Date: Fri, 17 Dec 1999 12:16:58 -0400
From: Daniel PIMIENTA <[email protected]>

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"Including the Excluded: for Common Good of All."

By Wijayananda Jayaweera,
UNESCO Regional Communication Adviser for Asia

The importance of the Internet, telematics and multimedia for global knowledge endeavors is indisputable. But technology is not, itself, a determining factor to change the "Information Society" into an inclusive knowledge society. It is therefore rather important to discuss key policy issues, which if unresolved, would exclude many people to benefit from knowledge resources. Since the purposes of this forum to formulate regional strategies, it is appropriate to mention few such issues, to help us understand to what extent, if unmanaged, they could exclude many from the knowledge based society.

The accelerated rate of growth of the Internet, in terms of its site propagation, is unprecedented. Overall, the number of years the Internet took to reach 50 million people is only one eighth of what radio took. Accelerated growth has not, however, led to the equal penetration. The current penetration is insufficient to prevent a divide between information "haves" and "have nots", and particularly between urban and rural populations in developing countries. The first condition for the knowledge-based society is Universal Access which remains unachievable if physical access facilities are not available at an affordable price. Moreover, Universal Access would remain ineffective if users cannot obtain needed information because most information is not in the public domain or is in an accessible language. Universal Access must therefore also be defined in terms of access to services and knowledge resources.

In the case of physical access both availability and affordability are paramount. Internet access disparities even among the citizens of industrialized countries are considerable, but they are incomparable with the divide seen in developing countries. Although telecom privatization and deregulation have made traditional operations more efficient, they are not a guarantee for local universal access to the Internet. Furthermore, the trans-border nature of telecom industry is more favorable to those who can impose revenue terms because of their advanced technology, high speed Internet backbones and net-concentration, developed over a period of time. This advantage has allowed few dominating operators to exert pressure on others to shoulder their access costs, making it even more difficult to provide the most basic services in developing countries. If unmitigated, this situation would reduce the possibilities for majority in developing countries to acquire and share knowledge resources. This point can be illustrated with the following two examples.

International call rates have been so far negotiated between the countries of call origin and reception. The conventional method has been to divide the one-minute call cost at a mutually beneficial rate between the two countries in a direct route. The so-called "Accounting Rate" arrangement ensured that the operator with high volume of minutes, who is usually from the industrialized world, shared part of his revenue with the operator with fewer minutes. Given the high infrastructure cost and slow penetration of markets, this cost sharing, while still advantageous for the call initiating operator, at least mitigated the hardship for operators in developing countries since this cost share arrangement was a source of major telecom revenue for them. In Sri Lanka and Senegal the net settlement payments on international calls reflected 30% of their total telecommunication revenue.

However, since then, the pattern of call generation has significantly changed, particularly between the carriers of United States and the rest of the world. The increasing amount of call-back telephone services from the United States has substantially increased the volume of traffic originating from the that country. Given this backdrop there is an enormous pressure from the US operators to eliminate the cost sharing mechanism. To this effect FCC has made a unilateral benchmark order for "rate re-balancing" which would effectively reduce the settlement rates, benefiting US carriers at the expense of operators in developing countries.

With this mounting pressure to abolish bilaterally negotiated cost sharing arrangements, developing countries will face with an unprecedented burden to maintain their telecommunication systems. The net result of this "rate re-balancing" is that the operators in developing countries will be forced to offset the costs by increasing their local call charges. ISP's in developing countries are normally located in urban centers, hence the dial-up connections to rural areas are already expensive. Further increases in local call charges would mean exclusion of many in rural and distance places from access to knowledge resources. The ITU estimates annual operational costs of a line per household at US$ 200, and without sufficient international call revenue no local operator in the developing countries will be able to provide even the most basic services at the rate of US$ 15 a month.

Secondly, the over-concentration of Internet backbone business in the USA, and with no requirement for US operators to share costs of full circuits, is an another disadvantage particularly for the ISP's in developing countries, who in most cases must pay the entire costs of two way links. Currently, even for intra-Asian networks the majority of Asian ISP's are linked to the US operators. This is even true with the most intra-European networks, which often use Virginia as their international Internet hub. Thus, positioning of the USA as the World Internet hub has created a situation similar to that of "all roads lead to Rome", whereby operators in the United States benefit far more than the connected peripheries. Ironically, under these circumstances, both the Internet providers and the users in the United States gain free Internet access to rest of the world at the expense of other countries, including the poorest of them trying to join information highways despite many other pressing priorities. This has led to a sort of exploitation, a situation which is, indeed, in the long run counterproductive to Internet penetration and eventually will prevent many in developing countries from tapping knowledge resources.

What other counter-measures are available to developing countries? In this connection, the issue of strengthening intra-region networks has to be brought forward to be high in the agendas of regional forums. Serious thought should be given to the possibility to establish high capacity regional backbones to connect each country within a multi-hub global network in which nobody dominates connectivity. If this is achieved, operators in developing countries will be in a position to reduce costs and extend telecommunication and Internet access well beyond the present elite enclaves of access. The civil society in developing countries could sensitize parliamentarians and regulatory authorities to address this important issue and to mobilize the relevant regional political bodies to act with determination.

Equally important is the access to, and sharing of, knowledge content. Knowledge is expected to be the driving force of post-industrial economy, to which many countries are expected to leapfrog. It is predicted that "the country, company and the industry with the most productive knowledge workers will win". The knowledge base for the future knowledge economy is being developed largely through publicly funded ventures such as universities and research grants, while the exploitation of knowledge to produce products has become mainly a concern of private industry. While it is true that industries increasingly do their own product research, it is also true that the publicly funded institutions produce the researchers, and publicly funded academic institutes continue to be the fountain of knowledge. Then who should own the knowledge? Shouldn't there be a fair access to knowledge produced by both private and public enterprises, with due regard to the intellectual property rights? Shouldn't there be an arrangement to ensure at least that all research grants of public funds are issued on the condition that research information is made available for fair use in the public domain? For that, the principles of free access to information in the public domain will have to be defined and promoted.

