Ensuring Open, Universal, and Affordable Access to the Internet

APC’s Communications and Information Policy Programme

Ensuring Open, Universal, and Affordable Access to the Internet: Global Public Policy Advocacy for Information and Communications for Social Justice and Sustainable Development

Report for the period 1 June 2006 to 31 May 2007

Grant # 1065-0731

Submitted by the Association for Progressive Communications

to the Ford Foundation

September 2007

Contacts:

Willie Currie

Communications and Information Policy Programme Manager

Cell: +1 646 249 0600

Anriette Esterhuysen

Executive Director

PO Box 29755, Melville 2109, South Africa

Tel/Fax: +27 11 726 1692

Table of Contents

Acronyms and abbreviations

Executive Summary

1.Introduction

2. How APC Implements ICT Policy Advocacy

2.1 Communications and Information Policy Programme (CIPP)

2.1.1Programme Overview

2.1.2Priorities for 2006-2007

2.1.3The CIPP Team

2.2The Women’s Networking Support Programme (APC WNSP)

2.2.1Programme Overview

2.2.2Priorities for 2006-2007

2.2.3The APC WNSP Team

2.3International Coalitions and Partnerships

3.Global Advocacy on Open, Universal, and Affordable Access to the Internet

3.1 WSIS Implementation

3.2WSIS Follow-Up Events

3.2.1 The First Internet Governance Forum (IGF)

3.2.2 The Second Internet Governance Forum

3.2.3 United Nations Commission for Science and Technology for Development (CSTD)

3.3 Other Global Policy Spaces

3.3.1 United Nations Global Alliance for ICT4D (GAID)

4. Linking Global Advocacy to Regional and National Advocacy Processes on Open Access to the Internet

4.1Africa

4.1.1 The South Atlantic 3/West Africa Submarine Cable (SAT-3/WASC)

4.1.3The Fibre for Africa Campaign

4.1.4 APC Research on Access to Infrastructure in Africa

4.1.5 Africa ICT Policy Monitor and Chakula

4.1.6 Catalysing Access to ICTs in Africa (CATIA)

4.2 Asia

4.2.1National advocacy

4.2.2 Research on Censorship and Surveillance of Mobile Telephony

4.3Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC)

4.3.1 LAC ICT Policy Monitor

4.3.2The Latin American Regional Plan for the Information Society (eLAC)

5.Nurturing and Growing the Existing Network of APC Members and Partners Engaged with ICT Policies

6.Global Information Society Watch

Appendix 1: New Members since June 1 2006

Appendix 2: APC Websites

Appendix 3: APC.org Website Statistics for 2006

Appendix 4: APC Publications Related to this Report Published since June 1 2006

Appendix 4: APC Publications Related to this Report Published since June 1 2006

Appendix 5: Events Participated in during the Reporting Period

Acronyms and abbreviations

ALER / Latin American Association for Radio Education
AMARC / World Association of Community Broadcasters
APC / Association for Progressive Communications
BASIS / Business Action in the Information Society
BCO / Building Communication Opportunities
BFES / Bangladesh Friendship Education Society
APC WNSP / APC Women’s Networking Support Programme
CATIA / Catalysing ICT Access in Africa
CIPESA / Collaboration on International ICT Policy for East and Southern Africa
CIPP / Communications and Information Policy Programme
CRASA / Communications Regulators’ Association of Southern Africa
CRIS / Communication Rights in the Information Society
CSO / Civil society organisation
CSTD / (United Nations) Commission on Science and Technology for Development
DRC / Democratic Republic of the Congo
ECLAC / (United Nations) Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean
ECOSOC / (United Nations) Economic and Social Council
EED / Evangelischer Entwicklungsdienst
EPIC / Electronic Privacy Information
EASSy / East African Submarine Cable System
EFOSSNet / Ethiopian Free and Open Source Software Network
FOSS / Free and open-source software
GAID / (United Nations) Global Alliance for ICT and Development
GISW / Global Information Society Watch
GEM / Gender Evaluation Methodology
ICANN / Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers
ICT / Information and communication technology
ISOC / Internet Society
GKP / Global Knowledge Partnership
ICT4D / Information and communication technology for development
IGF / Internet Governance Forum
IGP / Internet Governance Project
IICD / International Institute for Communication and Development
IPRs / Intellectual property rights
ITeM / Third World Institute
ITU / International Telecommunications Union
KICTANet / Kenya ICT Action Network
LAC / Latin America and the Caribbean
MDGs / Milennium Development Goals
NEPAD / New Partnership for Africa’s Development
NGO / Non-governmental organisation
NRO / Network Resource Organisation
OECD / Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
ONI / OpenNet Initiative
SAFE / South AfricaFar East
SAT-3 / South Atlantic 3
UNDP / United Nations Development Programme
UNECE / United Nations Economic Commission for Europe
UNESCO / United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation
VoIP / Voice over internet protocol
WALC / Workshop for Latin America and the Caribbean
WASC / West Africa Submarine Cable
WIPO / World Intellectual Property Organisation
WSIS / World Summit on the Information Society

