National and regional policy and regulatory issues

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  • Lishan Adam – Facilitator
  • Al Alegre – An information and communication rights lens in the ‘glocalization’ of access
  • Ashis Sanyal – National Government Policies & Regulations in India
  • Abi Jagun – Regionalisation and access to communications infrastructure in West Africa
  • Willie Currie – Open access / Net neutrality


Lishan Adam

Background presentation (not presented at the event)


Al Alegre, FMA – An information and communication rights lens in the ‘glocalization’ of access

  • Defining access within the frame of “information rights”, “freedom of information” >> freedom of expression, communication rights (UDHR/Article 19 + UNESCO, WSIS Declarations, etc)
  • Orientations:
    • Internet as a global public commons
    • ICTs as public goods
  • Access areas at national level:
    • Infrastructure issues: mechanisms for universal access - policies at micro (telecenters, access funds, sectoral strategies) and macro (broadband, spectrum management, pricing and competetition) levels. But it's not just infrastructure.
    • Logical layer + application issues: open standards and interoperability frameworks; FOSS policy
    • Content layer issues: access to information - transparency/accountability; content filtering/censorship; security & surveillance vs privacy rights; IPRs
    • Civil societ capacities / awareness - there are analytical gaps and lack of convergence of sectoral advocacies
    • State capacities - knowledge gaps; financial gaps; bad practices, corruption; retreat of the State viz. market pressures
  • Regional spaces:
    • Governance Spaces: Semi-permanent regional/subregional spaces: ASEAN, APEC + ASEM; bilateral and multi-lateral agreements;
    • “glocalization” processes (WIPO, CoE:Cybercrime)
  • Starting point for analysis and action: EVERYTHING IS POLITICAL


Ashis Sanyal (AS), Government of India - National Government Policies & Regulations

  • Important issues in government policies:
    • Level of interventions: total ownership or enabling ecosystem; catalytic role with calibrated financial support
    • How it interacts with other development objectives
    • How to ensure sustainability
  • ICT indicators in India (see presentation)
  • Government of India vision to equitable access:
    • Access to Communication Infrastructure leads to:
    • Economic Development
    • Empowerment of under privileged
    • Gender equity
    • Equal opportunity
    • Human Development
    • Better Governance
  • India Interventions on shared access of communication infrastructure:
    • Highly successful public call office (PCO) model across the country for voice services (launched more than a decade ago) (see indicators in presentation)
    • 100,000 common service centres (CSC) in 600,000 villages in rural India: involvement of govt. and private operators through bid process / close monitoring of implementation process; identification and tie up for delivery of content and services (both govt. and private) (see indicators for impact of CSC in presentation) (for more information on the CSCs see: [1])


Abi Jagun – Regionalisation and access to communications infrastructure in West Africa

Powerpoint presentation

  • Regionalisation
    • Definition: Increased interactions and interdependencies amongst nation-states within a defined geographic region
    • Facilitates harmonization and management of trade-, growth- and development-enhancing institutions and supporting frameworks
    • Confers scale economies: market size (with implications for trade opportunities), lowering the cost of providing infrastructure services, increasing the negotiating power
  • West Africa
    • Highly ‘mobile’ population: 7.2 people moved around in the WA region. – high dominance of mobile communications networks (cell phones) - GSM is the predominant mobile technology
    • Still a long way to go in terms of penetration rates
  • Foundation for regionaliased mobile communications
    • Gaps exist in backhaul terrestrial infrastructure
    • Formal and informal regional (and bilateral) infrastructure initiatives (ECOWAS, WAEMU, Telecom/Mobile Operators)
  • MUST HAVE: enabling legislation (that allows passing traffic across borders, for instance), improvements in investing and operating environments, consistent regulatory environment
  • Always include the wider context in terms of the high mobility of the population – the high opportunity of having a mobile technology already existing


Willie Currie – Open access / net neutrality

  • We need to shift from a sectoral approach to policy to a more layered ICT approach
  • In each layer there is tension between a closed approach and an open approach

(For background information see: A Layered Model for Internet Policy, Kevin Werbach. 1 Journal of Telecommunications and High-Tech Law 37, 58-64 (2002)(PDF))

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