Beyond development: connectivity as human rights enabler | IGF 2023 Town Hall #61

Nathalia Lobo

Brazil conducted a 5G auction in November 2021, with the majority of the revenue, over $9 billion, being allocated towards coverage commitments. This substantial investment showcases the country’s dedication to advancing its technological infrastructure. The auction resulted in a positive sentiment, as it is anticipated to greatly enhance connectivity in Brazil.

One notable project aimed at improving connectivity is the North Connected project, focusing on the North and Amazonic region. This initiative plans to deploy a comprehensive network of 12,000 kilometres of fibre optic cables into the Amazon riverbeds, ensuring efficient and reliable connectivity. The maintenance of these cables will be handled by a consortium of 12 different operators. The positive sentiment surrounding this project indicates its potential to significantly enhance connectivity in this region.

Furthermore, the impact of these connectivity projects extends to critical sectors such as healthcare and education. With the support from the funds generated by the 5G auction, hospitals that previously lacked internet access can now effectively manage patient information through online systems, providing better access to resources and improving healthcare services. Additionally, schools are being connected through the funding from the auction, enabling better education opportunities and facilitating digital learning.

Efforts are also being made to make the benefits of internet usage tangible and viable for the people of Brazil. The allocation of funds for connecting schools underscores the commitment to providing equal educational opportunities to all. Additionally, investments from the auction funding will be allocated to various projects, ensuring the overall development of the country’s digital infrastructure and making internet accessibility a reality for all.

While community networks play a crucial role in ensuring connectivity, they have specific needs that require tailored directives and policies. These networks operate in unique ways, making it challenging to create standard policies. A positive stance emphasizes the importance of understanding the needs of community networks and structuring effective public policy to support their viability. A working group has been established to study these specific needs and draft viable policies and directives.

One significant outcome of the efforts to improve connectivity is the North Connected project, which aims to bring competition and lower connection prices in the region. By increasing the number of service providers and fostering healthy competition, consumers can benefit from more affordable and accessible connectivity options. At least 12 new companies will operate in the region as a result, indicating a positive impact on reducing inequalities and improving access to digital services.

However, there are concerns regarding illegitimate community networks that don’t operate with the same level of efficiency and reliability as legitimate networks. Differentiating between legitimate and fake networks becomes imperative to ensure that public financing is not misused. The need to regulate and monitor community networks to prevent misuse highlights the challenges faced in this sector.

Overall, the initiatives and projects aimed at enhancing connectivity in Brazil signify a positive transformation in terms of infrastructure and access to technology. Community networks offer meaningful connectivity and foster learning about the digital world within communities, complementing the efforts of Internet Service Providers. The government continues to grapple with the challenges and responsibilities associated with supporting the growth of community networks, highlighting the need for a balanced approach to drive equitable and inclusive digital development in Brazil.

Audience

The analysis delves into various arguments surrounding the topic of internet access and community networks. One argument highlights concerns about the current system of charging for data, particularly as it is seen to benefit more developed communities, while placing a financial burden on users. The speaker expresses worries about high bandwidth resources, like videos, requiring more financial resources from users, thus exacerbating inequalities. This argument reflects a negative sentiment towards the capitalization of bandwidth.

Another critique focuses on the current telco model, suggesting that educational resources should not be dependent on a person’s ability to generate income. The speaker questions why access to educational resources should be gamified and proposes a different model where users can directly access frequently needed resources. This perspective aligns with SDG 4 (Quality Education) and SDG 10 (Reduced Inequalities). It also carries a negative sentiment.

On a positive note, the case of Finland is cited as an example of a more honest and beneficial business model for data plans. In Finland, data plans do not have a data cap but differentiate based on speed, providing everyone with a flat rate. This positive sentiment is supported by evidence of negligible variable costs for data volume, especially in mobile services.

However, the analysis reveals that the project Wikipedia Zero, which aimed to provide zero-rated access to Wikipedia versions, failed to gain substantial traction and was discontinued in 2017 due to low access numbers. This is considered a negative outcome for the project.

The analysis also highlights the importance of revisiting access points and connection questions in communities facing struggles related to conflict and climate change. Access numbers to internet services, such as those provided by the Wikipedia Zero project, are questioned in communities where zero connectivity is a resilience measure. This observation reveals a neutral sentiment towards the subject.

Additionally, the high costs associated with community networks in remote areas are flagged as a concern. It is noted that individuals in Chihuahua and Mexico need to have a daily income of at least $3 or $4 to afford connectivity, while some communities resort to engaging in illegal activities to finance their access. This negative sentiment highlights the financial challenges faced by communities in remote areas when it comes to internet access.

The analysis further reveals that community networks sometimes depend on weak infrastructures, which affects the quality and reliability of their services. This observation adds to the negative sentiment surrounding the topic.

Issues with government policies regarding access to fiber networks for communities are also raised. The analysis suggests that despite the presence of fiber networks near communities, government policies restrict their access. However, there is optimism about future developments, particularly with the Amazonian network project.

The operation of community networks is shown to vary depending on their context. For example, community networks in Africa function more like small businesses, while those in Mexico or Colombia display a greater level of political organization. This insight highlights the diversity in the operation models of community networks.

Lastly, the misconception of poor service quality in community networks is challenged. The analysis presents evidence of good performance and positive impacts of community networks in communities. This positive sentiment encourages a re-evaluation of misconceptions and brings attention to the potential benefits of community networks.

In conclusion, the analysis provides a comprehensive overview of various arguments and perspectives on internet access and community networks. It highlights concerns about the current system of charging for data, critiques the telco model, and examines alternative approaches. It presents the case of Finland as an example of a more beneficial business model for data plans. It also discusses the discontinuation of the Wikipedia Zero project and raises questions about access to internet services in communities facing challenges like conflict and climate change. The analysis examines the high costs and weaknesses in infrastructure associated with community networks. It points out issues with government policies regarding access to fiber networks and highlights the diversity in the operation models of community networks. Finally, it challenges misconceptions about poor service quality in community networks and emphasizes their positive performance and impacts in communities.

Jane Coffin

This extended summary delves into the importance of diverse networks, grassroots advocacy, community networks, public-private partnerships, and structural separation networks in the context of global internet access and connectivity. These points are supported by various pieces of evidence and arguments.

Firstly, the importance of diverse networks is highlighted, with a focus on how they contribute to global internet access, lower prices, and reaching more people. It is demonstrated through the challenges faced by Liquid Telecom in deploying fibre from Zambia to South Africa due to complications, as well as the significance of connectivity being delayed by regulatory issues. This highlights the need for diverse networks to ensure better access, affordability, and inclusivity in the global internet landscape.

