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First, I agree whole heartedly with Randy's point that NGO's don't generate their own electicity (unless absolutly essential) so maybe they should not be overly concerned as commercial service providers appear on the scene. It use a phrase from Marx, when they have played their historic role in this regard, it may be time to move on.
Having said that there is still a role for an organization (a council of partners) in each country, and at several 'nested' levels in some countries and/or regions. In Ontario our network of networks has been ONET, a part of Canada's CA*NET, which to the rest of the world simply looks like part of the generic "internet". In the past it was partially a service provider and partially a forum for efficiently achieving access to the internet. It was where the major institutional users, on behalf of their individual users, worked on policies to effeciently buy that which they needed but did not produce (i.e., there were a buyer's club for telecom access), in the line of Randy's position.
This is where Cuba is now. It is trying to work out how it efficiently reaches the internet and how individual partner networks access that gateway in a cost efficient manner. It is recognized that 'tomorrow' there may be one, two three gateways from competing service providers. Then the role of the network of networks will be to strengthen capacity (on the supply and demand sides) to use the networks to socio-economic ends.
While Randy is right when he says don't produce what you can buy, if it is not central to your mission, he is not saying that commercial access marks the end of the need for regional and national collaboration. I take it to mean that when the electricity reaches your 'project' you pay less attention to producing the electricity and more attention to its uses. In all cases, with regard to networking, this means taking seriously the need for local providers of local information to information provider (server) sites and strengthening capacity to use the tools in meaningful collaborative work. If these technologies are important for reducing the obstacles of time and space, then we should be most active on those frontiers where time and space operated previously as a binding constraint.
Sam Lanfranco
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: Prof. Sam Lanfranco | * DKProj - York University, CANADA :
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