Executive Summary

This report reflects on the progress that the Association for Progressive Communications (APC) has made during the first of two years of support from the Ford Foundation for public policy advocacy work with respect to information and communication technology ICT).

Part one of this report provides an introduction to APC’s public policy advocacy work, and outlines the four specific outcome areas towards which the Ford Foundation’s support is being utilized. Part two explains how APC implements ICT policy advocacy through the Communications and Information Policy Programme (CIPP), Women’s Networking Support Programme (APC WNSP), and in collaboration with its worldwide network of members and partners.

Part three focuses on what APC has been doing globally to promote more open, universal, and affordable access to the internet following the close of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in November 2005. This includes APC’s active participation in the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) – largely considered to be the most successful and dynamicof all post-WSIS fora, and its co-facilitation of WSIS action line C2 (on information and communication infrastructure) with the International Telecommunications Union (ITU). This section also discusses APC’s involvement in the United Nations Commission for Science and Technology for Development (CSTD), the United Nations Global Alliance for ICT4D[1] (GAID), and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

The fourth section of the report describes what APC is doing to link global advocacy on open access to the internet with regional and national activities. In Africa, APC’s focus has been on access to infrastructure. It organised a series of workshops and consultations on existing and proposed submarine cables (which contributed to downward pressure on South Atlantic 3/West Africa Submarine Cable (SAT-3/WASC) bandwidth costs), launched the Fibre for Africa campaign, published a stakeholder analysis of the East African Submarine Cable System (EASSy), and commissioned three extensive country case studieson the effect that the SAT-3/WASC submarine cable has had on African communications.

Despite not having dedicated staff focused on Asia, progress was made in supporting national advocacy on broadband policy in Bangladesh, open access to online content in India, and community radio in Pakistan. APC also co-developed a research framework to explore censorship and surveillance of mobile telephony in the region.

In Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) APC made interventions at roughly 15 key events in 2006. It organised the Internet and Society Forum, a public multi-stakeholder dialogue around ICT policies, at the annual Internet Workshop for LAC (WALC) as well as a regional ICT policy workshop. APC submitted a proposal on greater civil society participation to eLAC2007, the region’s only intergovernmental policy space following WSIS. APC’s inputwas formally recognised at the third eLAC2007 Coordination Meeting. APC was active in a number of regional research activities, participated in consultancy work for UNESCO to devise guidelines for the formulation of national information policies, and is working with the Latin American Association for Radio Education (ALER) to build the capacities of community media advocates to engage in policy.

Part five reviews what APC has been doing to nurture and build its network of members and partners engaged in ICT policy, many of which contribute significantly to national, regional and global policy spaces. Two initiatives, which have been particularly instrumental in supporting network development, are discussed in detail. The first is the EED[2]-funded “Knowledge and capacity for civil society engagement in ICT policy” initiative. The second is the Ford Foundation supported first annual Global Information Society Watch (GISW)report, to which part six is dedicated. The seventh and final section of the report provides an overview of progress on expected results outlined in the April 2006 funding application.