The significance of grassroots advocacy and multi-stakeholder approaches in promoting connectivity is emphasised. Personal experiences of working on community network projects are shared, underscoring the collective power of communities in negotiating with governments. This highlights the role of advocacy and partnerships in bridging the digital divide and ensuring that connectivity initiatives are inclusive and sustainable.

The effectiveness of community networks in providing connectivity in regions where major providers struggle to make a profit is discussed. The example of East Carroll Parish, Louisiana, where a community network was utilised to provide connectivity, exemplifies how these networks can fill gaps and offer diverse types of connectivity. This showcases the potential of community-driven initiatives in expanding internet access to underserved areas.

The role of public-private partnerships and innovative financial models in funding connectivity projects is emphasised. The Connect Humanity project is cited as an example. This underlines the importance of collaboration between public and private sectors, as well as the need for innovative financing mechanisms, to overcome financial barriers and ensure sustainable investment in connectivity infrastructure.

Structural separation networks are presented as a viable option for reducing costs and improving connectivity. These networks involve one party managing the network while others operate their services on it. This model is being explored in parts of the US, where municipalities are demanding greater accountability. The potential cost-efficiency and improved connectivity offered by structural separation networks make them an attractive option for expanding global internet access.

Lastly, the summary highlights that communities running their networks can deliver reliable connectivity. It stresses that such networks are not unreliable but are managed by skilled technologists. These community networks require a long-term business plan and substantial financial backing to ensure sustainability. This insight underscores the importance of community involvement and support in achieving sustainable and robust connectivity solutions.

In conclusion, the extended summary underscores the importance of diverse networks, grassroots advocacy, community networks, public-private partnerships, and structural separation networks in promoting global internet access. These insights are supplemented by evidence and arguments from various sources. It is evident that a multi-faceted approach, involving collaboration, innovation, and community empowerment, is crucial for achieving connectivity goals and bridging the digital divide on a global scale.

Raquel Renno Nunes

The analysis explores the important issue of connectivity and stresses the significance of internet accessibility as a fundamental human right. Notably, Raquel Renault plays a crucial role in this area as a program officer at Article 19, where she addresses various connectivity issues. Her responsibilities mainly focus on infrastructure and involve collaboration with standard-setting organizations such as the ITU and ITU-R.

Undoubtedly, the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the pivotal role of connectivity, particularly in enabling the right to health. The outbreak has underscored the critical need for accessible and reliable internet connections to ensure the well-being and improved access to healthcare services for all individuals. In this context, connectivity has emerged as a vital tool in bridging the digital divide and reducing inequalities.

One of the central debates surrounding connectivity revolves around whether internet access should be treated as a human rights issue or simply as a commercial service. There are two contrasting ideologies on this matter. On one hand, the viewpoint advocating for the recognition of internet access as a basic human right argues that governments and relevant organizations should ensure equal access and availability of the internet for all individuals. On the other hand, some argue that internet access should function solely as a commercial service, subject to market forces and individual affordability.

The discussion aims to bring together these differing perspectives and comprehend the merits of each argument. Its goal is to comprehensively explore the concept of connectivity and determine whether all forms of connectivity are inherently beneficial. By considering these diverse views, it becomes possible to develop a more nuanced understanding of the issue at hand.

In conclusion, the analysis underscores the importance of connectivity in our society and examines the debate surrounding internet accessibility as a human right. It highlights the invaluable role of individuals like Raquel Renault in addressing connectivity challenges and emphasizes the positive impact of accessible internet during the COVID-19 pandemic. The discussion of various viewpoints contributes to a broader perspective on the issue, stimulating further dialogue and exploration of the different facets of connectivity.

Robert Pepper

The analysis of the given information reveals several key points regarding internet connectivity. Firstly, it is stated that 95% of the global population now has access to broadband. However, despite this high percentage, there are still around 2 billion people who are not online. This discrepancy highlights the shift from a coverage gap to a usage gap in internet connectivity. Affordability is identified as the main hindrance to internet usage, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. The high cost of devices and monthly service is preventing many individuals from accessing the internet.

Furthermore, the benefits of internet access are seen as serving human rights. It is noted that people use the internet for educational purposes, to receive and create information. In fact, a significant 73% of people believe that access and use of the internet should be considered a human right. This highlights the importance of internet connectivity in empowering individuals and promoting equality.

On the other hand, various barriers to connectivity are observed. Infrastructure limitations, such as the backhaul and middle mile, are identified as one of the challenges in getting people connected. Additionally, the architecture of telecom termination monopoly is mentioned as a barrier.

In terms of specific services, the concept of zero rating is discussed. Zero rating is the practice of not charging for data usage on specific applications or websites. Discover is highlighted as a net-neutral zero rating service that allows access to any application or website. This service is seen as beneficial as it helps prepaid data users stay connected even when they run out of their data plan.

It is also worth noting that not all zero rating services are considered anti-competitive. Some zero rating services have been found to be net neutral and pro-consumer according to the stringent net neutrality rules under the Wheeler Commission.

The analysis also points out the outdated nature of legacy models and regulations in the telecom industry. The traditional telecom network architecture, engineering, business model, and regulation are based on outdated principles. The emergence of modern flat IP networks has changed the costs associated with data usage, rendering the legacy models irrelevant.

To conclude, the analysis reveals the challenges and opportunities in internet connectivity. While a significant portion of the global population now has access to broadband, affordability and infrastructure limitations remain significant barriers. The benefits of internet access in terms of human rights and empowerment are recognized. Additionally, the emergence of zero rating services and the need for modernization in the telecom industry are highlighted. These findings emphasize the importance of addressing these issues to ensure equal and affordable access to the internet for all.

Thomas Lohninger

The analysis focuses on connectivity and internet access, highlighting several arguments and supporting evidence. One argument is that instead of wasting time on debates that hinder the goal of connecting the unconnected, efforts should be directed towards addressing these debates. The discussion points out that although promises have been made about 5G, the actual impact and benefits of the technology have not materialized. In addition, there seems to be no new technology empowered by 5G, and little reason for consumers to upgrade from their current 100 to 300 megabit connection.

The analysis also highlights the negative consequences of network fees or “fair share” contributions. It suggests that proposed fees could harm smaller networks and lead to increased fragmentation of the internet. Another important argument raised is the potential negative impact of zero rating, where certain companies are given an unfair advantage. This practice could potentially violate net neutrality and hinder efforts to achieve reduced inequalities in connectivity.

