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Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers

>>VINT CERF: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. This is the opening session of our meeting on Caribbean information and communication technology.

And I am very honored to be allowed to open this session because I don't consider myself an expert on the Caribbean except for having taken a cruise or two in the area and enjoyed it very much. But I have spent time in island countries. The ones that I have spent the most time in have been in the Pacific Islands, and I would guess the situation in the Caribbean has some similarity to the situation in the Pacific.

In particular, communication is often achieved by satellite rather than by optical fiber, and the economies in each of the islands are relatively small. And with regard to information and communications technologies, it's very important that the businesses in those economies have an international character.

So we draw on the domain market that is largely than the domestically available one.

So I consider it to be a very important opportunity here in Sao Paulo during the ICANN meeting to have this discussion with our colleagues whom you see sitting at the dais.

Since I haven't got everyone's name in front of me, I wonder if the right thing to do is to simply go down the row here and get everyone introduced.

So Sebastian, would you like to begin.

>>SEBASTIAN BELLAGAMBA: Thank you, Vint. I am Sebastian Bellagamba, representing LACNIC here.

>>VINT CERF: I am Vint Cerf, and I am chairman of the board of ICANN.

>>RAY PLZAK: Ray Plzak, the president and CEO of ARIN.

>>BERNADETTE LEWIS: Bernadette Lewis, is secretary-general of the Caribbean Telecommunications Union.

>>CARLTON SAMUELS: Carlton Samuels, chief information officer, university director of I.T. at the University of the West Indies.

>>BEVIL WOODING: Bevil Wooding, special advisor, CTU, Telecommunications Caribbean Union.

>>PAUL TWOMEY: Paul Twomey, president and CEO of ICANN.

>>NIGEL CASSIMIRE: Nigel Cassimire, telecoms advisor with the Caribbean Telecommunications Union, CTU.

>>OSCAR MORENO: I am Oscar Moreno. I am the manager and founder of the dot PR domain.

>>JACOB MALTHOUSE: And I am Jacob Malthouse, liaison for the Caribbean and Canada for ICANN.

>>VINT CERF: Today's discussion covers a substantial amount of territory because we are talking about ICT development in the Caribbean, Internet governance, user perspectives, the introduction to NIC PR and plans for ICANN in San Juan, introductions to ARIN, introductions to LACNIC and then Q and A.

So I am going to make my remarks very brief. So Paul Twomey and I both need to leave early in order to get to another meeting.

But I'll stay and so will Paul as long as we can.

I am going to turn this over to Paul now to make his remarks and then we can begin the full program.

Paul.

>>PAUL TWOMEY: Thank you, Vint. You talked about not necessarily knowing well the Caribbean. I have to say my knowledge of the Caribbean is also somewhat distorted. It starts with names like Viv Richards and Michael Halding, and I have fond memories of being at the Brisbane cricket grounds in the early 1970s watching Viv Richards hitting the Australian ballers all over the field.

Further, I was brought up on a story by my father where he was actually in attendance at the tide test match in 1960. He was there on the final day of that test match.

Sorry for those of you who do not follow cricket. I am sure you will recover from your disadvantage.

Apart from the more global nature of that, the implications to the West Indies -- I want to clarify, the ICANN staff, through our liaison team, has been responding to increasing requests from this community for information on and opportunities to engage with ICANN for the past year. The global partnership team has been very important helping us to respond to these requests, and just talking to some of the speakers here have confirmed that.

This event is meant to be an open and broad-ranging introductory dialogue. It is an exploration for our communities and will be a foundation for concrete action and collaboration in years to come.

I would like to particularly welcome Ms. Bernadette Lewis, the secretary-general of the Caribbean Telecommunications Union. I think Bernadette has truly demonstrated her personal and professional commitment to this community by traveling from the I.T. plenipotentiary in Turkey almost directly to this event in Brazil. So we very much appreciate your commitment.

And as someone who travels frequently, I can attest to the fact that traveling back-to-back to global meetings is not an easy task. So thank you very much.

After Ms. Lewis's presentation, it will be followed by an overview of Internet initiatives in the region, a user perspective from the new Secretariat of the LAC RALO, Carlton Samuels; an update on the plans for ICANN San Juan in Puerto Rico; an overview of regional Internet registry activities in the area.

While Vint and I unfortunately cannot stay for the entire event, I know we are going to closely review the discussions here. I very much look forward to seeing the video streaming being held in the archives for future reference. And look forward to continuing to support the growth of partnerships between our communities that reflect the best traditions of the Internet's growth and development.

