybe some year and this kind of term or let us say time I necessary for people to invent or innovate content.

So, I mean, the main tenan I would like to more emphasise on the important of the main tenan.  Thank you.

MS MUNYUA:  Thank you very much.  If there are no further comment from the Panel ‑‑ yes, my comoderator.

CARLTON SAMUELS:  Thank you Alice.  I wanted to pick up on a couple of issues that I thought maybe the Panel can (inaudible) on the question for development especially in the area where I come from the internet imperative is development.

One of the issues going forward and one of my colleagues here said you know content is very important to innovation and further development.

An issue that I related and this is where I talk about legal and regulatory framework as part of the infrastructure development is about adopting openness as a principle for legal frameworks.  I am speaking specifically in this case to the issue of open data.  One of my colleague on the Panel mentioned the fact that there is a lot of data that is sequestered by governments.  They are public data it should be available publicly but it sequestered and issue of whether we had an open data regime you could find a lot of ewes being made of that that vainnovative and creative developers of application.  That is one thing that I think can be done.

The issue of infrastructure and the fact is that you need bandwidth improvements in the developing economies to make the case for sustainable development in internet.  Submarine cables are part of that.  It hato be part of the mix.

Here is the thing and it the cain the Caribbean until recently.  We had a lot of submarine fibre system traversing the Caribbean.  What did it not do?  They did not land in the Caribbean and they would tell you that it is because of their economic questions/conditions, that prevented landing of fibre cable system in the various Caribbean territories.  Thankfully that has changed significantly since then.

Let me give you an example.  Within the last two years, the capacity, the submarine bandwidth capacity for Jamaica haactually increased about 100 fold and with that you have seen reduction in the costs of internet bandwidth and it happening elwhere in Caribbean.  It is moving.  I am suggesting that there are still opportunity for greater fibre landings in the regions.  What has to happen sometime is that there hato be a meeting of mind.

I wanted to end by talking about disaster.  Last week we had a visitation from a weather system that we call Sandy.  It was a hurricane.  It started south and west of Jamaica but it came across Jamaica and I stayed in my house and I watched it blow through and we didn't suffer too much damage I telecommunications‑wibut we did suffer heavily coof a office lectrity electrical power.

Then it went to New York City and it devastated New York City.  With respect to the infrastructure there.  The thinking at the time that a lot of these infrastructure that were quite hardened infrastructure and they could survive and then they found out for example that the calculations they made about where you plaelectrical substations and the component the critical component they have to rethink it totally because they were overcome by flood water reaching as much as 15/20 feet above where they thought it would have been.

That has given us pause in the Caribbean, one of the things we always talk about is that for some kinds of infrastructure, we have always looked north for resilient and back up infrastructure what sandy has shown, perhaps we all need to look again at what our framework for critical infrastructure and looking at how we, we set the mlgt frameworks as well as the regulatory frameworks to ensure, as well as the sur bility of the structure,.

Do we have any comments from the floor?  Yes ambassador.

Yes, well I first of all, I would like to thank all of the panelists, I am, this is my first IGF and this has been very important for me personally, the kind of evaluation assessments that we have been, I have been hearing here, I a couple of years ago, I was well, some more years ago I was in New York at the second committee working around the resolutions and I think and that this is why the point, I have been insisting in this context, I think the kind of discussions we have here, the wealth of information, it would be very important to be fair to other processes, I think our colleagues, my colleagues that will be in New York, working around the resolution niceties and maybe decides on making decisions in regard to is this [inaudible] or enhanced  ‑‑ benefit very much from the diswe had here.  Particularly in the last cluster, I was very glad to hear many important elements as I said from the beginning, from the perspective I was taking at the beginning, the first issue was not exactly let's say a priority for us.

I am not an ks pert in domain names, but I have been...  audio starts  the people who are and they are not convinced they are from a developed  from Brazil's perspective, not allowed  to generalise, this would be a major topic regarding development, the  nexus, so I am very glad that we could move to an area of there to I think it is crucial for, for the developing world.

