The following are the outputs of the real-time captioning taken during the Twelfth Annual Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Geneva, Switzerland, from 17 to 21 December 2017. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the event, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>>FLORENCE POZNANSKI: Good morning. We are just finishing the technical preparations. Maybe before just to finish, I would like to say you to everybody, good morning. My name is Florence. I am activist in the Internet Without Borders in the Brazilian best, and I will coordinate the sessions that I will present you in a few minutes.
Before we begin, maybe I would like to make a special call from someone who maybe have the kindly to help us taking some photos because we don't have any collaborator here with us to help us, and we are coordinating. It will be difficult to do something, I don't know if someone has a tablet or a smart phone to take a little bit pictures of the people and after we can share together and do this.
Okay. Just let you think about this. And we begin ‑‑ we are just waiting to the last ‑‑ the last PowerPoints. How are we going to do? Okay. I am going there. So we are going to begin. So I will explain a little bit the topic of our panel now and present the four panelists who are here. Maybe make a small conceptualization of what's the goal of talking today about submarine cables and the governance of them.
Submarine cables and internet exchange points play a crucial role in ‑‑ national and international networks into a complex network of submarine highways. Estimates show that ten percent increase in broadband penetration brings around 1.4 percent increase in terms of economical growth. But interconnection costs remain very high in developing country, especially in Africa due to various factors including national ‑‑ lack of infrastructure or buyers dramatic access. But also Latin‑America.
In 2005, every working groups on internet governance, huge international agency to report on intersection costs ‑‑ and local context from developing countries.
Since then, several organizations have met the challenges and recommends to promote the mobilization of access to international gatherings. Latin‑America and Africa and generally all the ‑‑ are passing through a request of huge transformation of their infrastructure, which is materializing with the construction of new cables ‑‑ and like in Brazil for example to Europe and Africa. But without context and transparency, jurisdiction and governance, the impacts of new internet infrastructure can be reduced.
This panel aims to pull from these topics. And you can just go ahead. There are some questions we have put here. What outcomes show additional cable have internet affordability, Latin‑America countries and how to maximize them. Second question, how could sea cable provider create transparency on the functioning and terrific policy. Third question, how can this change take place with the national legislation on telecommunication infrastructure that's reduced by the ‑‑ like in Brazil. Our international gateways ‑‑ to become collective goods ‑‑ and governance of common pooled resources and how to reduce the high ‑‑ in some countries in international broadband especially in Africa and Latin‑America.
This panel is the result of our research that we have beginning since the last year. We have already the opportunity to present these work in other international contrasts, like at the rights con to in the beginning of this year in Brazil and also in Brazil in the forum that ‑‑. And for us it's a big opportunity to present this first part of this states today. So the aim ‑‑ the goal of this panel is to talk about this very rarely discussed points and have the possibility to share with other possible insides and online in order to improve our collective reflection of these topics. I'm going now to introduce our four panelists who will have each one more or less 12 minutes to present the presentation.
And after, we will have a debate, more or less 40 minutes for the debate where everybody will be invited to come in, critique, with older experience of each one have here in these beautiful community of internet kind of governance. So you can just pass here.
We will begin our presentation with
>> ROXANA RADU: Representing the technical community in Switzerland and she was talk about balance and perspective of the outcome of submarine cables in the international legislation and governance. After, we will talk with peter. He's representative of the civil society, global police, legia consult and access now in Europe. And with him we will talk about internet shut down and censorship. And the USGNC of internet gateways.
And then we will hear the presentation of Veridiana. She's also represent of the civil society and lawyer, member of the director conceal of internet ‑‑ in Brazil. And she will make a general point of view of the governance in Latin‑America, the structure of the ecosystem in reference to providers, users, and citizens.
Then at the end of these groups, we will talk with feeling. He is represent of the technical community researcher. He has make a fellow from the subject of in Brazil and he's also member of Internet Without Borders and he will present his research about the ela link cable in Europe and lat America and his invasive governance model.
If it's possible, we can now begin with Roxana.
>> ROXANA RADU: Sure. Thank you very much. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for being here in the room so early on in competition with some of the main sessions. I think this should become a main session very soon. It's a very important topic that unfortunately it's not well covered. When we talk about internet, we often hear that the internet is decentralized. But in effect if we look at the very basic infrastructure, the way in which communication travels, we see that there's a very high concentration. I don't know if we can maybe display a quick map of the under cables. I don't know if it's possible, but I'm sure all of you here in the room have already seen the map. It has generally very crowded spots and fewer lines around the global south than around the connections in the global north, and this is the situation nowadays. 97 percent of all communications travels via cables. If you thought a lot of it has to do with satellite, it's only three percent. And there was a study that showed that in the U.S. was it not for the under sea cables for a failure at some point to function properly, only seven percent of all communication going out of the U.S. would be possible via satellite.
