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Americas, Africa Center Of Telecom Talks
by William New
In the past week, top telecommunications experts have concentrated on ways to improve telecom and Internet connectivity in Latin America and Africa.
On Latin America, senior telecommunications officials this week made recommendations to an intergovernmental telecom organization mandated to address the issue. The recommendations to the Inter-American Telecommunication Commission (CITEL) came after panels were held Monday, the first day of a weeklong annual meeting at the Organization of American States in Washington.
In the chairman's statement, the moderators of the three panels strongly recommended that CITEL "expeditiously" approve the so-called Connectivity Agenda of the Americas, developed by the Western Hemisphere's heads of state at the Summit of the Americas in Quebec in April 2001. That agenda called for development of telecom infrastructure, free and fair competition, improved use of human resources, training programs, growth of e-commerce and more government services and information online.
The moderators also urged CITEL to adopt an action plan developed in Quito, Ecuador.
The panels included telecom officials from governments throughout the Americas, international financial institutions, hemispheric research centers and private companies such as Motorola, Ericsson, Qualcomm, Lucent Technologies and Nortel Networks. The primary U.S. official was David Gross, coordinator for international communications and information policy at the State Department.
Linda Wellstein, a partner at Wilkinson, Barker and Knauer, chaired the first panel. It recommended that countries review existing regulatory frameworks, look for ways to collaborate, address small economies' concerns, and support local content development, among other suggestions.
The second panel -- chaired by Frank Urbany, vice president for international at BellSouth -- focused on critical issues to further infrastructure development in the Americas. It recommended stronger independent regulatory authorities, increased cooperation with the private sector and government regulatory authorities and more competition, as well as examinations of ways to finance infrastructure deployment "considering current equity markets" and to promote network utilization consistent with a fair return on investment.
The panel also noted that deployment of advanced wireless services and high-speed Internet technology is constrained by financial resources and consumer demand, while technical standards for system implementation exist. It suggested that service coverage be extended through universal service mechanisms that consider the need for rate rebalancing, and proposed an examination of the impact of spectrum fees on the availability of investment resources.
The final panel addressed the upcoming World Summit on the Information Society, endorsed by the United Nations and scheduled to be held in two phases: in Geneva in December 2003, and in Tunis, Tunisia in 2005. The panel said the Americas connectivity agenda would constitute an "important contribution" to the world summit.
African Events Set Telecom Goals
African telecom issues were addressed at the concurrent East African Internet Forum and Africa Computing and Telecommunications Summit in Nairobi, Kenya on Aug. 5-9.
The events resulted in 11 key development objectives for government, the private sector and civil society. The objectives included providing more rural access to information and communications technologies because some 80 percent of the African population (particularly in the sub-Saharan region) has no access.
Officials also concluded that the continent needs the following: more access to low-cost devices and user terminals on existing telecom platforms for rural areas; policies to allow new technologies and companies to compete in the markets; reductions in the cost of infrastructure expansion; and promotion of local entrepreneurship.
Other objectives included bringing African telecom operators together to take advantage of economies of scale; encouraging more e-commerce, with an emphasis on bank support; providing training and education; encouraging democratic governance; and fostering more African participation in international meetings, such as those of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers and the International Telecommunication Union.
A report released at the summit showed that Africa's international bandwidth more than doubled from 2001 to 2002 and that new partnerships with the private sector are being sought as an alternative to privatization. It also showed that highly competitive mobile markets have led to mobile services overtaking fixed phone services. But at the same time, Internet user growth has slowed to 20 percent per year, and private oligopolies are seen as replacing monopolies.
Also at the summit, the International Development Research Center (IDRC) announced that the Canadian government will contribute $15 million over three years to create a Center for Connectivity in Africa aimed at reducing the "digital divide." The IDRC and the U.N. Economic Commission for Africa will help with planning and implementation. The initiative follows the IDRC's Institute for Connectivity in the Americas project launched in May.
Canada Announces Border Funding
Allan Rock, Canada's minister of industry and newly named minister responsible for infrastructure, on Friday announced the details for a nearly $1.3 billion Canadian strategic infrastructure fund and a roughly $380 million border infrastructure fund.
The border fund is designed to support the initiatives of the Canada-U.S. Smart Border Action Plan by reducing border congestion, improving the flow of goods and services and expanding infrastructure capacity, according to a release.
Investment categories include broadband networks, highways and railways, local transportation, tourism or urban development, and water and sewage infrastructure.
With the knowledge that 70 percent of Canadian-U.S. truck traffic passes through six crossing points, the majority of the border fund will be invested in Windsor, Sarnia, Niagara Falls and Fort Erie in Ontario; Douglas, British Columbia; and Lacolle, Quebec.
On the border, funds will go toward physical infrastructure, infrastructure such as "smart cards" for "intelligent transportation systems," and improved analytical capacity via data collection and other means.
New Studies Probe Internet Jurisdiction, E-Health
The Cato Institute recently released a study that argues that U.S. courts should not enforce foreign-court orders that would undermine First Amendment protections. A basis for the argument is the uniformly held precedent that "the Internet fulfills the ultimate promise of the First Amendment and should receive the highest level of constitutional protection," according to study author Robert Corn-Revere.
The argument would defeat a French court's order against Yahoo that is now before a U.S. appellate court. In 2000, a Paris court ordered U.S.-based Yahoo to censor its Web site because it could be accessed in France and contained material violating that country's laws. A U.S. court overturned the French court order, and the appellate court is expected to rule later this year.
Separately, a recent study by Harris Interactive shows that European physicians are ahead of U.S. doctors in their use of electronic medical records. The study found that 90 percent of general practitioners in Sweden use such records, followed by the Netherlands with 88 percent and Denmark with 62 percent. Meanwhile, 17 percent of U.S. doctors use digital medical records.
European countries range widely in adoption of information technology, the study showed.
Beyond The DMCA
The United Kingdom is considering a draft copyright law that would be broader than the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act, according to Wired News.
The draft contains a passage stating that a person would be guilty of violating the law if he sells, rents or imports technologies designed to circumvent copyright protections for other than his own use, or, as part of a business, takes any steps toward selling or renting the technologies.
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