1.Introduction

APC has been building an international community of organisations concerned with civil society’s use of ICTs[3] for sustainable development, social and gender justice, since its founding in 1990. APC works globally, regionally, and nationally to raise awareness, build capacity, and develop tools and information resources to strengthen civil society participation in decision-making. We believe that civil society inclusion in policy-making processes will lead to its greater involvement in implementing and monitoring policies, and ultimately to more inclusive societies.

Through its grant to CIPP, the Ford Foundation is supporting APC’s public policy advocacy work. This document reports on the progress that APC has made in achieving its public policy advocacy goals as outlined in the April 2006 application for support from the Ford Foundation.

The 2006 application identified four specific outcome areas towards which the Ford Foundation’s support is being utilized:

1. Global advocacy on open, universal and affordable access to the internet through engaging two policy spaces: the IGF[4] and the WSIS implementation action lines C2 and C6.[5]
2. Linking this global advocacy to regional and national advocacy processes on “open access”[6] to the internet in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
3. Nurturing and growing the existing network of APC members and partners engaged with ICT policies.
4. Using this network to produce an annual 'information society' watch report that monitors the implementation of goals agreed by governments during WSIS.

The report will address each of these four outcome areas.

2. How APC Implements ICT Policy Advocacy

The APC network has been involved in global, regional, and national ICT policy processes since 2000, focusing on human rights and social inclusion in the information society and on addressing the '”digital divide'”.

Two APC programmes in particular, CIPP and the APC WNSP, place substantial focus on ICT policy. Their activities, with the support of APC’s network development manager and executive director, constitute the hub of APC policy advocacy in global, regional, and national spaces. This report will focus primarily on the work of CIPP which is supported by the Ford Foundation. A separate report on APC WNSP’s policy advocacy is available on request. APC also works with its strong community of members and partners to promote ICT policy advocacy on these levels.

2.1 Communications and Information Policy Programme (CIPP)

2.1.1Programme Overview

APC grouped all of its ICT policy and communication and internet rights activity into an integrated programme in 2002. The overall goal of the programme is to ensure that the interests of civil society are addressed in ICT policy and supported in ICT practice. It seeks to build more inclusive ICT decision-making processes by facilitating civil society engagement through building their capacity in a range of ways, and supporting advocacy at national, regional and international levels.

APC approaches ICT policy work through a modular framework as depicted in the figure below.

Figure 1: Diagrammatic representation of CIPP activities

The activities in each module reinforce each other. Research generates information resources that inform the content of APC’s communications strategy in specific contexts. The research module also incorporates a dissemination strategy for keeping partners and relevant stakeholders informed on outputs. Such information resources not only aid advocacy and networking capabilities but also form an important component of capacity building activities, which in turn, strengthens advocacy.

2.1.2Priorities for 2006-2007

Global ICT Policy Advocacy in the post-WSIS environment:

• Advocating for openness in relation to access (infrastructure), content, technology and policy and decision-making processes.
• Specifically, continuing to open and sustain a space for the issue of universal and affordable access to the internet on the agenda of the IGF.[7]
• Advocating open access models as an appropriate global public policy for addressing universal and affordable access.
• Seeking to place access as a development priority in the context of the UN's Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) initiative and the UN Global Alliance for ICTs for Development (GAID).
• Seeing to what extent access can be advanced within regional spaces such as the eLAC2007[8] Action Plan, the “Fibre for Africa” campaign,[9] and within the regional policy space in southernAsia.
• Extending the reach of these regional spaces into the global space of the IGF and other global spaces as appropriate.
• Engaging with the WSIS implementation agenda which has divided the policy issues of the WSIS Geneva Programme of Action into eleven action lines.