So in fact we have a very low reliance on other means of sending information around the world. And in that sense, the cables become then a critical infrastructure. They are not treated as such for various reasons that I'm going to talk about in the next minute. This go something very important to keep in mind at the start of this discussion.
What concerns the governance of this space, we have a very interesting picture. It's entirely private. This cables used to be owned by the operators. They are failed for the infrastructure that was created for the telegraph. So they are cables that belong to 1 or 2 big players now. We see that the cost for lying such a cable on the bed sea, it's so high that not even the big players can do it on their own anymore so we have consortia of telephone companies being in charge of this cables.
We have 213 cable systems around the world, and all of these are entirely private. And what we see recently in the evolution of the discussions is that more and more companies that have made their profits out of internet content and content processing are also investing a lot in cables. So we talk about companies like Google or Facebook that will very soon have their own cables. Google is now working on connecting a single port in Australia by one of its own cables. And we see this model expanding and of course that is a set of interesting challenges to governance models. If these companies are able on their own to transport all the data that they produce, how is the global internet connectivity going to be affected.
I was saying before that the cables are laid down on what was the telegraph infrastructure. Of course, they evolve from electromagnetic copper cables to fiber optic and even here we have a very fast growth of the technology available.
However, they are not entirely exempt from disruptions and from faults. We have in fact a lot of incidents that have to do with the internet cables around 300 every year. We hardly ever hear about this in the west, but I think it is a recurring problem in the global south.
In fact, in a study that looked at all the disruptions between 1959 and 2006, it turns out about 45 percent of cable fault have to do with fishing and about 21 percent are linked to unknown causes whereas about 15 percent have to do with anchoring practices.
This triggers a very important question, namely how are these cable protected because they are on their ability, increasingly so as we have concentrated hubs of communication and landing points. When you look at international law, there are a few conventions that can help us figure out where we stand with the protection of cables, and I will just go through for this very quickly. The first one dates back to 1884, and it was for the protection of the submarine telegraphy. It had 40 signatories which agreed to make it a punishable offense if somebody breaks or injures a cable. Now, what's complicated here is that the cables are in international waters, so unless you can link the vessels to our particular state, it's becoming a little more complicated to punish and sanction the percent that interfere with the cables. In 1958, the Geneva convention of the hi seas concluded that the space should not have struggled the construction of undersea cables in international waters and a convention of the UN from 82, the one on the law of the sea, made the protection of cables a priority although they do not fall under any special provisions when it comes to military purposes or wars. So the cables cannot be protected as legitimate ‑‑ not military targets in conflicts, which is an interesting point for our discussion today. But in effect, this convention from 1982 is making it a criminalizing offense to break the cables in any way and the states all have jurisdiction to punish the vessels that interfere with these cables.
Now, an interesting example of some state action in this field comes from Australia and New Zealand about where special protection has been attributed to the landing points in these two countries. There is something called a cable protection zone, which is a designated restricted area for grossly monitoring what happens to the cables. In fact, all vessels that enter the special area have to declare their position at all times, and they are under monitoring for the entire duration they spend in the protection zone. This also has to do with the fear that this countries have in having their communication disrupted. But most importantly, they also get prepared for responding later to such a problem. So in effecting the cable protection zones, Australia, New Zealand, can activate their military boats and can surveil everything throughout the duration of the day of the boat there. And this is something that has been given as a good practice in this field because the cables were not insured in any way other than by the corporate ownership they have.
So to think about the protection of this critical communication even in peace time from all sorts of disruptions that can occur naturally, like an earthquake or a natural causes or like human intervention is something that I think is where the discussion should move into. Of course when I think about the defendants on one or multiple cables, this doesn't apply to the northern part of the world. In general, the continents are very well connected. But when we look at the situation in the south, that is very very different. We have for example the incident in Somalia from July 2017 where one cable was cut and for three weeks, there was no possibility of repairing it and that costs about 10 million daily, the entire region. We also had the ‑‑ an earthquake that affected Taiwan in 2006 and also had massive financial implications. It's interesting to also point out here that if you look at this hops, the landing point or the connections, where many many cables are concentrated, it is enough to affect 1 or 2 to actually start the communication even if the other cables remain available because they might not have the capacity to take on all the additional traffic. And this is for example the concern around the concentration ‑‑ when it comes to the communication between Europe and Asia. If you got three of these cables, more than 70 percent of the communication won't be possible anymore.