>>VINT CERF: So I think now we turn this over to Bernadette Lewis who will be speaking on the current state of ICT development in the Caribbean.

>>BERNADETTE LEWIS: Good afternoon, everyone.

On behalf of the Caribbean Telecommunications Union and the Caribbean delegates of this 27th ICANN meeting, I would like to express our sincere gratitude to ICANN for giving us this opportunity to present Caribbean people and Caribbean priorities to the ICANN community.

And yes, Vint, the Pacific Islands and the Caribbean, we share very similar challenges. And we offer, also, our sincere thanks to the government, NIC Brazil, and people of Brazil for the very warm reception and hospitality extended to us here in this intriguing city of Sao Paulo.

This afternoon I will be giving an assessment of Caribbean ICT development by formulating an ICT scorecard which considers nine dimensions.

But in order to put my presentation in perspective, I would like to introduce the Caribbean to you by means of a video presentation. And it's very brief.

(video).

>> Welcome to the Caribbean. An eclectic group of island nations. Continental states, democracies and European colonial dependencies at different stages of political, economic and social development.

The Caribbean covers an area of approximately 2 million square kilometers with countries ranging in size from 261 square kilometers to 110,000 square kilometers.

For half of the year, the region basks in the calm of the blue Caribbean sea. For the other half, citizens live under the threat of the destructive hurricanes.

The geographic structure includes mud flats, extensive rainforests and swamps, coral islands with white sand beaches. Volcanic islands with black sand beaches, mountain peaks and sulfur lakes.

Add to this mix the anomalies of half-island countries, of the inclusion of Central American beliefs and the Caribbean, and the exclusion of Venzuela, both of which bound the waters of the Caribbean sea.

The Caribbean is home to some very poor and moderately wealthy nations. The GDP per capita range from 1600 U.S. dollars to 16,000 U.S. dollars. Populations range from less than 50,000 to tens of millions, and population densities from 3 to 630.

The Caribbean boasts of descendants of indigenous peoples, European migrants, Africans, Asians, speaking English, French, Spanish, and Dutch, with several hundred dialects, all working together to build this region called the Caribbean. The diversity that is the Caribbean is often overlooked. At best, the countries are thrown together in popular imagery and generalized as a homogeneous region or, at worst, an appendage to Latin America.

In developing information and communication technologies, ICT's scorecard for the Caribbean, we need to look at the availability of ICT infrastructure. We need to consider accessibility for all citizens to ICT. If he has access, can he afford it? And finally, what is he doing with it?

Is it facilitating his development? Are Caribbean citizens reaping tangible benefits from ICTs?

>>BERNADETTE LEWIS: All right. Having established that the Caribbean is characterized by diversity, you would appreciate the difficulty in formulating a scorecard for ICT development.

Nevertheless, we will begin our assessment by looking at the first dimension on our ICT scorecard, that of policy.

There's universal recognition that information and communication technologies have the potential to spur economic growth and social development. ICT policy must support national development plans, but size and limited resources make Caribbean economies particularly vulnerable. But ICTs present an opportunity to help overcome these challenges.

Collectively, a lot of work has been done in the Caribbean on ICT policy.

At the highest level, the Caribbean community or CARICOM devised an ICT connectivity plan in 2003 which was designed to guide subregional and national policies.

But ground-breaking policy reforms have been initiated in the Caribbean. When, for example, the islands of St. Kitts, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Dominica and Grenada, all members of the organizations of eastern Caribbean states, they collectively developed a policy which led to the liberalization of the telecommunications sector in their respective markets.

Trinidad and Tobago launched a comprehensive ICT policy in 2003 called fast forward which focuses on the establishment of community access centers to bring ICTs to all of its citizens.

It is designed to build ICT skill in the work force, encourage PC ownership, promote e-commerce and provides high-speed connectivity for all schools.

Cuba's policy focuses on social and collective use of ICTs by incorporating them in educative and health care processes.

Guyana's ICT 4D national strategy of April 2006 focuses on capacity building content and applications, infrastructure, and connectivity and I.T. enterprise.

So we are seeing in the Caribbean a growing maturity in the policy development. The evolving policies are adopting more structured and pragmatic approaches to leveraging ICT opportunities.

So how has the region performed in policy development?

We gave it a score of 7.

The next dimension that we are going to look at is that of legislation.