Regional Policy Monitor Projects

Africa[10]

• Growing the user base and content partnerships of the French and English online policy resources.
• Researching and supporting the development of municipal networks[11] in Africa
• Campaigning for open access regulation and new business models to manage and govern bandwidth initiatives such as the EASSy and SAT-3 westernAfrica undersea cables.
• Facilitating debate, discussion and collaboration between civil society, regulators and policy-makers, the media, and the private sector on ICT issues in Africa.
• Collaborating with governments in the regional implementation of WSIS and regional ICT strategies.

Asia[12]

• Supporting a national campaign led by the Bangladesh Friendship Education Society (BFES), a new APC member,[13] to persuade its government to allow open access to the submarine cable that was landed on the coast of Bangladesh in 2006.
• Supporting a campaign in India which is pushing for all digital content related to development to be openly accessible and affordable for all.
• Supporting a national campaign to persuade the Pakistani government to reform its laws in order to permit community radio in Pakistan.
• Supporting research on surveillance, censorship, and monitoring of mobile telephony in southeast Asia and in the Philippines, Cambodia, South Korea, and Bangladesh.

Latin America and the Caribbean[14]

• Supporting national policy advocacy and capacity building in Bolivia and Ecuador.
• Participating, and ensuring the inclusion of civil society, in the implementation of the regional strategy, eLAC Action Plan 2007, and WSIS regional implementation in collaboration with APC partners and members.
• Collaborating with the community media sector on ensuring access and enabling policy for civil voices to be heard.
• Researching universal access funds, open access models, and new technologies as a means of developing advocacy around new approaches to ICT4D.
• Working in collaboration with partners to develop an approach to monitoring and engaging with regulators on the implementation of ICT policy that affects development zones.

NationalICTPolicyCapacityBuilding and Advocacy

Expanding the network of national ICT policy portals maintained by members and partners.[15]

Supporting national initiatives in Senegal, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Kenya, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Uganda, Bangladesh and India.

2.1.3The CIPP Team

During the period covered by the report, the CIPP team consisted of:

Willie Currie: programme manager / US and South Africa
Valeria Betancourt: LAC ICT Policy Monitor coordinator / Ecuador
Clio Bugel: LAC ICT Policy Monitor information worker / Uruguay
Abiodun Jagun: Africa research coordinator / Nigeria and the UK
Partha Pratim Sarker: Asia ICT Policy Monitor / Bangladesh and Canada
Alan Finlay: Africa ICT Policy Monitor and Chakula[16]editor / South Africa
Ory Okolloh: FibreForAfrica campaign researcher / Kenya and South Africa (

With the exception of the manager, the team works part time. They work very closely with Karen Banks, APC’s network development manager, Anriette Esterhuysen, APC’s executive director, as well as APC members active in ICT policy advocacy.

2.2The Women’s Networking Support Programme (APC WNSP)

2.2.1Programme Overview

The APC WNSP was established in 1993 in response to demands expressed from within the women’s movement. It has since played a leading role in gender and ICT advocacy in national, regional and international arenas. Its overall goal is to promote gender equality and women’s empowerment through gender and ICT advocacy at all levels, and to promote the strategic use of applications and tools by womento strengthen their networking. The programme works to:

Promote the consideration and incorporation of gender in ICT policy-making.

Initiate and implement research activities in the field of gender and ICT.

Advance the body of knowledge, understanding, and skills in the field of gender and ICT by implementing training activities.

Facilitate access to information resources in the field of gender and ICT.

Create gender awareness in evaluation and impact assessment in the ICT area

APC WNSP activities are centred on six main areas of work:

1. Policy and advocacy
2. Research
3. Evaluation
4. Information facilitation
5. Development of training methodologies and materials
6. Support for emerging national and regional internet-based networks

APC WNSP ICT policy work began in 1995 during the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, China. During WSIS, the APC WNSP was a founding member of the NGO Gender Strategies Working Group,[17] the Multi-Stakeholder Gender Caucus and, along with APC and several APC members, an active member of the Civil Society Plenary[18] and the Communication Rights in the Information Society (CRIS) Campaign.[19] The APC WNSP has fought for recognition of women and civil society throughout the WSIS process, and gender is included in all APC publications.[20]