Thomas Lohninger, in particular, raises concerns about zero rating programs limiting consumer choice and hindering innovation. He highlights examples such as a Smart Net offering in Portugal, where the affordability of certain services compared to others raised concerns about an “internet à la carte” system. The analysis also explores alternative approaches to data plans. It suggests that instead of having data caps, data plans could be differentiated based on the speed of internet access, as implemented in Finland. This is seen as a more honest and efficient business model for telecom companies.

The analysis also notes that total data consumption does not necessarily impact network operation unless it leads to congestion. It criticizes the use of legacy models based on minutes of use, distance, and time, which are no longer relevant in today’s data networks. Noteworthy observations include the termination of projects like Wikipedia Zero, which aimed to provide free access to specific services. The low usage of Wikipedia Zero led to its discontinuation.

Furthermore, it is suggested that corporations could make better use of available bandwidth by offering flat rates during off-peak hours. The analysis argues that in instances where the mobile network is often unused during late-night hours in countries with connectivity issues, the refusal to open the floodgates is primarily due to corporate greed, rather than capacity or cost issues.

In conclusion, the extended analysis emphasizes the need to prioritize connectivity and internet access for all. It proposes addressing debates that hinder these goals, critiquing telecom industry PR campaigns, and examining the consequences of network fees, zero rating practices, and data plans. The analysis suggests alternative approaches such as bandwidth-based data plans and flat rates during off-peak hours to optimize available resources. These insights provide valuable perspectives for policymakers, businesses, and individuals involved in promoting inclusive and accessible internet connectivity.

Raquel Renno Nunes:
from Brazil and we are just testing the camera and also she would need us to go to the presentation because she’s gonna you know show some PowerPoint and we’re gonna be doing from here because she’s not being able to access the link via her computer so we have to to do it but anyway I’ll start by introducing myself I’m Raquel Renault from article 19 program officer and I’m responsible for connectivity issues and I work mostly on infrastructure level and standard setting organizations my work specifically is in the ITU, ITU-R and here I’m followed by Natalia Lobo who is online and she’s the director of the sectoral policy department of the Ministry of Communications of Brazil then Robert Pepper the head of global connectivity policy and planning ex-FCC, ex-NTIA and consulted to other regulators and have a vast experience in spectrum management then Jane Coffin also an expert with extensive experience in the technical community public sector private sector as well and she’s currently a consultant and an expert providing information on community networks, IXPs, interconnection peering and community development and Thomas Lohninger there is the executive director of the digital rights epicenter works in Vienna Austria and also works a lot on net neutrality issues specifically in the European Union but not limited to European Union and this is going to be an open discussion we’re going to take questions and comments from the people here in this room but also online and the idea is to bring different views you can see that we have people from different backgrounds here basically the idea is to update and bring different views on the connectivity issues a lot has been said about how connectivity is important how it’s a human rights enablers specifically after the pandemic so even the right to health was something that was related to connectivity lately but we still face the digital divide and we have new kinds of digital divide and also some people say that we have many digital divides and the SDG still frame access as a development issue and but then we are facing a human rights issue so there are two different ideas and assessment of what the right to access the Internet not as a human right but also not just a commercial service how it should be tackled know how it should be seen how it should be framed so we are here together these different ideas and also understand if any connectivity is good connectivity and what are the challenges and opportunities that we might have nowadays so I would like to start with Natalia if possible or not yet Lucas okay okay so we’re gonna start by the people in this room and then we live Natalia for later is it okay okay so we can start by please pepper if you

Robert Pepper:
can start there I think that that works better thank you very much and it’s great to be here and thank you for the invitation on the panel so just maybe to start things off a little bit one of the things that I’ve done with meta with the economist intelligence units now called economist impact was we had started a study back in 2017 and it was a six-year time series called the inclusive Internet index and it looked at 54 55 indicators for a hundred countries and you know you’ve seen some of this Brazil does quite well and we early on you know the issue on connectivity was coverage people did not have available to them a broadband connection over the last six or seven years we and about three years ago we saw a shift from a coverage gap to a usage gap and the latest data provided by the ITU and the UN Broadband Commission three weeks ago in New York at the their annual meeting before the UN General Assembly met was that 95% of the world’s population now has available to them a broadband connection there’s about 400 million people out of the 8 billion people that do not have a broadband connection available and that remaining 400 million will be served by satellite and that was you know a general conclusion not just by the Broadband Commission but by GSMA the mobile operators satellite operators who were there in the room and that becomes extremely important on the on the other hand there’s about 2 billion 2.1 billion people who could be online who are not online that is the usage gap so there are about 2 billion people not connected and then there are people who are under connected and this goes to the question about what is meaning you know about meaningful connectivity and so the question is why are they not connected so one of the other projects we did with the economist was they surveyed people in sub-saharan Africa who were not online in about 23 24 countries and what they found these are the people who are not online all right the vast majority had a connection potentially available the number one reason was affordability of devices and affordability of monthly service the second reason was the way it was framed was I don’t know how to use the internet or what to use it for digital literacy questions the third major reason was the lack of local relevant content which also goes to the question of why should somebody be on and then there’s a separate issue with electricity no electricity you’re not even if you have devices you’re not gonna be able to charge them and so on so we’ve seen this shift from a coverage gap to a usage gap which is about adoption but why is that important it’s important because of the focus of the of the session being online and we especially learned this during the pandemic provides access to services that are directly related to fundamental human rights education the ability not just to receive information but also to speak and create information this is this is really fundamental when you take a look at article 19 not just the organization but article 19 one of the things that the economists did as part of this project was to go into the field in each of those hundred well actually there were it was 98 countries because two countries do not permit surveys so they couldn’t go in the field for a survey in two of the countries but 98 countries and they asked people when they called it the value of Internet survey what do you use the Internet for how do you value it and what do you know how has it improved your life and in the last two years of the pandemic it was specifically focused on questions about well-being and what was interesting is especially during the pandemic the last minute actually change it’s by region it’s differences in some of the regions but questions about education the way people use the Internet for education for their children during the pandemic when things were shut down and what was a little bit surprising was that people in sub-saharan Africa felt that being online was more important than people in Europe for education for their children across the world as part of that survey on average three-quarters of people 73% year-over-year I mean so it’s more than one year 73% of people said access and use of the Internet should be a human right and it was one of the things about that that’s interesting is in emerging markets in particular this was the case in sub-saharan Africa it was 76% Middle East North Africa 75% Asia 74% Latin America 71% in Europe it was only 69% and North America 57% because in Europe and North America people take being online for granted that’s at least we don’t know that that’s the fact that’s my you know presumption right that’s my hypothesis of why that’s lower because people think oh it’s like turning the water on on the tap but when you’re in parts of the world where you cannot take the Internet for granted people see it as even more important as something that really should be a human right so I’ll stop there and I’m happy to dive into any of the more data later but I wanted to just sort of maybe set the scene with you know connectivity why it’s important for human rights broadly and how there are real data that reinforce that from both people who are online and from people who are not yet online and then we can have a conversation about how do we get people online so that they can benefit from being online in ways that serve human rights thank you

