Stuart's blog

Access

The second panel session of the morning was run along the same lines as the first and concerned the theme of access. What came across most for me was the way the panelists returned regularly to the idea of alternative business models for access, although these were never elaborated on in depth. Driving costs down at all levels of the access chain, increasing competition and implementing appropriate regulation of the market were seen as key to increasing access to the Internet in developing countries and while this rings true, the presentations were practically the same as the ones I heard during the WSIS prep phases pre-2003. What has changed are the numbers – the fact that one of the overall phrases of the conference is ‘Reaching the next billion’ gives away the fact that we are now dealing with a world that has a lot more access, and the panellists pointed out at as mobile Internet-enabled handheld devices (er, phones) become the standard point of entry to the online services, we are going to see numbers continue to increase.

Fascinating questions come out of this however, especially when combined with the content production aspects of the multilingualism session. Will a new generation of users be mainly consumers or will a new type of citizen be created too? What will drive the access, what will people do with it? Is there still a responsibility to provide public access? This last question particularly concerns libraries, and one member of the audience put the situation in a way I could understand: if all of the panelists were correct, he said, the market will take care of the next billion users. What we should really be concerned about is reaching the last billion, the ones that the market has no time for due to their lack of purchasing power. Something for us to think about, and a definite role for libraries in the future I feel.

Opening Session

And so after these two sessions we had the opening session proper. This was were the big names were, and they didn’t disappoint. There were a number of – for me at least – reasonably forgettable speeches but three stick out for me. All three made comments in the direction of the role of ICANN, something that is becoming extremely controversial in the run up to the end of ICANN’s agreement with the US department of Commerce in September next year (the controversy is over whether or not governments will have more say in ICANN’s business). First was Ms. Meredith Attwell Baker, Acting Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Communications and Information and National Telecommunications and Information Administration Administrator, which is a long job title by anyone’s standards. Ms. Baker stated categorically that governments should be in charge of the ITU, the private sector in charge of ICANN and the IGF should experience a multistakeholder approach, as it does now.

Mr Baker was followed by Paul Twomey, ICANN CEO, who did his best to stick up for ICANN in its current role. The strongest remarks were saved until last however, as the Secretary General of the ITU, Hamadoun Touré, went on the offensive against ICANN in much the same way as he did just over three weeks ago at an ICANN meeting in Cairo. Pulling no punches, he first talked about how the IGF lacks effectiveness and then went on to criticise ICANN, mentioning complaints about its effectiveness and how, in light of these “it was no surprise that people turn to the ITU”. His position seemed clear as crystal to me – ICANN’s current position as a non-profit organisation with little to no governmental oversight has to end, and governments need to step in. Very political stuff for an opening session.

PS: I apologise for the lack of photos etc. on the site so far – access has been patchy so far and time is short. I will try to do better…