The other point that is probably interesting for the discussion here is what happens when you afford more connection to these tables. Now, we have more vehicles that could surveil the sea bottom. But also with almost militarizing protection zones. And this is importantly in the context of developing countries and conflict torn countries. Do we want to move in that direction and protect this cables from all danger by putting even more power in the hands of some of the governments. Thank you. I will stop here. Thank you.
>> FLORENCE POZNANSKI: Thank you, Roxana. I had the one minute paper that I wanted to send to you and I didn't have the possibility. So great for the time. It's a good transmission now because with peter, we will also talk about the shut down and the unilarity of the cable and how that can also have a big impact of the censorship and the freedom of expression in the countries. So Peter.
>> PETER MICEK: Thank you. Thanks. I think that was an excellent introduction. I just want to underscore a couple points to start. I'll then talk about some of the vulnerabilities that I see both to freedom of expression and access as well as to privacy, and then talk about some of the response in civil society and in the human rights world.
So I want to underscore that I think these cables are critical human rights infrastructure. They're not only essential to our banking and financial systems and everything else we're hooking up to the internet these days, but they're essential to civilian communications, people to people links, and users have rights to.
These cables largely operate out of the public eye, in secret. They're literally in the ground, under the water, and a lot of their operators and a lot of the governance that licenses operators that seem to be operating with a vested interest and maintaining the secrecy and cloaks of darkness over these cables.
However, as human rights infrastructure, I think it's incumbent upon all of us to continually raise the inspector of vulnerability to these cables and vulnerability to our access to human rights.
So first of all I want to shout out to Steve song who is somewhere at this event who tracks these cables and their production around Africa. And I say that because again there's not much reporting on the day‑to‑day management of these cables, the building of new cables, and their governance.
A lot of the reporting that we do see in the western press came out around the revelations by a former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. So in 2013, you'll see articles that really provided the first hard glimpse at the access that governments enjoy to many of the cables running under the seas.
So the first vulnerability I highlight is actually surveillance and tapping. Wire tapping and surveillance. And the whole sale collection of internet traffic at the landing points and elsewhere.
So two programs I want to highlight are the U can recollect's program TEMPORA as the guardian reported in 2013. A program took place with two principle components. One was called mastering the internet, and the other global telecoms exploitation. And the scooping up as much online and telephone traffic as possible and carried out without any public debate.
One of these programs under GCHQ's watch had the ability to tap into store volumes of data for up to 30 days to sift through and analyze them. That was reported in 2013. We have to assume that the capabilities have only grown since then in the UK.
This is part of what makes ‑‑ let's just say the UK an intelligent superpower as one of the five guys. And again to underscore what we heard previously, this is not actually a new capability. These cables date back to the 18 '50s. If you look at the cable maps of telegraph cables over 100 years ago, they map very nicely with the internet cables that are existent today. There's maybe a few more around Africa, a few more around South America. And as we're seeing some being built between South America and Europe.
But the cables map nicely also to the fly‑bys of governance, and you will see that not only the cables lost the volume of traffic largely runs through the five at some point. One of the first acts by the UK government after the declaration of war in the early 20th century against Germany was to cut access to the fiber optic ‑‑ I'm sorry, the telegraph cables at that point. And so that intentional disruption shows another vulnerability of these cables.
So after declaring war, putting your cut ‑‑ chip out and see the cup, five cables linking Germany, France, Spain, and North America. So these cables have more than 100 years ago been used to disrupt global communications intentionally.
Back to the surveillance, I should mention that the initial security agency of the United States also forces the operators of the cables to sign so‑called network security agreements. The first that we know of was in 2003 with global crossing. An operator became a model for these agreements which did not themselves authorize surveillance, but they did authorize or demand the ability to tap these cables be built into the ‑‑ into by design, into the infrastructure and that the U.S. government would have ready access, I think it was within 30‑minute or so, of an order being issued.
So two takeaways I think from the wire discussion. First of all, building new cables won't stop the five guys, the 9, 16, or even your government, whoever they may be. Building new cables won't stop any of these governments from spying and probably accessing much of the data flowing over those cables.
And the second take away would be that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to stop this ‑‑ especially talking about this surveillance which takes place without authorization.
I think three more ‑‑ one of the ladies I are unintentional disruptions, as we've heard, intentional disruptions, and then failures of governance.
So unintentional disruptions, that's pretty much what it sound like. If sharks or one of the real threats to the internet, some people say, I think the story in Armenia of a grandmother digging for mermaids. Cutting off Armenia from the global internet is probably a myth, but it is pretty standard that ships will drop anchors. So that shut down.