Jane Coffin:
follow on with another economist story from 2014 and I know some of the people involved in this so it’s a true story well I know the company it’s called liquid telecom they provide fiber a lot of fiber connectivity in sub-saharan Africa and the point of telling you this is to focus on the importance of diversity of networks for access of course lowering prices and competition and bringing in more people to the global internet liquid telecom has been providing connectivity for years and years and one of the hardest things for them to do is get fiber across borders now it will change with the Leos that are going up but that’s got hold another cross-border issue which I’d love to hear peppers opinion on and folks in the room later but this one is about how hard it was to take fiber from Zambia to South Africa the team had to get in a boat after about there were negotiations going on for over a year between the two countries and part of the hang-up was a an historic bridge so a cultural ministry was involved on both sides of the border the telecom ministries were involved on both sides of the border the Border Patrol was involved on both sides of the border the regulators were get the picture the regulators were involved on both sides of the border so a year goes by and there’s still no fiber deployed year now if you’re going into business and you’re deploying fiber your business model is not a year’s wait it’s it’s get the fiber out get it deployed you have the investment and liquid does do a lot of great work with developing communities as well so we’re not just talking about a big corporate giant that doesn’t think about working with communities that have been unconnected and underserved they finally put some people in a boat and the article in The Economist is from July 5th 2014 where they said the connectivity between the two countries was nearly thwarted by a swarm of bees because they had put the fellow in the boat a bunch of bees started to attack the fellow the CEO took off one of his shirts wrapped around the guy’s head they got in the boat they took the fiber across the river this is a true story there have been other stories like this in it all around the world where you have these border issues now of course there are going to be complications in some parts of the world but this is more of a government’s just not coming together and negotiating those agreements to quickly get connectivity deployed across those borders of course with mobile networks it’s a little different sometimes that’s a power level issue I used to live in Armenia and there were all sorts of power level issues where people would blast the signals too much from one country to another and you were picking up the signal from one operator that you didn’t intend to have and paying a lot more money but the point of this story is that there are ways that connectivity can be deployed but it just gets hung up if you were advocating for connectivity from a grassroots perspective you can help with governments I’ve worked with Pepper and others here at this table talking to governments I was government years ago it does take a multi-stakeholder approach to make sure that governments understand whether it’s from a corporate perspective or nonprofit perspective that there are things that need to be done in order to speed up connectivity the liquid story is of course one about a company I used to work on I’ve worked on many community network projects and it helped lead a movement here back in 2016 in Guadalajara when I was at the Internet Society we brought about 40 different community network advocates together from all walks of life to talk about the importance of working together and as a collective you can often have more power when you’re trying to negotiate whether you’re in an ITU meeting or you’re here and you’re talking to others when you’re when you’re bringing certain concepts together that are similar and you can share those stories and come up with talking points together because if you’re by yourself sometimes you’re not going to make that difference when you’re negotiating with folks that may have more power quite frankly community networks have come in from a diversification perspective to bring in last-mile and minimum connectivity when you talk about community networks it’s not in the manner at least what we were advocating at the Internet Society what I still advocate when I was with a startup community networks or community networks can provide different types of connectivity that some of the bigger providers may not be interested in providing because they don’t get a return on investment in certain communities because time and distance equals money right and if there are only a certain number of people in a certain place some providers can’t don’t go in there because they can’t get that return the smaller networks some of these are fixed wireless some of them are just Wi-Fi mesh networks are creating change and most recently I was working with some folks in a place called East Carroll Parish Louisiana that had been named the poorest town in America and they were tired after the pandemic because they weren’t connected so this is another story of where public-private partnerships were something called capital stacks which is just a fancy term for putting a lot of different types of money together whether it’s concessional capital and or philanthropic which means foundations grants banks coming together companies who can provide those loans as well and that’s what the capital stack means stacks of different types of funding blended finance is the other fancy-pants term for this it’s just lots of different funds coming together to de-risk investment and you can do that in small towns and in poor communities and this is what a group called Connect Humanity is doing the startup I was working with before other organizations are looking at this even some of the folks in the UN and the Giga project I’m not speaking for them I do work with them adjacent to them on a project but I would just say that you’re finding more innovative ways to bring in these PPPs that are very different from the huge infrastructure projects like the dams and roads that we saw in the 60s 70s 80s 90s I suppose to infrastructure infrastructure is expensive if you talk to anyone in the space who’s building out that connectivity it’s billions of dollars to build networks but it also can be supplanted with the M’s and the tens of thousands of dollars with these smaller networks so I’m just here to throw out that there are ways that different types of organizations can work together to achieve the same thing which is connecting the unconnected and digital skills training that’s a whole separate issue I won’t get into but I’m more on the infrastructure side there are ways to work together and it’s not as if the capital out there is something evil you’ve got to look at capital in a very clinical way when you’re working at that grassroots level also be as smart as the banks are be as smart as the people that are putting this infrastructure together thank you

