IGF 2019 WS #301
Constructing IoT Network : Connectivity Challenges

Organizer 1: CHANG LIU, China Association for Science and Technology、Chinese Institute of Electronics
Organizer 2: TIANCHEN ZHANG, FIoT-LAB
Organizer 3: Yang Yang, Fuzhou IoT Open Lab
Organizer 4: Yinxuan Yang, Fuzhou IoT Open Lab
Organizer 5: Danfeng ZHENG, China·Fuzhou Internet of Things Open Lab

Speaker 1: Lisa Nyamadzawo, Civil Society, African Group
Speaker 2: BIRARDA CARINA, Technical Community, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)
Speaker 3: Yang Yang, Technical Community, Asia-Pacific Group

Moderator

Yang Yang, Technical Community, Asia-Pacific Group

Online Moderator

TIANCHEN ZHANG, Technical Community, Asia-Pacific Group

Rapporteur

Yinxuan Yang, Technical Community, Asia-Pacific Group

Format

Round Table - Circle - 90 Min

Policy Question(s)

What factors should be considered when seeking to understand and tackle affordability issues, and how might improvements be made?
How do we ensure that Internet governance processes are truly inclusive? What needs to be done to enhance the capacity of different actors (and especially those in developing and least-developed countries) to actively contribute to such processed and whose responsibility is it?

SDGs

GOAL 1: No Poverty
GOAL 9: Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure
GOAL 10: Reduced Inequalities

Description: In the post-PC era, smartphones and other wireless handheld devices are changing our environment, making it more interactive, adaptive and informative. Termed as Internet of Things (IoT) evolving into Internet of Everything, the new ecosystem combines wireless sensor networks, cloud computing, analytical data, interactive technologies, as well as smart devices. However, Internet of Things haven’t achieved Internet of Everything because the IoT applications are isolated from each other. There are deep gaps between different IoT application fields. How to build the bridge across these deep gaps? IoT technology is developed in the adoption and integration of wireless network technologies, wireless sensor networks, RFID tags, as well as actuating nodes. How to guarantee the equal development of infrastructure among countries? Due to the unbalanced development of IoT in different countries and regions, will it enlarge the gaps or are there any chances to decrease the digital divide among different age groups, gender groups, marginalized groups and so on?
We had cooperation with Finland National Technology Study Center and participated various Expo of Internet of things, such as Mobile World Congress (MWC) and IoT Solution World Congress (IoT SWC) hosted in Spain. These efforts encouraged the application of the IoT in different industries. We weakened the isolation of various applications through technology communication and integration. We are also committed to promoting standards for IoT communications and various ends, which greatly regulates and guarantees cyber security in the field of IoT.

In the context of the rapid development of IoT technology, we organized several seminars for foreign officials to introduce the experience of IoT development and governance in China. Officials from the Niger attended the seminar on Oct 23rd 2018 as well as the officials from South and Southeast Asia attended the seminar on Oct 27th 2018. After that, we gave lessons for groups from 26 developing countries about data collection and analysis. Through such seminars, we efforted to reduce the imbalance of technological developments caused by different economic and cultural backgrounds in countries and regions, while ensuring the fairness and equality of access to technology and cyber resources.

The roundtable session in this year will be conducted by China Association for Science and Technology (CAST), and attended by experts from industry players, academia, and end-user community for EU, Asia, and Latin American and Caribbean. We would then like to invite responses and feedbacks to our session, moderate an interactive and constructive discussion about possible next steps and potential collaborations, and work towards a mapping of the issues raised during this roundtable.

Expected Outcomes: After this session, we expect we can figure out the difficulties in developing and studying the inter-connectivity between IoT end-use applications in developed and developing countries respectively. We also expect that it can be realized in collecting solutions of overcoming technologies difficulties in breaking the isolation of IoT end applications from experts and attendees. Finally, we wish it would receive a proactive respond about the appeal of fairness of seeking for developing by cyber access regardless genders, wealth status, race, regions and etc.. We sincerely hope our efforts would support and facilitate the promotion of internet governance in this world.

Ms. Lisa Nyamadzawo will highlight her attention on the problem of IoT connectivity occurred in the developing countries and in developed countries; Prof. Yang will present his perspective on the how to overcome the technology difficulties of IoT connectivity, breaking the isolation of IoT applications to facilitate infrastructure construction, particularly for those in the third world countries; and Ms. Carina will give a thought on the equal opportunities of access to cyber to seek for development regardless of different genders, wealth status, race, regions and etc..

The moderator will use significant experience in triggering proactive discussion.
Firstly, the session will be opened by a welcome of all the participants, including the topic introduction (10 minutes)
Speakers deliver their presentation respectively. (30 minutes).
After each presentation, the moderator will guide online participants and on-side attendees to get involvement of a quick Q&A session. (45 minutes)
The last five minutes, the moderator will warp up the discussion by summarizing the consensus of the roundtable dialogue and pointing out the challenges we are confronting. (5 minutes)

Relevance to Theme: The different degree of technology development leads to digital inclusion among different countries. IoT technology has rapid development in some western countries and Asian countries, which may leave little room for other interest and perspectives. However, as a new technology, there are still opportunities for other countries to catch up with the development steps. We will discuss how to decrease the gap between countries and regions upon IoT development and lead IoT technology development with the input of global perspectives and diversity.

Relevance to Internet Governance: The session keeps to the theme of IGF 2019: “Digital Inclusion”. It has particular relevance for the following Internet Governance (IG) issues:
The governance of infrastructure – An IoT system starts from the level where a single object is identified using a unique identifier to have Internet connectivity. On the one hand, it is developed in the adoption and integration of wireless network technologies, wireless sensor networks, RFID tags, as well as actuating nodes. On the other hand, it is also vital that the technology development of different vertical industry to connect to IoT platform.
The governance of digital inclusion and multi-stakeholder – IoT technology has rapid development in some western countries and Asian countries, which may leave little room for other interest and perspectives. However, as a new technology, there are still opportunities for other countries to catch up with the development steps. We will discuss how to decrease the gap between countries and regions upon IoT development and lead IoT technology development with the input of global perspectives and diversity.
Tag 1: Internet of Things
Tag 2: Connectivity Challenges
Tag 3: Digital divide

Online Participation

It is a pleasure to have the online participation access. Remote attendees will be involved in this session by a facilitated dialogue. Our online moderator will raise dialogues during the whole session and remote attendees will have separate queue and be entitled to raise questions by microphones after each presentation (We will present for 30mins for amongst 3 of us and leave 20 mins for the part of question and answer for both on-site and remote attendees after each speech). We value each question raised by attendees and all of them will be answered carefully.
We will also have a well thought by technological support for managing the interface between remote attendees and onsite attendees, to facilitate a collaborative session.