And in many jurisdictions, the telecommunications law dated back to the days of telegraph, but all of the Caribbean countries have now updated their telecommunications and information legislative frameworks to reflect the changing technological landscape.

The Dominican Republic had major reform in 1998 and the Bahamas in 1999, St. Lucia and Jamaica in 2000, Trinidad and Tobago in 2001. St. Kitts and Nevis and the Turks and Caicos island in 2002 and so on.

But as markets and technologies evolve the weaknesses in the legislative infrastructure are being exposed.

Much of the legislative reform was to prepare the market for liberalization, but more work needs to be done to bring the legislation in line with the post liberalized markets and the market dynamics.

So provisions must be made in law for e-commerce, privacy issues, cyber crime, content, and intellectual property protection, digital signatures. And in addition, the legislation must be crafted with the necessary flexibility to withstand the rapid technological advances that we envision.

How did we do in the legislation? We gave it a score of 5.

And we move on to regulation.

The Caribbean legislative reform processes of the 1990s gave birth to a number of semi-autonomous and independent regulators and these were responsible for creating and enabling environment of equity and transparency for all stakeholders, and to seek the interests of the consumer as well as ensuring a smooth transition to liberalized markets.

The Dominican Republic established an independent regulatory authority in (saying name) in 1998. In 2000 in Jamaica, the Office of Utilities regulation was given the responsibility for regulation of the telecommunications sector. While the Fair Trading Commission, the Spectrum Management Authority, And the Broadcasting Commission had responsible -- responsibility for different aspects of the regulatory function not handled by the OUR.

The organization of eastern Caribbean states model, the first of its kind in the world, established a central regulatory agency, the Eastern Caribbean Telecommunications Authority, which is also called ECTEL, in 2002 for five sovereign nations with satellite national regulatory commissions in each of the participating territories.

In Barbados, the Fair Trading Commission and the government of ministry responsible for telecommunications regulate different aspects of the sector.

The Telecommunications Authority of Trinidad and Tobago was established in 2004, and also the Anguilla Public Utilities Commission, both charged with the responsibility for regulating the telecommunications market.

Each of these administrations has independently adopted different approaches, practices, methodologies for regulating the sector. And while some commonalities exist, the development of regulatory policies and functions across the Caribbean reflect the diversities and the different experiences and the circumstances in the nations of the region.

So most countries have some form of regulation. Their regulatory institutions are relatively inexperienced and they are constantly being challenged by technical innovation, dominant operators, and their need to maintain some semblance of independence from the political directorate.

So the score for regulation was 6. And all of these scores are out of 10.

We move on to liberalization, and liberalization of the Caribbean telecommunications marketplace began when the Hispanic countries such as Puerto Rico liberalized in 1986 and they were followed by the Dominican Republic in 1992.

In 1997, most of the English Caribbean countries entered into commitments under the World Trade Organization's agreement and adopted the reference paper guidelines to liberalize their telecommunications markets.

In 2002 Jamaica became the first English-speaking Caribbean country to open their telecommunications market, and this was done in a phased basis which ended in March of 2003.

Organization of eastern Caribbean states followed in 2002, Barbados in 2003, and Trinidad and Tobago in 2005.

So the majority of Caribbean countries have liberalized to some degree.

So the score for liberalization was -- is given a 6.

Competition. With relatively stable governments in the Caribbean and legislative and regulatory frameworks in place, there was a flurry of activity as new service providers began testing the waters and many licenses were granted. But would-be competitors found that in spite of the liberalized environment and the oversight of regulatory institutions, they were severely disadvantaged.

The incumbent operators controlled international connectivity infrastructure, they controlled the local loop and the Internet access, and above -- more than that, they employed delaying tactics to frustrate interconnection and engaged the regulator in much legal wrangling.

So many of the new licensees were not able to commence operations, far less compete under the circumstances. But in spite of this, of these initial challenges, we now have more than gift companies with up to 100 business units operating across 30 countries in the region.

The Hispanic countries and the European overseas depend dense sees seem to have a more pro bus give market than in the English-speaking markets where you find in most cases effectively due op please are existing.

So on the competition front we gave a score of 5.

Infrastructure. The reason is fairly well connected. There are about 30 geo-stationary satellite systems with footprints in the system. We have 20 or so marine fiber systems in operation in the region, and we expect that by next year there will be four or five more marine fiber companies operating in the region.

Locally, the infrastructure exists for voice and broadband services through fixed line and wireless facilities.

