[Bp_localcontent] Let's keep the conversation going! Almost done...

[Michael Kende]

Hello Susan,

Speaking for myself, I agree these are the most important questions, because I believe there are relatively few good answers so far – which is why this is such a worthwhile initiative.  As I have been, I will mainly focus on area 1 regarding the technical infrastructure for hosting within a country or regionally.  On this front, I would divide between policies that indirectly help to promote local content and those that directly help to promote local content, and I think we have a pretty good idea of the former.

Historically speaking, the situation in Africa and Latin America is somewhat similar to the situation in Europe in the 1990s.  At that time, the majority of European traffic was passing through the US (I heard that at one point 66% of European traffic was going through the MAE-East NAP near Washington DC), and much of the content was originating there as well.  Part of the reason was based on the historical role of the US in developing the early Internet, and part of it due to European policies.  At the time, most European markets were monopolies, and capacity within and between European countries was very expensive – since a link to the US was needed anyway, it was efficient to use it for most traffic.  Then European markets began to liberalise, capacity prices came down, and the non-profit IXP model emerged to be used for local and regional traffic exchange, and then the largest grew into significant hubs for content as well.

With all of the new cables to Africa and their open access policies, and more capacity in Latin America as well, the prices for capacity are going down quite a bit, and now of course there are an increasing number of IXPs in countries that can be used to exchange traffic and host content.  From work we have done in Africa, the situation is not quite as promising for terrestrial capacity, to take traffic within a country, or for cross-border connectivity, where there are barriers to crossing borders and picking up traffic in other countries – this is particularly an issue for the sixteen landlocked countries of Africa and two, and for promoting the development of efficient regional hubs for traffic exchange and content.  (We are about to start studies of this issue for Latin America and Asia, but they will not be ready in time) However, the indications are generally promising in this regard. For instance, in East Africa, Liquid just completed a fiber ring through the five countries, and there are good reciprocal licensing arrangements whereby an ISP from one country can connect to and exchange traffic at an IXP in another country without a license in that country (which would only be needed to sell services in that country). Likewise, there is a good understanding of the conditions for promoting broadband access to increase the number of users and usage.

As important as these policies are, they are indirect policies that create the conditions under which there is more local content available, but do not focus on increasing the amount of local content per se. My sense is that less has been done in this respect.  I know that some governments have required that their own content is hosted locally – such as Rwanda – which helps to promote the creation of hosting infrastructure, but I do not know of any other policies to promote this.  Other general policies that help to promote local content, I believe, would be a focus on promoting the use of the local ccTLD, which gives the websites a domestic focus, and often resolve quickly with a local root server.  I don’t have any experience in this, but I would gather this has been helped by IDNs, in countries that do not use ASCII script.  Also, we have come across a number of innovation hubs in countries, which provide a space with Internet access, mentorship, possibly seed money, etc., and can act as incubators for developing local content – I am not aware of any research that shows the results of these hubs, but it also seems quite promising.

In addition to creating the infrastructure for hosting content, there is also a need for appropriate legislation and capacity building, and then the hardest piece is the creativity and innovative drive behind new apps and services, and that of course is much harder to promote.  Looking forward to the call tomorrow.

Best,

Michael



From: Susan Chalmers <susan at susanchalmers.com<mailto:susan at susanchalmers.com>>
Date: Friday 8 August 2014 18:06
To: "bp_localcontent at intgovforum.org<mailto:bp_localcontent at intgovforum.org>" <bp_localcontent at intgovforum.org<mailto:bp_localcontent at intgovforum.org>>
Subject: [Bp_localcontent] Let's keep the conversation going! Almost done...

Greetings everyone,

I'm writing because our conversation has petered out a bit on what (I think are) the most important questions. Thus far, we have discussed the definition of "local content", we have shared stories about the states of Internet infrastructure, regulation and human capacities in our various countries, and we have identified policy measures that exist in our countries which relate to local content development.

Now comes the fun part!

  *   What are the successes of the existing policies? Do some countries have the same success stories? Let's identify them if possible.
  *   What turned out to be the unintended consequences of these policies? Again, do some countries share the same experiences?
  *   How can multistakeholder cooperation address the shortcomings in existing policies?

Please recall that we'd like to keep responses organised within the tripartite structure:

Area 1 - technical infrastructure
Area 2 - legislation and government policy (including preservation policy)
Area 3 - human capacity and capability

Thanks again everyone and it would be great if we could keep this conversation going over the next few days, so that Mr. Laprise, who is in charge of producing the final document, has a rich source of material for the final product.

Warm regards,
Susan

--
Susan Chalmers
Consultant, Internet Policy

+1 269 290 2097
www.susanchalmers.com<http://www.susanchalmers.com>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://intgovforum.org/pipermail/bp_localcontent_intgovforum.org/attachments/20140811/5a4f3961/attachment.htm>