And Somalia is interesting because it showed the dependents of Somalia's economy on the internet and also because it took place during political debates. And as the country was gearing up for an election, there was a lot of suspicion that these cuts were intentional. So without transparency and a Clearview of ‑‑ and trust in the operators and operations of these cables, we're liable to see more distrust and possibly unrest from people's suspicions about why the disruptions take place.
‑‑ absolutely do occur. This is one of the ways that internet touchdowns take place. We have tracked, had access now and in the on coalition arise in internet shut downs around the world. We define these as intentional disruptions that made the internet inaccessible or largely unusable and connect communication services often with the purpose of disrupting the free flow of information. It's a mouthful. The UN has developed another definition you'll see in the internet resolution in 2016 as well as the coming safety of journalists resolution at the general assembly to be approved any day now.
Language on intentional disruptions of accident to or dissemination of information. So this is the Norma link piece is building these norms at this ‑‑ our communications are essential to the exercise of human rights and intentional destructions likely violent human rights and are something that should be dealt with in public forum and our governments should be held accountable for.
Applying these sorts of norms to the submarine and terrestrial cable business is not something that's been done, but we will do it if it's necessary to protect our rights.
I think the last vulnerability I want to mention is failures of governance and imagination, really. So these cables are laid, you know, often as we hear at great extreme expense, run by consortiums of operators in powerful countries, often. And I think in the south pacific, we saw cables being laid towards Australia, another great power, and then went close by a number of islands and didn't have the operators and those involved in planning them didn't have the imagination to think that people on these islands might actually want a connection to the global internet.
And so it took people with a social expertise and with a human rights leaning to say you know perhaps that ‑‑ to bring everyone online by 2020 as sustainable development goals and press us to do. We should actually bring access to the greatest most expensive infrastructure there is to some of the most verbal and marginalized people in the world.
And so I did hear one success story of the plans being changed and many of the islands that would have been passed by being hooked up to some of these cables.
There's also failures in governance in terms of activation. The cables ‑‑ some of the cables running around in the horn of Africa go right up to the beach, the landing point, and then die. They're dead ends, simply because of lack of governance to activate those cables and to bring their benefits to the people.
So a few solutions I want to highlight. First, access now has produced human rights principles for connectivity and development. So these principles tow investing in in infrastructure. People trying to bring digital economies into the ‑‑ grow digital economies and bring it around into the digital age. They tell them ways to build in human rights protections by design, bring inclusivity into the planning, the process, the operation, the deployment and the governance of telecommunications infrastructure in the digital age.
These principles include pretty simple things like consider who will have access to these new capabilities. If women ‑‑ if the verbal and marginalized have access, and I'm happy to share those.
We also point to norms, like the UN getting business on business end human rights which absolutely applied to submarine cable operators. These tell us that due indigenous is necessary. So where are ‑‑ where is the due indigenous by cable operators, these consortiums? Where is the human impact assessment for each new cable planned out online.
And then I think finally transparency, there should be a couple of contracts on the concepts of these cables. It should have been that's practice and bidding and openness. We have have transparency to access to the cables which should only take place in a digital world.
The last point, just published an awesome statement about the public core, as with most norms these days, the best part is in the foot notes where it talks about elements of the public core, including communications tables. So I recommend you all check that out. Thanks.
>> FLORENCE POZNANSKI: Thank you, peter. Just informing you that we have also five people who are participating in our video online communications so they can also talk with them, with Anna who is responsible for the communication online.
So now we are going direct to Latin‑America with Verdiana who is going to contextualize us in the context of infrastructure connection, governance, and everything.
>> VERIDIANA ALIMONTI: Good morning, everyone. I'm from Brazil. I'm with a program that works with digital rights. So we got back to the map, and this image is very strong in showing the inequalities within infrastructure and the community. This distribution fundamentally express as power relation linked to the concentration of information for world wide. We trace this concern really to network neurilities or surveillance in cyber security. We see a huge number of cables connecting United States to Asia, Latin‑America‑Europe. And more than that, we see that Latin‑America cannot communicate with Asia without passing through the U.S. as well as that there's only one cable already in service which lets Latin‑America to reroute the U.S. on the way. The others in the grade are not in operation yet.
Likewise, currently, the American content only communicate with of course passing through Europe. Actually, now a days the connection between Africa and the rest of the world is mainly through Europe.
When we look specifically in Brazil, only three of our submarine operators do not pass through U.S‑‑
Being twice the amount charged between SaoPaulo and Miami. Among other factors, the prices are related to prices in the market and more central fruits.