The prospect of competition has spurred incumbent operators to enhance their network infrastructure. And network coverage has increased considerably.

Broadband infrastructure is available, but the service uptake is typically commercial.

Mobile telephony devices are almost ubiquitous but this is not the case with computers. And many have embarked to bring I.T. facilities to the citizens in their communities.

So the score for infrastructure is 6.

And I pause at this point to -- the first six dimensions that we have looked at really create an enabling environment and we will continue now with that of affordability, and the question is can Caribbean citizens afford ICTs, information communication technology.

Competition in the Caribbean market has resulted in the prices for voice services coming down by more than 50%.

The cost of a cellular phone is well within the reach of the average citizen.

In Trinidad and Tobago, for example, a cell phone goes for about $10 U.S., so everyone can afford one. But the cost of computers on the other hand is definitely beyond the reach of the average homeowner.

The cost of broadband services, while we have seen some reductions, it is still high compared with the rest of the -- with the United States and even Europe.

And not being able to afford broadband relegates users to frustrating experiences on the Internet and restricts them to very basic services such as surfing and e-mail.

This point of affordability is critical. If ICTs are not available, people are -- are not affordable, people are not going to use it, even they may have physical access to it.

So affordability is one of the most significant barriers to the development of knowledge-based societies in the Caribbean. And I believe we're having problems in this area, so we gave it a score of 4.

Let's look at the access now. And Caribbean governments have committed to universal service principles and have undertaken to provide access to ICT in some form.

Let's look at the access now.

And Caribbean governments have committed to universal service principles and have undertaken to provide access to ICT in some form.

They are providing, for example, Internet ICT services by placing computers in schools, in libraries, and community-based centers.

Operators have also embarked on such programs.

TSTT in Trinidad and Tobago, they have deployed a number of rural telecenters and provided training for attendance.

We have Telesur in Suriname also providing telecenter services.

The numbers of mobile subscribers has seen exponential growth, exceeding and even supplanting fixed line subscribers.

And some of the countries in the region, as you would have seen, have geographical access challenges, such as Guyana and Suriname, with communities several travel days away from population centers, and countries like the Bahamas, with numerous dispersed islands.

So more consideration has to be given to indigenous peoples, the differently abled, visually impaired, physically challenged, the elderly, in our communities, to ensure that they, too, have access to and can use information and communication technologies.

And I don't think enough is being done for these classes of citizens in our regions.

So bearing in mind that the number of people accessing ICT services is also a function of affordability, the issue of access is intimately connected to affordability.

So we've also given a score of 4.

And, finally, the effective use.

What are our citizens doing with ICTs? The development of information-based societies require the incorporation of ICTs in everyday activities -- filing tax returns, paying bills, promoting Caribbean culture -- in every area of human endeavor.

And providing access to ICTs is not sufficient.

It requires a structured approach that encourages citizens to use them.

So governments must show citizens the way by being the first and early adopters of ICTs in their operations, and in delivering services and using ICTs to deliver services to citizens.

The necessary programs must be put in place to ensure citizens have access and can use the online facilities to pay their taxes, for example, obtain birth certificates, or make an appointment to see a doctor at a health facility.

For those Caribbean citizens who have access to ICT devices, are they really deriving tangible benefits from their use?

Are they using them effectively? And effective use isn't chatting on the cell phone for an hour, rehashing what happened at the last soccer game.

It's not about surfing the Internet to see the shenanigans of the Hollywood or Baliwood movie stars.

That's not effective use.

Effective use is reaching the long-stay children in hospitals and teaching them from their hospital beds.

Effective use is about using the phone to find a buyer for your fish while you're still on the boat.

Effective use is about an up-and-coming Calypso or reggae or samba artist, marketing his skills online, buying and selling over the Internet.

It's sending your x-ray pictures to a specialist in Cuba via high-speed connection.

It's about paying your taxes online, or, as is done in India, for accounting firms in the United States, computing tax returns as a business for clients halfway around the world.

What we find in the Caribbean is that citizens are spending more and more disposable income on nonproductive use of ICTs.

And there are some excellent examples in the Caribbean of effective use.

But these are certainly not enough.

So the score for effective use is 3.

And overall, we come up with an average score of 5.

And this is barely a passing grade.

We have created the enabling environment, but quite clearly, we are failing in our ability to leverage ICT opportunities.

So my question is, how do we go about improving this score? And there are things that we can do to ensure that in the next three years, the score is, indeed, improved.

