C.Key Characteristics of Improving Internet Deployment

2.Key Themes/Issues

a)Addressing Cost Impediments

In many cases, access to the Internet is limited by the high costs of connection. Even in situations where a potential user has access to a device that could support a connection, the high costs of the service may suppress usage. For example, in Mauritania one gigabyte of post-paid mobile data (computer-based) costs $33.32; by contrast, in Indonesia it costs an average of $5.26 for the same volume.⁵¹ Such cost disparities can be a significant impediment to broad Internet access. For that reason, several partnerships have emerged with a specific focus on addressing the high costs of Internet access.

• 
  The Alliance for Affordable Internet (A4AI): This partnership has over 70 members spanning the private sector, governmental organizations, academia, civil society, and foundations. The goal of this organization is to achieve the UN Broadband Commission’s target of enabling people buy entry level broadband for 5% of monthly income or less. The A4AI has several modes of operation:
  
  • 
    First, it builds coalitions in countries with significant challenges for Internet access and affordability. Currently, they are working in the Dominican Republic, Ghana, Mozambique, and Nigeria; they plan to add coalitions in up to six more countries by the end of the year. These coalitions create partnerships and dialogues to help address issues relating to infrastructure, funding, transparency, data collection, spectrum policy, and anti-competitive behavior.
    
  • 
    Second, A4AI conducts extensive research into pricing and the policies that impacted the affordability of Internet service in various countries. This research is a key input into their Affordability Index.⁵²
    
  • 
    Third, A4AI develops and publishes case studies in order to explore in depth the policy environments that have shaped the affordability of Internet access in particular countries. Currently these countries include, Cameroon, Ghana, Nigeria, Brazil, Dominican Republic, Peru, and Myanmar.
    
• 
  Internet.org: This Facebook-led partnership includes the support of Ericsson, Mediatek, Opera, Qualcomm, Samsung, and Nokia, with a goal of providing free basic internet services in places where access is otherwise unaffordable. Internet.org provides its free service, rebranded to “Free Basics,” by offering “zero-rating” service. This service is sponsored data provided in partnership with mobile providers in nearly 15 countries. The zero-rating means that mobile providers do not charge users for any data accessed through the Internet.org portal, which includes services like Facebook. Because the organization only offers zero rating for select services, as opposed to the Internet as a whole, the project has been criticized as a challenge to net neutrality in that it pushes users toward zero-rated content.⁵³ Similar concerns have been raised about Wikimedia Foundation’s zero-rating service, which provides free access to Wikipedia through partnerships with mobile providers.⁵⁴
  

Although Internet access is, as a general trend, becoming more and more affordable, significant challenges remain in sufficiently bringing down the cost in order the make it possible for the next billion users to connect. Although unique partnerships like zero-rating plans have emerged in the last few years, their controversial nature and lack of clear standards have seemingly inhibited broader deployment.

b)Addressing Technical Impediments

A significant challenge to access is a lack of sufficient physical infrastructure. In many cases, either physical infrastructure simply does not exist, or there is so little competition that monopoly pricing makes access too expensive. For that reason, we observe several partnerships that are focused on either indirectly supporting technical expansion (through best practices, education, etc.) or directly enabling technical expansion (through new, lower cost technologies).

• 
  African Internet Exchange System Project (AXIS): This is a partnership between the member states of the African Union, the E.U.-Africa Infrastructure Trust, the Government of Luxembourg, and the Internet Society. The partnership was formed in order to assist in the development, creation, and operation of new national and regional Internet Exchange Points (IXPs) to increase intra-African connectivity. Currently, because of a lack of local IXPs, Africa relies on expensive and inefficient overseas carriers to route local African traffic. This partnership is building capacity and providing technical assistance in order to support the deployment of IXPs in Africa, and it is doing this primarily through trainings and workshops focused on best practices and technical development.
  
• 
  FibreForAfrica.net: This project of the Association for Progressive Communications (APC) and its members is focused on research, advocacy, and policy reform, with the goal of laying the groundwork for fiber deployment in Africa. In particular, the APC has focused on the impact of the SAT3/WASC cable in West Africa and assessing the ways in which monopoly pricing has impacted infrastructure and development.
  
• 
  Global Access to the Internet for All (GAIA): This project of the Internet Engineering Taskforce (IETF) aims to build collaboration between governmental organizations, researchers, companies, and practitioners, with a focus on research, best practices, workshops, and developing experimental revisions to the core Internet protocols.
  

Similarly, there are ongoing initiatives aimed at directly improving Internet infrastructure in developing countries. Many of these direct approaches are being led by for-profit companies, either independently or in coalitions. Several of these approaches are fairly experimental, rather than investments in traditional infrastructure.

• 
  M-Powering Development Initiative: This project of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) aims to increase the reach of mobile Internet technology to more people, particularly in rural and underserved areas. The initiative brings together industry associations, such as GSMA and individual firms, with governments from developing countries to launch projects and share best practices. The initiative is continually searching for additional partners.
  
• 
  Fiber-Speed Satellite Network: O3b Networks uses a constellation of Medium-Earth-Orbit (MEO) satellites to bring fiber-quality connections to locations where other Internet infrastructure would be too costly to build, including small islands and remote inland countries. Their network of satellites in focused on the Global South.
  
• 
  OneWeb: This partnership between OneWeb, Virgin Group, Qualcomm, and Airbus plans to design, build, and launch up to 900 satellites in order to provide Internet broadband service to the hundreds of millions of people residing in locations without existing access.
  