Thomas Lohninger:
thank you My name is Thomas Lohninger from the Austrian Digital Rights NGO Epicenter Works and I am surely here on this table the one with the least expertise from on the ground when it comes to building community networks but I absolutely think that this is one of the key issues that should be in the focus of this IGF and digital rights debate in general and what I might be able to contribute in that regard is to point out how debates that we are having right now globally but particularly in Europe are actually working against achieving this goal of connecting the unconnected. The first thing is that I really want to call out some of the PR campaigns that we have seen from the telecom industries in recent years. I mean that whole debate around 5G with all of the promises what it should bring nothing of this is materialized and I think it would have been that money would have been far better spent actually bringing connectivity of normal best effort end-to-end internet to all corners of the world and doing it in an affordable manner because of course satellite internet is available everywhere but it also needs to come to the people in the form of a device that can be powered it can be sustained in the local circumstances. And now we have debates around 6G already while we just see all of the promises of 5G just imploding in themselves. There’s no killer app, there is no new technology that’s just empowered by that. It is at best a little bit of a faster internet connection and what do we see in the countries where this already exists? People are actually not interested. If you have a 100 megabit to 300 megabit connection there’s very little reason as a consumer to upgrade. So I would really question the premise of a lot of the international telecom debates and we should ask the question if that energy that focus and that money is well spent and I think we just simply have bigger problems. And then there is a second big issue that I want to raise which also ties into this whole issue of connecting everyone on the globe together and that is the issue of network fees. It’s also often dubbed fair share or fair contribution. This idea which currently is making the round because ETNO, the European Telecom Operators Association, was quite successful in lobbying a former CEO of France Telecom who is currently serving as digital commissioner in the EU to adopt this idea. It is a very old idea we know it from the telephony era. It’s basically you want to reach my customers you have to pay me money. This idea of the telephony era is forced upon the interconnection world so whenever autonomous networks connect with each other, the so-called interconnection sphere, according to the fair share network fee proposal there needs to be a lot of money exchanged before that connection can be made. And if you just think that through you will see many problems and one particular is that smaller networks will suffer. We already have many small ISPs saying that they are actually afraid of their ability to compete, of their ability to connect to other networks if such a proposal were to really become law of the land. Because when you are right now looking at the interconnection world this is not an area to make a profit. This is usually nerds connecting networks with each other. It’s where we see that some connection is congested and that we have a packet loss. Okay let’s just put another cable there and maybe the money that this cable and connection itself will cost is the price that you have to pay. But it’s not a way to make money. We see some telecom operators already abusing interconnection as a tool to maximize their profits and if this were to be the law of the land, if every interconnection would have to follow this principle then I think we would see many more problems in the global internet in terms of right now you can connect to every other point of the internet which is what we call end-to-end. This could be a concept of the past and maybe we will wake up in a splinter net or in a fragmented internet where only a few big telecom companies are able to really be reachable globally. But all the others might actually have a far lower chance of connecting and that would certainly deteriorate the ability of particularly global majority countries to connect to privacy-friendly alternatives to let’s say Google or Meta. And then the last thing that I also want to mention because there’s a very interesting court case going on and the Constitutional Court of Colombia is the issue of zero rating. So the price differentiation if you make certain data packages more expensive or cheaper than others and in many global majority countries that is a very common way of connecting. So when you buy a SIM card you have free WhatsApp or free Facebook or other services that are given to you no matter if you have gigabytes in your SIM card or not. And that of course gives an unfair advantage to the companies that are in a poor position if they are the only ones reachable for people that otherwise would only have a telephone number and not be able to access the full internet. And I think Free Basic is certainly a project that needs to be discussed in that context and it’s my hope that the Colombian court follows the example from Canada, from India, from Europe to actually outlaw zero rating as a practice that is violating net neutrality. Because if we want to bring meaningful connectivity to everywhere in the world that needs to encompass the whole internet and just not a walled garden and a handful of selected services. Thank you. Now we’re gonna

Raquel Renno Nunes:
have Natalia that is going to be online.

Nathalia Lobo:
Hello everyone. Thank you so much for waiting for me. I had some trouble getting in. Let me try to share my screen. Can you all see it there? Yes, we can see it. But if you can you put it in show mode? Yeah. There you go. Great. Thank you. So I’m going to talk about a little bit what we have been doing in Brazil on connectivity. So it talks a lot with what you all have said, principally Jane and Pepa. So let me tell you a bit of what we have been, what is Brazil. Okay. And what is our challenge. So Brazil is the fifth largest country in geographical area. We have 203 million people and we have the largest city in Latin America with 12.3 million people and over 5500 municipalities and more than actually 40,000 localities. The largest economy in Latin America. And look at our size. Well, there’s lots of Europe there. We have great parts of Africa. So you can see the size of our challenge. Connecting all the people that are in our Brazilian territory is a challenge, especially when you got mainly people that you cannot make, you can’t give for granted any type of technology. You need to have them all working together so that we can get everyone inside the internet. So one of our, basically all the policies that we do have in Brazil regarding connectivity have been facing the supply side. So how do we get networks into the people? Today we managed to get over 90% of our households with connectivity and how do we achieve the rest of the 10%? That’s the deal. So in our 5G auction that we held in November of 21, we had the 5G obligations that put an over 90% of all economic value into coverage commitments. Let me talk to you that over $9 billion were in revenue of this spectrum auction and 90% of it converted to obligations. Most of the difference was paid over reserve price and converted into commitments and these commitments were into investments until 2030 and they go through 4G obligations in localities. We have over 7500 localities that are going to have 4G mobile broadband that had no service at all. We’re going to have 5G obligations in all 5570 municipalities and we have also the North, the connected North. This one is our very dearest project as we have, we’re going to a region in the North and to the Amazonic region that connectivity is still poor in terms of quality, in terms of resilience and in terms of price. So we are deploying 12,000 kilometers of fiber optic cables into the Amazon riverbeds and making sure that this is the CAPEX is just is public but who does the maintenance and operation of this these cables afterwards are a consortium of 12 different operators that will explore this and do all the maintenance. It’s not easy and maintaining the cable, this fiber cable optic, this optic fiber along riverbeds as it’s that you have many kinds of like anchors in the rivers that from the boats that can do, that can rip off the fiber optic cables. We have many issues regarding logs on the rivers. There are many issues that make it quite expensive and this is turning everything into possible. So the public partnerships are coming into this into this sense. So why is this so important for enabling human rights? Well, things have, this is what we’re doing there in the Amazon. So this is all our, what our boats are doing, deploying the fiber, the optic fiber cables. And why is it so important? Well, it’s transforming lives in the, in this region. So we have regions that had no internet and hospitals had no, had no way to put their protocols inside. And they were, they used to have post office shipping off the information on the patients and now they can have access to a simple system where they can put all the information inside and now they have access to more resources. May there be into medication, into amount of money that it gets to attend to their patients and telemedicine with the best hospitals in Sao Paulo for the people that live there. So there you go. And schools and the 5G auction. We also have a budget for connecting schools. It’s a little less than $1 billion, but then we are going, we are seeking to do the full connectivity there, not only the speed getting into the schools, but also the, all the wifi and what we, what this, what the schools are going to do with this pedagogical use. So that’s a bit of how we used the 5G auction to bring in some other perspectives that is not only the private perspective, but public policy. So we also have the investment fund to structure all that we need. So we have many sunk, sunk loss projects to do with this funding and especially and especially for public points and doing transportation. So we have subsidized, we had, we have many financing lines with subsidized revenue. And so here we go. We have, we have this summit tree of commitments. We have funds to make private investments viable. And we are also talking about now going into public policies in the demand side about usage, about wanting to make tangible benefits from internet usage into people’s lives. So I thank you. That’s all for now.

Raquel Renno Nunes:
Thank you, Natalia. Sorry, is this? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Thanks. And do we have questions or, because I think I see people here that, ah. So Natalia, that, um, you point out something that’s actually really, really important.

Robert Pepper:
One of the biggest barriers to getting people connected is less in the access network. The backhaul and middle mile is absolutely one of the barriers. So the project by laying the fiber in the river, the Amazon, to bring broadband connectivity to those regions, right? That is essential. And, um, a, another example of that is something that we did partnering with Airtel and a small company called BCS in Uganda, uh, back in 2017, 2018. Um, Airtel had a 4G network, uh, across, uh, the, you know, Kampala, the urban areas in Uganda, but it did not have 4G on its cell site. It had cell sites across Uganda and covered about 90% of the population. Um, but in the rural Northwest part of Uganda, uh, it was 2G, it was GSM, 2G, some SMS. They couldn’t do the internet. Um, and the reason was they couldn’t get backhaul to this tower sites. They only had narrow band microwave, so they couldn’t actually get broadband to the towers. One of the projects that we did was build a, um, wholesale backhaul network, 770 kilometers across Northwest rural Uganda where there were no roads across the Nile can help. And it was an open cable. So there were capacity for all the operators, right? And it enabled Airtel to convert from 2G to 4G once they got broadband to the cell sites. So this is actually very analogous, um, to the project in Brazil, which is like really, really important. Um, uh, I would like to, though, uh, Thomas just respond very, very quickly. The zero rating thing is extremely important, and I do think that, you know, there was an evolution from FreeBasics, which was limited, to a less than perfect but much, much better and actually net neutral called Discover, because it uses a proxy server, so any application or website is available, as opposed to having to have the selection on the old FreeBasics, which is an 8 to 10-year-old project. And what’s interesting is the way people use it actually benefits people, because it’s not a degraded internet. The way a lot of people are using it is one of two ways, an introduction to being online, and then people actually want to be online. One of the evolving uses of it is actually, I think, extraordinarily pro-consumer, and that is especially in emerging markets, and it’s in dozens of countries, people who rely on prepaid data packs, data plans. What happens is that in the past, when they ran out of their data plan and they could not afford to top up, they were disconnected. What’s happening in many, many cases in many countries is that when people finish, fill up, they run out of their data plan, they, using the zero rating version of the narrow band connection, stay connected, so they have something, and then when they can top up, they go back to their full plan. And so it actually helps both the consumer and the operator in that there’s no transaction fee of having to be reconnected, redo plans, or anything else. So again, it’s not perfect, but it has a very, very positive social and consumer benefit, but the idea is eventually, I mean, everybody will want to be on the fully accessible internet with all of the applications, and that’s, I think, everybody’s goal, but, and by the way, when the FCC had its, you know, net neutrality rules, which were very stringent under the Wheeler Commission, they found that there was nothing inherently anti-net neutrality related to zero rating. There were some zero rating services that they found anti-competitive and violated net neutrality. There were others that were net neutral and that were pro-consumer, and so it was nothing inherent in zero rating that was anti-competitive, and in fact, that was even before some of these other developments, and so it’s not black and white, and I think it’s also a good example of where we’re extremely aligned on some things and not on others, which is absolutely fine. I mean, that’s actually a good thing, but I didn’t know how familiar you were with Discover or the way people are now using it, especially in emerging markets, to bridge top-ups so that they can stay connected, at least at a basic level, and then they top up and then they have the full internet experience.

Thomas Lohninger:
Maybe if we can go into that point. So the problem with zero rating is really what we have seen in the market, and it’s worth really looking at those concrete offerings and also how they are priced. When you go today to the English-speaking Wikipedia article for net neutrality, you will still find the picture of that article, it’s the infamous smart net offer from the Portuguese incumbent provider Mail. If you look closer in that offer, a gigabyte of YouTube was 54 times cheaper than normal internet gigabytes. So we have a drastic difference in affordability of certain services over others, and this internet à la carte where individual applications are bought is certainly the worst thing where we can all agree. And there certainly has been an evolution to class-based zero rating offers. I think those were considered in Canada, and then they scrapped it, they said, like, that’s actually not a viable option. In Europe, that was the reading of regulators, how zero rating could be admissible from 2016 until 2021. And in 21, the European Court of Justice found that, no, it’s actually contrary to equal treatment of traffic if you price differently. And why did the court find that? Because it’s actually an additional effort on the side of the telecom company to calculate packages differently, to have not just your monthly allowance, but a monthly allowance for this service, for this service, and for the rest of the internet. So it is, I think, it’s hard to make a case from the perspective of a telecom operator why it should be easier and cheaper to roll out these zero rating offers instead of, as you just said, the goal, and I think we agree on that, is an application agnostic form of access. And that could be a low bandwidth, that could be something that’s tailored for maybe low energy devices or other particular needs where you simply will not be able to stream 4K video. It’s totally fine. But the thing that we all want to avoid is that once the monthly data cap is cut off, you’re left with nothing, or you’re only left with WhatsApp. Because I feel like there always needs to be the freedom to choose. And if discovery is that, and I haven’t looked into it, I cannot speak to it. But I think it’s important that we understand the rights also from low income households to have the freedom to choose all things of the internet. And I mean, it’s also the freedom to innovate, which is most at stake with these zero rating offers. I mean, when Mark Zuckerberg created the Facebook.com, he did so because he had a full-fledged internet connection in his dormitory, and wasn’t limited to a consumer-only version of the internet.