The equality of the communication exchanged since we reduced the latency which as you know is the time it takes for a data package to go from one designated point to the other. Investors of one of the Brazil‑Africa cables believes that with this infrastructure, the exchange of behavior between American and Africa continents will be five times faster.
So Brazil will have more and more diversified submarine cables and then how does the network spread with the international territory? As you know as well we have the backbone infrastructure which crosses the country, the pack hall one that makes the link and the last mile infrastructure that the the last one and where usually there are more conditions to the small and men and women ISPs to flourish as well as community networks and initiatives when the networks are built and by and for communities.
The spectrum of location is also an important element of the internet access equation. How efficient, how distributed, how dec that allocation is. So network universalization will hardly counting only on market activity. It's necessary to combine private investments with public policies and regulation that set out obligations and service goals in exchange for licenses, public subsidies, and other mechanisms. We can already see in this presentation a variety of players involved. Big time operators, small and medium sized beasts, communities operating their own networks, university that also their academic networks. Different government levels. And noncommercial civil society that must involve in the liberation of policies and recommendations.
This vision bring forces in forces of a multi‑stakeholder approach also to the multi‑stakeholder approach, also to the governance of the internet infrastructure. In Brazil, the telecommunications service that supports internet connection are called the infrastructure or the physical layer is liberated by Anatel, which is our telecom regulatory body. However, considering all the ecosystem and the need to mood to stakeholder processes, we also count on the Brazilian internet steering committee which sets out regulations for the internet, administers critical resources such as the location of IP addresses and among other things carries out products networks efficiency.
And I want to talk to you about one specific project which fosters the information of internet exchange points which is an connection of metropolitan areas ‑‑.
So the most usual way to connect to the internet, it's establishing a commercial relation with an ISP bang for transit. But as we know, internet is a network of networks that therefore includes home users, companies of full sizes, governmental and networks, et cetera.
So it's possible to create direct links among these networks without the mandatory participation of providers. I'm not assuming or stating that iSPs are disposable. However, it is possible ‑‑ no, it's one before. However, it is possible to identify other internet participants with whom the communication through the network is relevant enough to establish a direct physical link exchanging through this link the traffic that previously passed through the provider. This is what we call in Portuguese traffic exchange or peering in good English.
So usually this relation has a collaborative nature, but it exists between a recitative service between the networks involved. And generally, does not involve payments from the bending to another. But in this case, there may be payments as well.
This is a more economic solution because there's no need to pay a provider for the traffic that's exchanged directly with other networks and it also enhances the quality of service since direct connections with faster and more reliable.
Nevertheless, there are expenses involved. Links must be established which usually costs a significant amount. Equipment such as rotors maybe needs to be replaced, and a skilled labor must be available to handle the necessary configurations. In order to deal with this complexity, the internet exchange points project was developed. So the ISPs exist to help internet participants to establish traffic exchange relationships, keeping its advantages while reducing the expenses and problems involved. So, again, that's the other one.
The concept is very simple. They consist of a centralized structure where several networks can insect to. The several links are not required to establish different rips with different networks but only one link to the ISP.
Currently, 33 million metropolitan areas host and the relationship of interconnected is diverse, including ISPs of different sizes, content providers, universities and academic networks, banks, big companies related to other sectors. Sof this is the overall success to experience led to explicitly reference in the Brazilian civil rights framework for the internet which is known as Marcus few.
One is related to the information of net neutrality in Brazil, which is involve telecom regulator, the competition authority, relying on CGI.BR recommendations.
However, we simply are warning sign was lit up regarding CGI.BR and its relationship with the government because a unilateral public ‑‑ in Brazil was carried out by the Brazilian government without discussing it previously with the committee. And the process is still going on, and now with more ‑‑ with more CGI participation and public oversight and also the international support was very important in this moment. And we are facing in Brazil right now conservatives that are bagging many issues with the recent decisionmaker of net neutrality, our regulation of net neutrality. A decree is also in danger, but we have a lot of important legal guarantees in the markets with you. So we cannot ‑‑ the setback cannot be very hard because of the legal guarantees that we have.
We also have the rules of changes in our telecom regulation that we can mistake power and some prerogatives regarding investments and the rights of users. But we have a good news. It is related to the link and part of this investments are done by a state owned company, a Brazilian state‑owned company that was reactivated to conduct universal access policies in general, televerse project wasn't so well succeeded until now. But Ela link is a good example. So to be optimistic, I will finish my intervention here and let feel, talk a bit more about the link that is the direct link to the Brazil in Europe. Thank you.