• 
  SpaceX: Elon Musk’s SpaceX has announced plans to build a global satellite network and has received significant funding from Google, Fidelity, and Founders Fund, among others.
  
• 
  Aquila: Facebook has announced plans to build solar-powered drones to deliver Internet access. Test flights are expected later in 2015.
  
• 
  Google: Similar to Facebook’s plan, Google’s Solara drones will aim to deliver broadband services to unconnected regions. In addition, Google’s Project Loon will use a network of weather balloons in order to provide internet access to people with LTE-enabled devices in rural and remote areas.
  
• 
  Outernet: This project uses satellites to broadcast a predetermined bundle of content, including news, weather, educational materials, and more. Solar powered boxes download the bundles of content and then make them available over Wi-Fi to nearby devices.
  

Many organizations and partnerships are working toward providing the technical infrastructure needed for Internet deployment. The approaches span building an educational foundation to traditional infrastructure, to entirely new forms of infrastructure. In all cases, significant progress is still necessary.

c)Addressing Legal and Institutional Impediments

Expanding Internet access sometimes requires addressing a variety of non-technical challenges that are perpetuated by outdated or inflexible legal and institutional systems. For example, in 2012, the Internet Society described the challenge in Africa as “80% social and 20% technical engineering.”⁵⁵ The social “engineering” often involves addressing deficiencies in the legal and institutional structures within a country or a region in order to support functioning broadband markets, incentivize investments, or develop coordinated ICT strategies. According to A4AI, effective Internet strategies at an institutional level requires three things: (1) a strategic, forward-looking approach to ICT development; (2) rules that increase efficiency and enable market entry; and (3) the means and willingness to enforce the rules.

• 
  Ethiopia: This is an example of a government that did not adapt outdated institutions. In Ethiopia there is only one Internet provider—Ethio Telecom, a government-run company that outsources management to France Telecom. Competition is constrained because foreign companies are prohibited from investing in the country’s telecommunications market, and there is no domestic competition.⁵⁶ Additionally, Ethio Telecom contributed around $300 million to the Ethiopian government’s budget, disincentivizing change.⁵⁷ This means that prices for Internet connections exceed market levels in Ethiopia.⁵⁸ In 2013, one gigabyte of mobile data cost 41 percent of per capita gross national income (GNI) in Ethiopia. For comparison, the same data in Kenya costs 15 percent of GNI.
  
• 
  Colombia: Recent revisions to law and regulation have enabled Colombia to improve the cost and service of Internet in the country. In 2009, Colombia introduced a new ICT law that lowered the barriers to market entry. As a result, today several companies are part of a competitive market that has driven prices down and quality of service up.⁵⁹ Several companies are currently rolling out 4G technology. Additionally, the government explicitly targets the most underserved segments of society through expanding the National Optical Fibre Backbone project in order to connect every municipality to broadband infrastructure through the creation of hubs in national parks, and through financial assistance for families that cannot afford ICT equipment.⁶⁰ Because of these policies, Internet is affordable and nearly half of the population has Internet access.
  

3. Conclusion and Core Observations

Connecting those in developed countries without access to the Internet requires simultaneously addressing technical, economic, social, institutional, and educational challenges. For that reason, we observe public-private partnerships playing a central role in this space and expect that they will continue to be central in addressing these varied challenges. Although there are many organizations currently operating in this space, the challenge remains substantial, presenting several opportunities for the Forum and the FII.

It is important to have accurate measurements of the scope and scale of Internet deployment today and over time. We observe several efforts at collecting that information, but current datasets are incomplete. The Organization on Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), for example, has conducted studies in broadband growth and policies, but covers only the OECD countries.⁶¹ Organizations like the ITU and A4AI have significant datasets, but can provide only limited insight into (1) how policies have shaped the outcomes; (2) whether and how users ultimately take advantage of the access they have; and (3) what factors inhibit use in areas where basic access is available. Generating such information at a global level is collection and analysis intensive, and therefore expensive. There is an opportunity for the Forum and the FII to help supplement this understanding through raising relevant questions in its own surveys, supporting additional in-depth case study research, and supporting in-person survey research in additional countries.
Several on-going initiatives in this space seek to provide education, primarily at the policymaker and infrastructure management levels. The Forum and the FII do not need to duplicate such efforts, but can leverage their extensive relationships with policymakers to ensure that existing educational tools are effective and reach the necessary individuals. Additionally, there is an opportunity for the Forum and the FII to consider what educational tools and resources may be necessary for ensuring that users can make the most effective use of Internet access once it is available.
Given the challenges of affordability, zero-rating service has tremendous potential in bringing Internet access to users at no additional costs using devices they already own. Zero-rating services, however, have been controversial because of the power it gives to the service providers to shape the content and knowledge available to the user.⁶² The Forum and the FII have an opportunity to help bridge the gap between policymakers, technology companies, and civil society, in order to identify best practices and standards in the deployment of such services.
Finally, there is an opportunity for the Forum and the FII to help ensure a match between technological development and the needs of policymakers and end users. As noted above, there are many experimental approaches to addressing the infrastructural challenges, including balloons and satellites. However, people such as Bill Gates have have criticized those efforts as out of touch with the needs on the ground, including power, water, and health care.⁶³ Similarly, many projects aim to bring connectivity to existing mobile devices, which may lower costs while creating a mismatch between the necessary uses and the capabilities of the device. In both cases, the Forum and the FII can help foster dialogues to ensure that the technologies being developed and deployed are done so in way that best supports the needs of citizens.

Download 274.55 Kb.

Share with your friends: