26 June 1996
Actually only 8 countries with satellite earth stations. Current generation of equipment has receiver the size of a loaf of bread. Antenna is size of the rear of a car. Established in 1985. Two UoSat3 satellites (size of a small refrigerator) launched in 1989 and 1993. The gateway to the Internet is in Canada. Altitude is 550 files above the Earth. Polar orbit gives a footprint 3,000 miles wide in each pass. Recently (1989/1990) phones have improved enough that HelathNet is shifting to modems and HF radio for data transport. The Canadian gateway calls the country 5 times a day to collect compressed data. Cost to local subscriber is $5-15/month plus local phone calls.
John showed an interesting chart of existing Internet Access providers, costs and features. It included CGNet, Rionet, Internet Africa (Zimbabwe), ??? in Zambia, and Internet Exchange. He mentioned "ProMed" as an organization collecting information on emerging diseases. He literally begged attendees to remember just how poor Africa is, and how little is available for health care - so as not to create more systems that people can't afford and don't maintain (he made specific examples of the World Bank and advanced hospital equipment we had paid for that lies idle). He recited the long wait times for phone service and the poor quality of service that exists. He didn't mention why. An African challenged his implied statement that Africa wasn't ready for high bandwidth net access, and John replied tha tthe financial and government sectors are ready, but health care certainly ISN'T. What they need is cheap email text. HelthNet arranges for all its information to be available on the web AND via text email.
Digitla Equipment Corporation's Mark Manasse described DEC research into extremely high efficiency micropayments as small as $.001. A trusted broker would issue script to consumers and producers, and exchange for cash as requested. Users could also be paid to read things under this scheme. Mark said DEC will absolutely NOT become a broker themselves. Software developed by DEC would be PD and commercial.
Tatsuo Tanaka spoke about global economic effects of digitial cash. Some interesting elements:
Anyone could speculate in currency exchange, since digital cash can be exchanged among currencies instantly. Destroys export controls and create currency crises. (Actually, I think it will have the opposite effect - politicians will no longer be able to use the money supply for political gain.)
Anonymity of exchanges provides money laundering and untraceable transfers. Great for drug dealers, swindlers and terrorists. Mixed bag for tyrants.
The laundering and destabilization effects will lead to some regulation and control, which MAY have some effect, but may also be circumvented.
He spoke of transnational conflict and colonization extensively, but language barriers kept me from understanding the points he was trying to make. I'll try to get the electronic version on-line and point the DEC people to it. An interesting reference was made by another speaker in another session about a CitiBank directory written book "Twilight of Sovereignty."
Sterling Lee spoke of his experiences getting an intranet (which rapidly became external web publishing, as well) running in a Fortune 1000 company. Typical list of success factors (flying below the radar, grass roots support, sponsor, ROI justifications, motivated participants). I moved to another session before other speakers presented their papers. Michael Kane described Process Software's presentation as useful.
There was intense discussion regarding directory services (mostly on white pages). My impression is that the privacy defenders are wasting their time, and the focus should now be how to create directories that only get you junk mail that is specifically of high interest to you. The international nature of the net, the ease of assembling lists of addresses, and the near-zero cost of spamming leave controls up to service providers (who have to maintain relations with THEIR service providers). Irate spammees will hurt the ISP and so their damage will be governed by the ISPs.
Adult Learning
I've been preaching about Just-In-Time-Training (JITT) as a killer app for the web, and there was a session by some adult education specialists on how best to do this using the net. Predicatably, it was by far the most crowded session of the show, with no sitting OR standing room available. Here's the essence:
Persistent Uniform Resource Locators. Use a static server to locate web pages which need permanence, especially those on sites which are growing quickly, and subject to rapid moves. Also useful for mirrors. See http://purl.oclc.org
There was a two hour meeting Thursday evening of perhaps 50 Africans and others interested in internetting Africa. Here's a summary from my perspective:
First, materials (software and manuals) were lost by the organizers of the week long tutorial on internetting developing countries. They believe they are not recoverable (they don't know what happened or where they are) and suggested sending a CD-ROM in English to a representative of each French country and having them deal with distribution in their country. This was such a disaster for the participants that I suggested (offline) that the Bank might be able to assist with transport to our Resident Missions if the documents and software are ever found. Would be a nice way for our local OT person to meet future ISP staff face to face.
There was a general sense of frustration with lack of progress. Everyone wants to coordinate, but noone wants to be coordinated. George Sadowsky chaired the discussion, and began by listing current efforts and successes. There is a long list of agencies, especialy UN affiliates, and the World Bank was mentioned several times. Organizations mentioned by George include: UNDP, UN Secretariat, World Bank InfoDev, ITU, UNESCO (much moaning about how it has no money, with implication that it's the US's fault), Africa Internet Forum, African Networking Inititiative). The Leland money, through USAID ($15M?) was hoped to offer $4M for technical training, which nearly all participants felt was critical to success of ANY initiative. Most participants felt the ISOC training was very useful, but still insufficient to really operate an ISP. George mentioned countries now connected: Mozambique, S.Africa, Zambia (small pipe), Zimbabwe (small pipe), Ghana (small pipe), Senegal, Kenya (Africa Online mentioned several times - we put whole contents on our web CD-ROM), and Sierra Leone. I found it interesting that they didn't inlcude some countries that are already connected, such as Uganda, where as ISP is trying to sell connectivity to our Resident Mission. Apparently past efforts to maintain lists of ISPs in Africa and mailing lists have been failures. The Bush list was mentioned (we have a copy on the Africa regional web server). The AIG mailing list was mentioned. It apparently was established after the Inet'95 conference and died after mail flood/loop problem. Some participants agreed that each country should maintain its own connectivity list. Given the group's track record, this is ridiculous, in my opinion. I think perhaps I should take on building AND maintaining a connectivity list for the group - at least I'll do one for our own internal use.
It was suggested by several people that an ISOC chapter be created for Africa, and George indicated that rules for chapter creation were being rewritten, and would probably be flexible enough for this. The Swiss ISOC chapter will assist with this, since they are bilingual and have lots of agencies of interest in Geneva.
Many participants recognized that government leaders needed to be persuaded that the Internet was a positive thing. The AfCom'96 in DC several weeks ago was mentioned as the right sort of program, though one participant complained that it only included telecom people, and not informatics, and so all the decision makers needed aren't being reached this way. The speaker from Nigeria stressed the need for an Africa wide government workshop for officials which now see the Internet as a danger. Sounds like a request for the kind of thing we were talking about doing at the Ethiopia conference this fall.
A paper on problems with Internetting Africa, written by native participants, was presented by Alex (?) and Leishon (?) of Senegal and Ethiopia and will be posted, after some changes, to either/both U.Penn or ISOC web sites. I'll get the link and post when ready.
One speaker stressed, and most agreed, that there are no general soluntions for Africa, but solutions vary from country to country. One speaker stressed that bottom up building (get connected at however small a level and grow) works while top down only works if the government makes it a priority, which it often doesn't do.
There was some interest in forming an East Africa regional network using VSATs.
One speaker asked for more media involvement, and suggested making a videotape of participants at Inet. Sounds like a great opportunity for Peter Knight's videos.
Language interface was seen to be a big problem. Software in French and Portuguese is needed. It was observed that demand for internet in goverment offices which have only a typewriter is limited when Netscape requires 8MB of memory.
It appears that several participants recognize that Internet should be bundled as a part of other initiatives to get the needed money. Just the approach the KNIT talked about recently.
It was mentioned that Sprint and MCI have put ambitious network expansion plans on hold for lack of purchasable bandwidth (first I heard of this). The person who announced this also announced that Africa had been assigned a block of IP addresses, and asked for volunteers to set of an Africa NIC. This seems silly to me, when there are so many other demans for technical resources in the region.
ISOC wants to create regional Internet training centers in Africa to train over 3000 people over 4-5 years. Trainers would be local, eventually. There was some doubt enough money to do this would be available.
Sierra Leone is having an Internet day the end of July. They are inviting all sorts of government officials in hope of sensitizingtem to the net.
Many people felt the PTTs regarded the net as a threat. It was pointed out that the PTTs can make a lot more money with than without the net, and that PTT's might be acting out of self interest.
Nee Kwana of Ghana recommended connecting no matter how small the pipe, even 1200 baud. Then press the PTT for improvements.