>> FLORENCE POZNANSKI: Thank you very much. And with your transition, Felix.
>> FÉLIX BLANC: I will try to keep it down with the optimism because my research in Brazil was not otherwise optimistic. And I've been involved in ‑‑ for the past 2 or 3 years. I've made studies on the items for affordability ‑‑ with international gate was the like 2000 times higher from African to Europe and Europe to ‑‑. So I was a bit surprised at the community. And later on, we be allowed this project to discover the connectivity in Latin‑America. But I would say much has been said on the ‑‑ but it's a critical ‑‑ that support 99 process of ‑‑ because it's always a figure your heart into the newspaper but don't forget that there's also traffic which is not always. So I think the bright is 67 on the one traffic is there. That's the figure for the real figure.
So the map of economic inequalities and political intentions, it's very important in the Brazilian case. And more and more studies on the continuity on the telegraph system and then the ‑‑ optical fiber system in which we are currently.
The most important is when you research on this stuff because of the lack of transparency, access to information, and those ‑‑ that's international backbone providers doing their practice are very exclusive and for small operators creating possible access to the stations to see, to know what are the prices. And when I studied that ‑‑ the activation of the wax, which is in the very bottom cable now in West Africa. And for the small ‑‑ impossible to know what was the price. We are price paid by counter ‑‑ business negotiating directly with the consortium and they cost excessively, band width was like 60 percent of to customers. So it was huge. But we have now leverage on the dis consortia.
They are using ‑‑ said earlier, I want to expand on this for major influences such as surveys. There's also a French program that's the been rebuilt but in 2015, because the fence is a major link between the U.S. and the Africa‑Brazil. So there was ‑‑ in 2007, ‑‑ decided to launch a program similar to the one ‑‑. And that's why there has been no conversation for France to integrate on it program. I should say because of the terrorist attacks, but it didn't happen at the end.
For the shut down, car moon is a good example because we sent you there ‑‑ on this issue. And last but not least, this netrality issue I think it was in the review on it, an article critical on the technology saying it's quite possible to monitor breach of ‑‑ because technically, it's not so easy to do. The traffic is like a ‑‑ and maybe listening to the ‑‑ an assumption, but yeah, it does not ‑‑.
But going back to ‑‑ kind of partnered shape on this issuance of the cables because in Brazil in 2014, green values revealed that the president ‑‑ in the same program. I don't know what that's the about out here. And decided to announce what was already in the ‑‑ which was that the person knew that this program of connectivity to us in Africa and Europe, to second the U.S. wins. But it was public statements but after exactly discussing with one of the cables ‑‑ in Europe and Latin‑America. In fact, this cable was already in the ‑‑ since the early ‑‑ yeah ‑‑ yeah, 2002, 2004, it was already conceived I think a lot and then a few days after. So it was an occasion to say duplicate like a duplicate statement that Brazil is going to be ‑‑ in this digital ‑‑
But as I will ‑‑ it was an earlier project‑‑ so I won't go back. I will add that there's a bit of announcement in what you say. There was a check like internet and there is also ‑‑ and which would be the main actor of my presentation now. Because the first network in Brazil was operated mainly through ‑‑ architecture work and they are still here. They have been created in 89, and they're still part of the ecosystem.
The last thing I want to tell you about is a new way of cables. You saw in gray, there was three going through Africa and one to Europe. To re up there was already one ‑‑ but it's only for your mom. And then you would be ‑‑ does it treat or ‑‑ cable system but that is in fact linked to the Google project called Monet. It's a new cable from U.S. to Brazil. And the second part is from Brazil to Africa. It's part of the two cables which makes (there was another, Randy which is called a sea born which is between New York and some part of south Africa. It's only for ‑‑ high frequency trading. And the last one, I won't say a word today.
So this cable, it's usually the consortium or private models based on the exclusivity on international terrorists. But the link as rooted in our sanctity cooperation in Latin‑America and Europe, back to the 2002, that was a conference in ‑‑ supported by the European commission, and they decided to ‑‑ because the price was very high, like 20 times from U.S. than from U.S. to Europe, they decided to build their own which was a link from Latin‑America to fillips. And these projects is supposed to lower the prices and to guarantee the direct connectivity between the collaborators in Europe and behind the wind chilly which will represent 70 percent of the data in the 21st century. So it's very important for this ‑‑ much more than Facebook because it's like ‑‑ and this ‑‑ the ‑‑ in testing is that it's a ‑‑ an indivisible ride connected to this corporation like they will out ‑‑ says arrive to use this cable, and it kept asking for 30 years, like the life of the cable. And there are ways to exploit the shoulder. But I agreed initially to grant this access to the cable, like to guarantee.
