U.N. Body Seeks Cheap Broadband Throughout Africa by 2010, with Business Help
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Cal. -- A U.N. arm set a goal of making low-cost broadband available throughout Africa by 2010, and decided promotion of community “telecenters” is a main way to spread communications connectivity and access throughout the world. A closed meeting here of the strategy council of the Global Alliance for ICT & Development set as secondary goals helping to realize a Malaysian proposal for a Cyber Development Corps of volunteers to “train the trainers” in the 3rd world, and advocating 2 broad achievements, the body’s exec. coordinator, Sarbuland Khan, told us: Free broadband for all high schools, pushed by Switzerland, and development of standards for making communications technologies accessible to people with disabilities.
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Kofi Annan, then U.N. secy. gen., set up the Alliance last year to follow up on the work of the World Symposium on the Information Society. Its meeting much of Tues. was followed Wed. by a Silicon Valley event that organizers said was intended to harness the directness, innovation and goal orientation of the high-tech industry, but attracted a broader crowd.
The Alliance aims to take advantage of the coinciding interests of 3rd World govts. in economic development, and of technology companies in finding large new markets to continue high growth, said Craig Barrett, chmn. of the group and of Intel, at Wed.’s event. The Alliance is a small, “low bureaucracy… no budget” organization whose job is to bring together govts., companies, civic groups and academics with international banks and other financiers, to speed the spread of connectivity and access; the hardware, software and user education needed to make good use of them; and the local content needed to make them useful, Barrett said. The weather next week is more pertinent than stock-market results, he said, as are information on the best pesticides and fertilizers to use and where the crop-sale and job opportunities are. Creating local content is part of the development opportunity, he said. The purposes of spreading the technology, besides direct economic growth, are improving and expanding health care and general education and making govts. more efficient to serve their populations better, Barrett said.
Africa was chosen as the focus for putting broadband everywhere because it has the greatest need, Barrett said. Telecenters are seen as a crucial way to spread technology where many people can’t afford PCs and other costs, he said. There are already about 100,000 kiosks, community centers and other such centers, Barrett said. The Alliance’s job is to work with govts. and other money sources to replicate the most successful ones, he said. But it also seeks to expand and spread govt. aid programs for individual technology purchases, Barrett said.
Barrett told us afterward that the body’s biggest challenge is “getting the people with ideas together with the people with funding.” The biggest problem is coordinating the thought and work styles of participants from govt. and business, he said: “We're making progress.”
At a media briefing later, new ITU Secy. Gen. Hamadoun Toure emphasized that privatization and a “sound regulatory structure” underlay the explosion of mobile phones, aided by “very innovative models like prepaid cards in developing countries” for those without bank accounts or fixed addresses -- and this holds lessons for broadband. Khan said one of the main lessons is the importance of service cost and hastening a drastic drop.
Host Intel had about 20 employees at the event, according to a roster of about 260 registrants. Google, Hewlett-Packard, IBM and Reuters had 3 or 4 each. Cisco, eBay, Microsoft, Nokia and Siemens were among other companies represented. There were no other big device makers besides Sony and no large U.S. service providers besides AT&T and Verizon. But govts. from Canada to Azerbaijan, Mauritania and Malaysia were represented. Silicon Valley Rep. Lofgren (D-Cal.) had one of the few U.S. govt. offices showing the flag, and she was sending an aide.
The Alliance has an ambitious event schedule. March 26 it will focus on disability access at a N.Y. meeting, Khan told us. May 22 is a joint event in Geneva with the U.N. Commission on Science & Technology, “something like this” Silicon Valley conference, “only on a global scale.” There are tentative plans for a May 22-24 Global Forum on ICT & Youth for Development, he said. This would promote not only greater technology access for young people but also taking advantage of their energy to spread communications generally, Khan said. He hopes for an Oct. “major conference on connectivity access in Africa,” to be organized with ITU and others including perhaps the World Bank and held in Africa, maybe Kigali, Rwanda, or Cairo. The Alliance plans events in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in connection with the Global Knowledge Partnership’s annual conference in Dec. and with the May 2008 World Congress of IT Companies, Khan said.
The Maxwell School at Syracuse U. will do assessments every 2 years comparing what the Alliance is saying with what it’s accomplishing, Khan said. The first will be next year. -- Louis Trager
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Toure said he hoped for a “global agreement on cyber security” by the end of 2008 to help fulfill one of WSIS’s charges for follow-through by ITU. He said every country needs equipment and a trained team to tackle the challenges. ITU will take on cyber security broadly, including spam and child pornography as well as viruses, he said.