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IGF: The Future of the Internet is in Asia, on Cell Phones

Authored by Jay Baage on October 30, 2006 - 8:29am.
In case you missed it, The Internet Government Forum, IGF, is going on in Greece this week. The conference has been set up by the UN to give governments, companies, organizations and individuals the opportunity to meet and debate the future of the Internet. Here are some highlights.

The future of the Internet is the ambitious topic under discussion at the first global Internet Governance Forum, being held in Athens over the next five days. The forum is not a decision-making body but instead is designed to give stakeholders in the internet a chance to form consensus around key areas.

Already, conference is getting political. A top EU official praised the United States' commitment to pull back over the next three years from its historic oversight of the Internet as a worldwide conference on the network's future opened Monday, according to International Herald Tribune.

The issue is the eventual independence for the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the non-profit agency in charge of the Internet's key traffic-management technologies, that so far has been under the supervision of the U.S. Commerce Department. "We are very satisfied with the work of ICANN. What Europe was objecting was the government oversight of ICANN," EU Information Society Commissioner Viviane Reding told The Associated Press.

Many issues are on the agenda, like absence of truly diverse, multi-lingual internet, spam, cybersecurity, openness, what are the blocks to freedom of speech. All issues that concern all the world’s citizens.

In an interview Friday, the U.N.'s top Internet official, Nitin Desai, predicted that Asia will drive a massive online expansion by the end of the decade, propelled by improved cell phone technology and expanding computer sharing plans within communities. "The big expansion in the Internet in the next five years is going to take place in developing countries," Desai said. "A lot of it in countries which are not English speaking ... where people don't even know the Latin alphabet, for instance, China."

Desai said Web-enabled cell phones would have a massive impact in the developing world. "Once you get that, the cost of access won't be more than the cost of using a mobile phone. ... India is talking in terms of half a billion people having mobile phones, in a matter of barely five years." Greek organizers said the next IGF meetings would be held in Brazil next year, in India in 2008 and Egypt in 2009.

Related Links:
The Internet Government Forum Official Website
EU Official Satisfied with ICANN’s Performance Managing Internet (IHT)
tags: Internet | Regulation | ICANN | EU | Jay | IGF |



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