Robert Pepper:
And that’s why the newer versions of that, so first the FCC found that there were some zero rating services where there was discriminatory pricing for some video versus other video as provided by the telco, in terms of the way zero rating was implemented. On the other hand, if you think about a service like Discover, think about sort of a dial-up, a low bandwidth version. So if it’s low bandwidth, you’re not going to have streaming video. So it’s just a low bandwidth version. But it’s not just WhatsApp. So it’s not a separate WhatsApp service versus being online. It’s actually a zero rated service that would be essentially everything, but at a very low speed rate until you top up. And so again, it’s not black and white. And I’m happy to take that offline to have that conversation, because I think it’s an important difference in distinction as things have evolved, and also the consumer behavior of using it as a bridging access for everything, but at very low data rate, until they top up and then get the full experience. And so again, I don’t think it’s black and white, or either or. I think the more important point, going back to the earlier part of the conversation, is some of the ways in which telcos are wanting to have network fees, they call it fair share, which is based upon the architecture and the economics of telecom termination monopoly. So the reality is you can have a lot of choice on the originating end. So I may have four or five operators that want my business. And so there’s a lot of competition. Once I select my operator, right, your network, if we want to talk to each other, if you want to send me messages or videos or whatever, the termination is a monopoly. Because there’s only, once I pick my network, your network must terminate, there’s no choice. And that’s why the, and a lot of this was purely accidental, in Europe, there was the development of calling party pays, or sender network pays, and that created and reinforced a termination monopoly. In the U.S., by just a different model, we had a bill and keep arrangement. So I pay for my airtime, whether I’m originating, sending, or receiving. That eliminated the termination monopoly. And as a result, the choice of the network connection is where it should be, on the originating end. Now, what does that mean? It means that if the telecom networks want to use termination monopoly on interconnection, they want to use termination monopoly to raise fees, they want to use termination monopoly to extract rents, because they have that, if they interconnect to me, it’s a monopoly. And in fact, the European Commission, as you know, in looking at mobile roaming, defined termination as a separate market with significant market power. And that’s at the core, the crux, of a lot of what we’re hearing from the telcos on the fair share and network fee issue. There’s one person waiting for you. Thank you.

Audience:
My name is Jarell James, and I have some questions, because I’m hearing a lot about capitalization of bandwidth, and how people would need to spend more money to get access to be able to stream, if their data packages are running out, and this idea of topping off, or even creating subsidies to allow for topping off into these communities. I think it’s really interesting to focus maybe on the fact that that premise is really locked into the traditional way we’re used to dealing with data, which is coming from a Western, more developed community, and not, I think the days of us counting minutes and counting data packages is long gone for many people in the West. And so, what I’m wondering about is, when we look at an Internet in the future, where streaming platforms are going to have higher quality videos that are going to require more bandwidth, and we’re trying to do these mitigations, is it not also valuable to look at what happens when you take those resources, like videos, and high bandwidth resources that people are regularly looking for? As this gentleman over here in the green tie actually was speaking in his session a few days ago, I don’t even think he knows I’m referencing him, he was mentioning that a lot of people do Brick Lane, it’s like a regular thing that’s Googled, right? And that is advancing their career. Why would someone need to regularly Google that five or six times, instead of just having access to that video, because many members in their community have that? And so, this is where I’m curious about we potentially looking at the way that telcos are gamifying data access, and not doing very obvious movements to ensure that, while they are able to mine the transaction of data for communication purposes between people, and they can say, hey, yeah, we can provide you with communication access, does that really mean that every resource that is beneficial to that person’s life, which objectively is a lot of educational resources, should also be reliant on that person’s ability to create monetary value for themselves, and then give it to telco companies, so they can somehow learn skills and achieve a greater life? It seems like a catch-22, and it seems very much premised on the idea that we’re expecting other communities to pay up and use data packages the way that we’ve done it. And so, these are some of the questions I would have.

Thomas Lohninger:
It’s an interesting question. We had various debates in this direction over the years. It reminds me a little bit about Wikipedia Zero, which was a project from the Wikimedia Foundation to zero-rate access to local Wikipedia versions in the country, and I think the English-speaking Wikipedia was always included as well. They did this in partnership with telecom companies, and disclosure, they were criticised by many people, including me, and the foundation decided to sunset this project in, I think, 2017, something around that time, and one of the reasons why they sunsetted this was it actually didn’t work. The access numbers to the zero-rated service were ridiculously low. I never really got an answer what their conclusion is, why it was never really, because the concept sounds, of course, very good, and we had similar fears also in the pandemic, in the lockdowns, that suddenly everything went online, and that means low-income households have potentially only caps on the data they can use. A model to, I think in your question, there was also a call to think outside of the box, and here it’s maybe interesting to look at Finland. In Finland, you cannot find a data plan that has a data cap. They differentiate via speed, so it’s the bandwidth that you get, but it’s always a flat rate, and this is the much more honest business model, because the variable cost for data volume is absolutely negligible, particularly in mobile, it’s expensive to build a network, to connect it, but then afterwards, whether there’s data flowing or not, you might have congestion if you have too many people at the same time, but then also a bandwidth-based system is helping you to allocate those resources much better than if you right now give everyone a 5G connection with three gigabytes, which can be used up in one concert if you’re streaming it, and yeah, so I think these hard questions about the business model of telecom companies need to be asked.

Audience:
Just a quick question on the point, when they were sunsetting that project, was it access numbers in communities that had regular connectivity, or were there any numbers that you know of for population? I work extensively with populations that have been shut down from the internet, and overwhelmingly the information that is looked up and is searched for is oftentimes health-related, because health facilities are destroyed inside of conflicts, and there’s a lot of questions around this access numbers, how much of it was done in communities that had zero connectivity to the greater world, as a resiliency measure, especially as we go farther into climate change, destroying the telecom infrastructure, it does seem more valuable to maybe revisit those connection questions and access points.

Thomas Lohninger:
Good question. I cannot give you that answer, but there’s a Wikimedia Foundation booth around the corner, they hopefully have.

Robert Pepper:
Thomas, to your point, very related, a lot of the data plans in the name of network management are total data consumption, not related to congestion. So two gigabytes, if I’m downloading that or using that off-peak, there is no impact on the network. Now if everybody’s trying to access a network at the same time, you end up with congestion, but the reality is, right, the legacy telco, their network architecture, their engineering, their business model, and the regulation was all based upon some fundamental principles. The metric was the minute, because it was about voice. The longer the distance, the higher the cost. The longer the duration that you are on, the higher the cost. When you have a flat IP network, and once we got to 4G, it was essentially a flat IP network, even in mobile. There’s a cost to the network, but it’s a step function. Once you’re connected, how much you use that network does not vary until you hit the limit, and that’s where the congestion comes in, but if you use it, you know, only a little bit or a lot, as long as you’re under that technical architecture, the cost is not variable, and yet you still have legacy models based upon minutes of use, distance, and time, which are no longer relevant using the flat IP architectures of today’s data networks, whether they are wireless or fixed, and that goes to your point, which is, like, really important because a lot of these plans are premised upon total data consumed. and that may have no relationship whatsoever to network congestion, right? And, you know, go ahead, I mean.