If you allow me, I would like just to quote one paragraph that now stands almost as a permanent paragraph in the resolutions we have been adopting in New York, in regard to ICT and it says, I quote:

"Recognises that information and communication technologies present new opportunities and challenges and that there is a pressing needs to address the major impediments that developing countries face in accessing the new technologies such as insufficient resources, infrastructure, education, capacity, investment and connectivity and the issues relating to technology, ownership, standards and flows and in this regards calls upon all stakeholders [I think it is a important for the IGF in this] to provide adequate resources in  hand  capacity and technology and transfer, on mutually agreed terms."

I think not only to provide the assistance but also to discuss the issues, so I was, as it was said, somewhat frustrated that I thought we would exam from this angle of those issues had been identified as main impediments for developing countries but I recognise there is an importance in discussing the other issues so I would like to thank the panelists, the organisers, but at the same time also saying that as we see the development issue related to internet we take a rather broader approach, I think in the lines of what was read, taking our comprehensive view of many aspects that deal with some of those, we touch, but go beyond that and I think this is a reason why my delegation at least is defending the idea we need a platform to discuss things in a broader perspective.

I think it was very important to see this issue as being seen by technical community, by the business, also civil society but I think we need to have, an approach that would not maybe put so much emphasis on the business models we have and how we can make it work in developing countries because this,  I think issue related to the internet is not detached from the development issue at large so we need maybe a forum we chose or a platform that would enable a conversation in a more broader term.

But again I think it was useful for me personally and again I encourage that we should devise ways for this discussion, the wealth of information that is being conveyed to this should also be further defused.  Thank you.

ALICE MUNYNA:  Thank you very much, Ambassador.  I am afraid we are running out of time now so I would like to thank all the participants and panelists for the very vibrant discussions and hand over the closing of the meeting to the Chair, thank you.

CHAIR:  Thank you, Alice, before closing the session, I am using the opportunity of having some time left, I would like to summarise our discussions over the cluster 2 and clusters 3.  There have been very important key words during three hours of discussions like, "innovation", like "investment", "infrastructure", "ICT services" and "stakeholders", and how they will interface into internet governance policy development and infrastructure development, new technologies, mechanisms, lots of very topical cures.

Actually, the takeovers, the very high level from those discussions I believe are that the most important message in terms of the enabling environment issues, in terms of the investment issues and tackling challenges and bringing new opportunities would be as Erica Mann  from Facebook clearly explained that there is no single solution and there are different opportunities.

The model that she described to us, that we have a lot of global opportunities and we have a lot of local national environments that, to the extent of the interface, the official interface between those two, we will be getting to the overall efficient internet governance all over the world.

Then other takeovers from the discussions is that internet economy is highly complex.  It is very highly complex and the word of "complex" is very dangerous for me because it differs from being complicated because complication is something that you know which is difficult but complex really means that, which you have something which you don't know where you are going to and another issue that I took from those discussions are how various sectors are interrelated, in other words, interface between those sectors in the sense of the investment and infrastructure development.

Very interesting highlights we heard throughout the questions and answers and very good explanation by the distinguished panelists that we are at the very early phase of the very long term IAG  development, internet governance, and we are part of the big and global internet development and the very big chain at the moment and it is possible to influence, to the internet, to the internet development in the countries.  This process, we have to bring it forward and discuss in the forums like today.

I very much, it is really, useful insights we got out of the discussions by Rohan today, that some of those thoughts are really really new for me, for example, that people were using applications resident,  talking about internet as part of their research results.  That is really interesting.

This is a message that we have to take on board and develop further because that is really research done by the think tanks, to clearly explain.  People are using internet but they are not talking about internet, they are using the applications.  That is the very important to message for us as part of the forum today.

It is really interesting to hear about demand and content that creates, demand and content that creates the whole demand, actually, content and demand and business environment.  These three together creating a model; a very high level model that regardless of whether this is the developing world or the developed world, or it is for all parts of the world; it is going to be the model that we have to take seriously, how we are going to maximise the interface between those three  and there is some HERE  information that some companies in Asia making money on [inaudible] but not on customers was really good bit, more of a, the technical but still from the stra teengic development point of view it is really again, the big chunk of information or whatever and.

