greetings NCUC colleagues,

have been invited to present tomorrow in brussels as an "expert" to ITU SG3
joint rapporteur's groups' meeting--
        group on international internet connectivity
        group on traffic flow methodology.
i'm to present in the session on "Capacity building in developing countries
regarding the development and use of the Internet" because i'm one of the
creators of our (internews') project called the Global Internet Policy
Initiative--we have full-time internet policy advocates working in 15
developing countries.
        the meeting's main issue has to do with continuing the discussin
about pricing internet connections--some of you may be familiar with the
ICAIS idea which developed into ITU recommendation D.50. it sounds somewhat
technically arcane but the feeling among developing countries that they
don't have leverage in the debate is part of what's driving the tendency
right now toward some sort of int'l internet governance (which i think is a
dangerous move). the cause of the debate is the feeling that developing
countries (well, their users) have to pay to connect to the developed world,
even though the developed world benefits from that connection just as much;
and, interrelatedly, that the move to VoIP is going to negatively impact the
telecom revenues which have for so many years flowed to developing countries
(without replacing it with anything).
        BTW my PoV is that developing countries need to improve their
regulatory environment to enable internet use to flower domestically; that
will create a market that'll cause the provisioning of international
internet connectivity to become much more competitive, and the issue of "who
pays" will become a non-issue since int'l bandwidth providers will be
fighting over access to the market.
        at a prep meeting in brussels yesterday i met paul verhoef, (new)
policy VP for ICANN.

(succinct) comments, suggestions welcome.

best,
eric


28 Apr 2004 07.25