And what we have learned these days, so it's very important and I will complete on this that this ‑‑ this dual network survey of preserving ‑‑ I think it's the next one, the last one, and the fact that preserving part of the spectrum to academic and it's unsupported ‑‑ say not profit organization. It's very promising. It's a way to avoid what is happening right now on the part of the network which is bridge of neutrality. The internet access, for example, ‑‑ 40,000 communities do not have internet right now. And businesses, they don't play the rule. And ‑‑ corporation. Just mention that to her. The cool views in the future, this part of the spectrum, it's a possibility. It is in the project and one of the ‑‑ responsible for the project in ‑‑ Brazil told me we will have a much more higher volume of capacity that needed for the scientific purples. Okay. And so for maybe this example, this learning project with this kind of job, do I look intelligent in a way? Tune it work, even if the access, you can access all the walls, but I wanted to say ‑‑ spectrometer, it's coming for a ‑‑ I don't know it's a suggestion, but this cushion, to provide the band width to noncommercial providers, to preserve part of to ‑‑ and to provide also ‑‑ for this very critical investorship. Thank you.
>> FLORENCE POZNANSKI: Thank you. So now we are finished the first part of our panel, which is explanations. Anna, do you know if there are questions coming from online? So we have now more or less 15 minutes until the beginning of the next panel and it's a very important moment for us just to exchange the relation and also understand how is the reception of this kind of information. So please already you have a question. Maybe if you can identify yourself in order to help us make a contact, thank you very much.
>>MIKE: Thank you. My name is Mike. I have hundreds of remarks, but I will keep it to two. The first one, I was alerted when peter said built in human rights by Stein. Be careful. That's the same technology you use technology for surveillance, for packet inspection that everything else. So technology is the same. If you build it and it may be used for other things as well. And the other point with the dual internet, sounds good, but it's a two‑class internet that you should be aware of. Thank you.
>> FLORENCE POZNANSKI: Thank you. Are there other questions, remarks, commentaries? Yes, please.
>> AUDIENCE: Hi. This is from ‑‑ in Catalonia. My remark is on the experience. I know that the budgets are completely different and there are specific trades of each individual field. But we have a lot of experience in sharing management of researches have come up on research as you state in your description of work. This can be contingent to you if you want. Does it also include Scots and optical fiber and we're also starting building a small apartment and also big one. And then my remark is on public money. When public money is involved, I think this is one or probably the only way we can influence or maybe not ‑‑ the most kind way to make sure that if public money is involved, the right to access the ‑‑ should be open to anybody.
Because usually this ends up being exploited or managed by private companies and this is the way to block access to other initiative like community networks et cetera.
>> FLORENCE POZNANSKI: Thank you very much. Others remarks? Are there any people who is working in telecommunication who has already been involved in submarine cable consortia or construction? Or maybe in the collaboration of the project for the public government. We can give us a little bit of experience. Okay. No question online? And it's 6:00 in the morning, so we cannot expect our citizens. Great. Thank you, please.
>> AUDIENCE: Yes, thank you very much. I was trying to phrase my question. My name is Costienna Blind based in Geneva . So I thank all the panelists. Even if I look at the digital issues, this issue is very negative because it's not transparent. I have two questions. You talked about peering but my understanding is tearing is something completely different, something that happens in one big conference annually where the telecom exchanges number of client. And again because these are all resulting in secret agreements which are not open. It's very closed.
But what you were describing was something very different, but because you were naming the same thing, it created confusion for me. So I don't know explain it differently and how it was meant, that would be useful. And my second question is for peter. I was wondering if you had started to approach private sector consortiums and how have they been receiving your proposals?
>> FLORENCE POZNANSKI: Thank you very much. Great. We have a first block of questions for you to Answer two. Who want to begin? The is question for peter.
>>>> PETER MICEK: Sure. Happy to. And thank you for speaking up, especially as an operator. I think we really do need the private sector to be a huge part of these talks and discussions to understand how this actually works. Public use is still interesting as far as the two tiered I would hope there would be some sort of blind so you don't know which is which necessarily from ‑‑ as the operator, that you treat them and using the same best effort of service delivery and then connection and invasion without permission and other net neutrality principles.
Building and human rights by Stein doesn't necessarily mean the tech. The tech should always be optimized for efficiency and speed and band width. I think what we're talking about are protections around process and operation to bring in diverse communities and to the discussion of the building, the financing, the managing of these cables, and to ensure that they do benefit all in the society, especially when there's public money involved. So with Comtel being a key mayor in the delivery of this cable, it's really staggeringly ironic that the country has intentional and shut down internet access for most of its population this year. And I think that building new infrastructure does not mean new capacity to exercise human rights so it's not less economic right in the digital age. More need to be done.