Again, throughout the discussions we have discuss dz and we have expressed the views that investment is done on business environment not as percentage of rev news.  This is part of the experiences from the Asia engs peernses, from the intonation as was expressed by rohan and quite importantly and one of the most important things is to enencourage innovation in the process.  I very carefully listened to the deliberations done by Nakaya‑San, he clearly gave the 3 major points, the profitability, the stability for society and the transparency of society and how this 3 areas interlinked together and what are the challenges per each sector per each area and what are the opportunities; the opportunity exists in further developments.

That in order to sustain companies to continuing investing in business, this is going be the one of the, this has been one of the challenges actually to sustain companies and quite interesting to, to hear that in some cases based on the external factors.  We have to stick to the old tech nothings like experiencing in the case of Japan because we have to stick to the old technology in order to survive.

So, but all in all, the na cie ya sun, gave the relevance of ICT with the individual sectors of ICT.  Individual sectors of economy.  Using the opportunity I would like to ask the audience to, which one or who believed that say, 50% of the heart attacks could be prevented if we do proper and efficient ICT?  Do you believe so?  Do you believe?  I want to see the hands up and  ‑‑ okay, I see, many hands up.

How many of you believe that 90% of say accidents could be prevented?  Do you believe so?  You don't?  Okay.  This is the general belief based on quite comprehensive research that this is achief bl and not only in the health care and transportation but many other spheres of economy of our day life.

I really liked the comments made by excellency ambassador of Brazil that overall at a very high level collectively what we can do is to assist more, to assist for more broader interface between the regions, between the countries and the questions and the very comprehensive answers by the panelists and to the my observations on the role of young people in the processes is quite big as was correctly mentioned that young people do make up the majority of the internet users around the world.  That is fact.  That is the reality.

But all in all, I also would like to emphasise on the, emphasise on the important role of domain names because whether this is identifier on who is using what and providing a path to the overall development and we have, it is important to highlight that we have to have a good ie dent fier, otherwise we are not going to go to the, to the point where we want to.

In overall the one of the important takeovers from the discussions were that we should look ahead to the next IGF, to see if we can bring more case studies and more concrete actions and ceas studies from the country, the cases from the country perspectives to see if we have more of concrete herb shoes particularly from the developing world perspectives.  I believe the IGF secretariat will take note and will come back to the wider IGF community and how they are going to narrow down in some cases the cases for the future IGF forums.

The interesting statistics from David that on one hand we are talking about ten million.uk versus 25,000.ke Kenyans, but I would rather discuss not the statistical or the quantitative differences but, the growth, the growth agenda.

Let's find out and using the resources here, using our expertise here, let's find out what is the ten million figure telling us?  And what is this 25,000 .ke telling us, where we are going to, and what is the dynamics, what are the problem areas and how we are going to tackle those and a short medium and long term vision and how our joint and combined efforts as part of IGF will help us in order to tackle those challenges.

That is one of the reasons why we are getting together here as part of the big forum.

I would like to thank the present tiv of Fiji, who travelled 26 hours to get to Baku, and yourself but, also for voicing a very, very, very touchy messages here which have, the climate change issues and the global impact and the [inaudible] in managing those.

In terms of the infrastructure, the bottom line is, we need a basic infrastruck chowr to sustain.  We have the basic infrastructure in place but we have to develop it further.

This is more or less my, as the Chairman, of todays very interesting session to summary, although sometimes it is not easy to summarise that many you know, interesting debates, debated items in very briefly format, now I want to ask the panelists if you have got any other observations or anything before I ask the audience for last minute  ‑‑ no.

No thank you.

So we don't have anymore comments or observations and the nice we do have it from the audience.  This is good or bad, who knows, maybe good that everything has been captured, there is nothing, there is no area for improvement to have done or know because we think that it is not enough time lines so we need more time lines to discuss it later.

But anyhow, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to thank you for a very, very enjoyable debate throughout this afternoon and we have had various discussions during the session I would like to thank you all for all your contributions to the diverse and rich debate we have had and we enjoyed it.

I hope like me, you also feel that we have addressed the objectives we set out ot the beginning of the session today.

I would like to say thank you to our distinguished moderators, all one by one, I don't want to count the names one by one.  And particularly thank you to our interpreters who have done a great job today, so applause [applause]

I would like to thank individually the distinguished delegates and participants of session that you sure you have shown great patience that you have stayed here until the end of the session.

Thank you, I consider the session to be completed.

Thank you.

[end of session]