Even irrespective of public/private origins, some areas of knowledge production certainly would require transparency and public accountability. For instance, genetics is an area which includes the management of genome information. But genome information sequences have been developed naturally through millions of years of evolution. Should a private owner become the sole proprietor of such information ? Shouldn't there be an obligation to share that information with public bodies who could be entrusted to manage and to share it as a part of human knowledge base?

Current law and practice generally concept allow free use of published information for research (whether private or commercial), study, reviewing and reporting. Access to knowledge resources on the Net, if ethically applied, can be seen as an application or a corollary to this fair use principle. The most forceful counter-arguments to extending the concept of fair use to the electronic domain come from publishers. This reflects the tension between access and ownership. The analogous printed materials are browsed either in a library or a bookshop, hence they are less vulnerable to copyright infringements. But electronic text available in the Internet is not only storable but also can be duplicated and re-distributed at will. Therefore, pressure is mounting from publishers to tighten copyright laws and to make browsing on screen and sharing them through networks without permission, illegal. Policing of such tightened laws will be problematic with the difficulties of proving how and where the material is obtained and with ample opportunities to make changes to electronic text. In extreme cases some preventive technological solutions such as disabling of printing can be applied. However, it would seem more fruitful to expand the definitions of "fair use" and to inculcate "info-ethics" principles of respect for intellectual property rather than to tighten the legal framework.

Another, perhaps even more important strategy for development of knowledge resources is to increase the volume of public domain information available on the Internet. To this effect the governments and publicly funded institutes such as universities should be equipped and obliged to make their information available in public domain.

The public spirit and its role of setting norms for accountability are rather important if the market is to thrive in the knowledge economy. Markets without people capable of both producing and consuming knowledge are unsustainable, and it will remain as the task of publicly funded projects to produce these skilled and knowledgeable people. With the advent of the knowledge society the opportunities for life-long education will become the most important requirement for our future. Education systems with their traditional approach of fixed courses to make us ready for our adult careers will no longer suffice to meet the demands of knowledge society and economy. Due to accelerating rate of knowledge accumulation, the education we gain with 3 to 4 years in a university will become obsolete shortly after we are recruited for a job. Therefore people will have to have more avenues to obtain continuing formal education at various stages of their careers. This is where the strength of the Internet to facilitate on line education would count the most. Education investments in general should not only be raised, but also should include provisions to provide facilities and opportunities for lifelong education along with the required level of ICT support. Telecommunication and ISP operators could assist these efforts and promote the development of their own future markets by establishing concessionary rates for Internet access in schools, academic institutes and public libraries. Such schemes, sometimes known as "e-rates" have been successfully promoted by governments and regulating agencies in several countries, most notably the USA.

In a wider sense, the national policies to promote public domain information and to ensure that they provide information and applications to improve education, health, environment and government functions should be considered as a priority. The availability of public domain and other heritage information is an indispensable investment in education and therefore in the development of a knowledge society for all.

All the above considerations involve a balancing of the priorities of public service sectors and the common good of society with the interests of the private sector and individual citizens. One practical approach to working towards the needed balance of priorities is to encourage pilot activities involving government, civil society, non-governmental organizations, universities/schools and private sector to collaborate in providing universal access to knowledge. In this direction UNESCO has initiated a number of pilot learning activities. Using libraries in rural Africa as gateways to information highways though multi-purpose telecentres in six African countries and the Kothmale Internet Community radio, Sri Lanka, in which the matching and the mixing of conventional technologies with ICT are being tested, are some such examples. The experiences gained through these projects have raised and helped advance solutions on a number of policy issues on access, tariffs, public domain information, content relevance, training, ownership of broadcast spectrum and participation of public and private institutions.

A more fundamental question which concerns a "public sphere" capable of setting norms for regulating the private and market interests in favor of the global good, which should provide and encourage fair opportunities for the market as well. There are certain elements, such as access to information and education, and access to limited resources such as the broadcast spectrum, which require regulation from the perspective of global good. How could the market justify elimination of public service broadcasting together with educational and cultural dimensions it carries, in favor of mobilizing the largest audience to advertisers, when children, the future citizen of a knowledge society, are exposed 14,000 hours of annual media time as against 11, 500 hours spent in formal education? A recent book sponsored by UNDP explains why the market forces alone cannot regulate the global public goods. This requires enlightened interventions measures by governments and international agreements incorporating "public goods" within the norms for regulatory systems at national and international levels.

It is also important for all stakeholders to have equal opportunities to discuss such policy issues from various perspectives, so that the eventual resulting strategies will reflect "the global good" as our ultimate aim, without which a true knowledge society would become an unrealistic dream.

Author description.

Wijayananda Jayaweera, (Jaya)
UNESCO Regional Communication Adviser for Asia

Wijayananda Jayaweera is UNESCO's Regional Communication Adviser for Asia. Based in UNESCO Kuala Lumpur office he is responsible for implementing UNESCO supported Communication Development activities and projects in Asia. He joined UNESCO in 1994 as Asia-Pacific Desk Officer at the Communication Division of UNESCO.Mr. Jayaweera started his career at Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation (1969-1989) and subsequently worked for a number of regional and international organizations a consultant on various media development assignments in Bhutan, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, Vietnam, Denmark, Iran and Cambodia. Mr. Jayaweera holds a Master's Degree in Mass Communication from the University of Leicester (UK).

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