And I think the second question, yes, whether we approached the cable provider industry. Microsoft does have a large cable business that you don't hear about as much as some of their other products. They have teams of lawyers negotiating with governments and you know negotiating access and government access. I think there does need to be more work done in civil society and I do look for some support and resources. We have 78 intentional internet shut down this year. That is a very current, pressing problem that we're trying to combat.
And so to take our energy and focus on these potentials and more shady industry is not always easy. But I do think it is incumbent upon all of us to try to do that.
>> FLORENCE POZNANSKI: Thank you. First I would like to stress that the remark about the need of the cables that are producted not only submarine but infrastructure in general built with public investment should be open to not only to other private players but to community initiatives and other public initiatives as well. So the link has this governance, modus operandi, but it's more related to a ‑‑ civil society initiatives so this is an unimportant remark to have in mind in the way that the link will be governed.
Regarding your question, thank you for that. We call peering ‑‑ I think that the most proper name would be traffic exchange if we were to translate it directly from Portuguese. Sometimes we call peering because it involves negotiation that it's not ‑‑ the traffic, it doesn't involve payment. So the exchange of traffic without paying for transit which would be the other kind of transport. But of course it's done in this national level and in a much more transparent way. And it's not only related to other connection providers but also involves ‑‑ I bought her a kind of ultra system. So it's an office that exist in Brazil. I don't know how ‑‑ if this is also implies to what is indicated in other countries. But it's a really good experience that we have in Brazil that is carried out by the CGI.BR, and it's done in a transparent way because it's carried out by them, which is a mood stakeholder body. So it's different from the agreements that you're saying, and I use this word much more because it's related to traffic exchange in that initially doesn't involve payments.
And this is a very important initiative regarding internet efficiency regarding the traffic ‑‑ the traffic management after they were frozen. So I don't know if you can test with it, but it's much more a way of translating it and knowing people don't understand. But in the case the best way of saying it would be traffic exchange.
>> FLORENCE POZNANSKI: Maybe before giving the possibility to Roxana and feel, make their considerations, are there others questions and commentaries? We have just five‑minute until finishing the session. Are you sure? Last possibility to say something. Okay. So maybe if Roxana and feel, have something, also another consideration according to these commentaries, please.
>> FÉLIX BLANC: Thanks for the ‑‑ it's true that two class ‑‑ last time, it was a reaction because I discover this governance model which is not a model by the way because it's still negotiating ‑‑ on the cable it's almost finished. So the governance is not yet settled at all. It's sitting. Also, 40 percent of cables are also offended by ‑‑ so it means that tomorrow, they will ‑‑ to see SAM warm be kind of ‑‑ he says, that's the case on the 19th, did he come play.
So in the party, it's for the one class system. So given this trend, maybe this kind of issues, like using part of the spectrum on a cable operated by commercial operators is a way to preserve some self of internet. And especially in universities, well for knowledge for communication and maybe other nonprofit organization or public organization. And I jump on the single question on the fact that is public investment is very important for us as ‑‑ is true in the game of Brazil. That's because ‑‑ it's a huge project, 72 terabytes. I think the link is like ‑‑ in terms of connectivity for the future. So it's very big and a lot of money in this public. So they are more sensible and we are the kind of run to my room as a civil organization, which is very interesting because in the case of the mono cable, I don't know if we have any change on this. It's more difficult. So thank you.
>> FLORENCE POZNANSKI: Thank you. I think I would simply like to reiterate this call for having more research in this field and also more transparency around some of the processes of governance. It would definitely help to have a discussion out of this and be able to see a Lee more about the operations of the country, about their respect for human rights, if they can be forced to put this on the list of priorities. Obviously, it isn't the case right now. And also on the discussion about the ‑‑ I think we have to put more efforts into discussing what can be done to avoid this intentional or unintentional disruptions of communications. Thank you.
>> FLORENCE POZNANSKI: Thank you, Roxana. Maybe I can invite all the people who are interested to keep contact with us or to have more interaction with this topic, you can come here and give us your contact. It's important for us to be at these networks and continue ‑‑ keep changing. We are extremely punk actual not for the beginning but for the conclusion. I think now we have another session that is going to begin at 10:40 so maybe people aren't going to be dressed to stay. Thank you very much for everybody. Have a nice and interesting and expanding session at the Jeff, and I will conclude that I have the possibility, the session is closed.
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