Thomas Lohninger:
Just to put a finer point on this, like, or to put it bluntly, if you are operating a mobile network in a country where connectivity is an issue, and it’s late night hours where the network is idle, it’s the only reason why there is not a flat rate for everyone is corporate greed. Because it’s a wasted resource. The bandwidth would be there. It costs them nothing. It’s just corporate greed and their business model reasons for not opening the floodgates and that people use it.

Jane Coffin:
One of the things that was mentioned in the description of the panel as well was innovative policies for improving connectivity. There’s a model that’s being explored that’s not new, but it’s new to the United States-ish. It came out of the European, out of the UK, called structural separation networks, where somebody might manage the network, build and manage the network, but other networks can run on top of it. And this is a way to also cut down on costs. This is more of the CapEx side and OpEx later. But bottom line is this is coming back in some parts of the U.S. right now where municipalities are asking for more accountability from the companies that are providing connectivity, suggesting that they not run, because I want to be really clear that governments probably aren’t the best at running networks. There’s a reason for that, that so much liberalization happened and there are no more state-owned enterprises. Well, there are some. But anyway, some companies are better at running the networks at a cost that can help people. But the open access networks allow different types of networks to provide services over the top of the network. So you could have a $10 email-only network. And this is, of course, prices that make sense in that economy, but it wouldn’t be the same in an emerging environment. Another company could come in and run their services over that network as well. It could be full-on video streaming. Who knows? But there are different models being explored. So I think it’s important that for many people here who are interested in what could be done, there are lots of other people you can network with. You can talk to some of the community networks that are also coming into play. They’re actually solid networks. They’re not flaky. When people hear the term community network, they’re like, oh, a bunch of crazy people running a network. You’re like, no, no. These are smart technologists, people who know to run the network. And it’s not fly-by-night in that sense. But knowing your business plan, I do want to put this out there, and I hope I don’t sound too business-y, but you do need to have a thought about how you’re going to continue to run your network. It’s something that Talia was mentioning. You can’t just build that network and hope that people are going to come and buy the services. You’ve got to have a plan, and those plans have to last longer than a year. And you’ve got to have subsidization.

Nathalia Lobo:
How do these community networks actually operate in Brazil? And what are their needs? How can we structure something? Because each one is very specific in their models, in their ways of working in community. So we have to understand how can we make specific directives so that we can make specific policies. You can’t do something on the specific case. It’s very difficult. So how can we manage to make these communities viable first? What are their needs? And how can we, as a public policy, also help these projects actually happen? How do you know that this is a good community network and that that’s not a good way of going for community networks? Not always everyone is exactly the same. So this working group is going to have some study results. And in that sense, from then on, we can start operating something that works for them. That’s the idea. Understand.

Audience:
Hi, everyone. I’m Carlos Baca. I’m from Mexico. I work in an organization that’s called Resomatica. And we are actually a community network. And we help other communities to get connected through this model. So I just went to Brazil, to the Amazonia in Brazil in July, to see what happened with the National School of Community Network there. And I saw a very similar situation with other communities. It is that the WISPs that go to the communities have very expensive prices. Really, really expensive. In Chihuahua and Mexico, when we work, we have people need to have at least $3 or $4 a day to be connected. So what the young people are doing now, to be connected to Facebook, to YouTube, to WhatsApp, etc., is to involve in the narco, in the organized crime. The drug sellers, they are now part of it. Because in northern Mexico, we have this problem very much. And so we are seeing that the people spend a lot of money to be connected. There is a lot of WISPs. So in very, very, very far communities, they have one point that it is very bad connection, you know. And sometimes people spend a lot of money to increase these antennas and this infrastructure for the WISPs. And then they need to pay insurance. It is a very big problem that we are seeing because we think that they are doing this job that they need to do. I am not saying that we don’t need to work with the WISPs, the small ISPs, because we need to have a joint effort. We work a lot with them in Mexico, for example. But we need to establish some conditions to better understand what is happening really in the communities. Not only what they are reporting or saying, what they are doing. So I think this is one of the things that I wanted to address. And the other one is that, as the same in Oaxaca, and this is a question for Natalia, there is a lot of fiber, you know, in a lot of ways, very near from the communities. But the government doesn’t have the policy to access to these fiber networks for the communities. In the Amazonian, they have a lot of expectation about this project. This is what I found. But they are also thinking why they can’t connect to this fiber network. So I think it is important to reach that. And finally, of the last question, I think it’s very, very difficult to try to define what is a community network. And you know, say that this is a good and this is a bad community network. And we need to understand better that maybe it is the main characteristic is that the people in the community can handle in the different ways the infrastructure and the services they have. So if you think the community networks in Africa, they are more like little business models that is very different from one community network in Colombia or in Mexico where there is a lot of political organization. So we need to escape some of the things that we think about community networks. As Jane said, they work well, you know, because we have now good examples of how it’s working in the communities. And as the same as the community radio seen 10 or 20 years ago, we need to escape to all of these imaginations or all of these thoughts that make to say that there are poors, there are not so good services, there are bad things, no? Or there are not, they don’t have enough quality, et cetera, et cetera. So we need also to think in this panel. It’s a very complex issue, I know. But try to understand the diversity that exists around community networks. Sorry for that.

Nathalia Lobo:
It’s okay, because they’re going to disconnect her in two minutes. Okay. Well, I was very surprised about the two, three dollars a day for connection. Well, the idea of the North Connected is that when this is all installed, you have new 12 companies at least working on the region. And some of them are just for capacity. They are just transport operators. So actually you’re dealing about much more offer and competition in the region so that these big prices don’t happen anymore. That’s why we built, we had the idea of building the North Connected, okay? So that competition, so that better quality services get there. So that’s one point. The second point is that what I said about the bad community networks is that how do I not finance none? There are some people that may fake a community network so that they get some public financing. And how do I, as a public servant, know that that one is going into those important networks that community networks do work well? It’s not the question if community networks are necessary or not. It’s just that how do I just take away the bad stuff, the non-legal stuff from all this group. So that’s the idea, to better understand that. And there’s always something that community networks do that others don’t, ISPs don’t do, which is making the connectivity meaningful. So this appropriation of technology, of information, and making the learning among that community, and distributing information on how to better work on that virtual world. So that’s something that we don’t know how to do it. Government is still tackling in Brazil. It’s just tackling how to deal with that next phase. So I believe that we have all the synergies to make this happen. It’s just only that we need to study it a little bit more so that we can structure something that we can go forward with. Did I answer everything?

Raquel Renno Nunes:
Thank you. Thank you, everyone.