And the first is that we -- we need to plan strategically.

And this requires a departure from partisan politics and a demonstration of political will in the Caribbean.

Every time the government changes, the policy changes, and we start over again.

So we need to be long term and focused across the different governments, whatever they may be, so that we are -- move forward continuously.

And we also must be pragmatic in the development of Caribbean models for ICT development.

We cannot take things that work in Europe or even the United States and think we can just implant it in our situation.

It does not work.

And we have seen this happening on a regular basis.

We also need to build human capacity.

We need to build public awareness of the potential of ICT in socioeconomic development and to educate and train the work force to use and to develop ICT applications.

We need to manage our ICT resources.

And this -- we are promoting cooperation regionally to establish ICT infrastructure and appropriate systems that will enable all of us to benefit.

Cultivation of public-private sector partnerships, that is essential.

And we recognize that the governments cannot do it alone.

And we need to pool and share our experiences.

And then, well, I've mentioned it before, the governments must be first and early adopters of the ICTs and use them to deliver the services to its citizens.

Enterprises must incorporate the technologies in their internal processes.

And we have to develop industry.

It's all well and good to have the tools available.

But there's no industry.

And this needs to be developed.

We need to develop industries.

Nascent enterprises, which can leverage the technologies for competitive advantage.

In closing, I would like to say that the CTU is certainly committed to working with its members and organizations like ICANN and other like-minded regional organizations to improve the score and to ensure that every citizen of the Caribbean is able to reap tangible benefits from the ICT revolution and to contribute to the development of knowledge-based Caribbean societies.

And with that, I end.

Thank you.

[ Applause ]

>>JACOB MALTHOUSE:Thank you, Bernadette.

We're now going to move to a presentation by Nigel Cassimire, and Bevil wooding will follow.

>>NIGEL CASSIMIRE: Thank you very much, Jacob.

And I would like to add my own thanks to the secretary-general's, to ICANN for making this forum possible here for us in Sao Paulo.

Following on from the secretary-general's talk about the ICT scorecard, we in the CTU, the Caribbean Telecommunications Union, are focused on improving the access to the technology in our region and also improving that score about effective use.

So that has resulted in us being here today.

And I'll need to give you a little background on the CTU and what we are doing generally to -- so that you can understand the context in which we are here today and what we are trying to do.

Yes, my name is Nigel Cassimire.

So I'll -- in my talk, I'll be talking about a short background on the CTU, and giving you a short historical, because it's just -- over the last two years, we've been involved in Internet governance activities.

And we'll be talking about plans for the future.

My colleague, Mr. Bevil Wooding, will follow and talk a little bit more about the future plans.

The CTU started as an intergovernment organization of Caribbean governments, actually, Caribbean community governments, which is essentially more the English-speaking territories in the Caribbean, who have that common British colonial history.

It started in 1989 and it was established by a treaty, at least CARICOM was established by the treaty, and so was CTU, in 1989 in the Bahamas.

Its mission was to create an environment and partnership to optimize ICT resources for the benefit of stakeholders.

That 1989 is a key time in that it was right at the beginning of the era of liberalization in the telecommunications industry.

And the governments at the time had the foresight to realize, well, with this new environment coming on board, that we would have to change our whole telecommunications policy environment in the region.

So this CTU was formed with that purpose in mind.

I say it started that way, but, however, as technology has advanced and we've had convergence in terms of telecommunications and computers and convergence, as well even in the regulatory issues.

In 2004, the membership of the CTU or the CTU, I would say, in this ICANN environment embraced the multistakeholder model of policy development.

And the membership of the CTU was expanded to include non-Caribbean -- sorry, non-CARICOM Caribbean states, private sector organizations, civil society organizations as well.

So right now, we -- a quick look at our membership, we have 17 member countries, which are listed on the slide there.

And you will see that they are typically the English-speaking Caribbean countries.

We have now Suriname and Cuba, who have expressed interest in joining.

And they are in the process of joining.

And apart -- non-CARICOM, these are now CARICOM states that are now eligible.

And apart from the country members that are listed, we also have, at present, at least five private sector members or civil society members, one from -- one is a private sector company from the U.S.A. The second one is the regulator in CURACAO.

The third is a private sector operator in Jamaica.

The international amateur radio, that's sector 2 in our region.

And telecommunications authority in Trinidad and Tobago is the regulator in Trinidad and Tobago.

So we are expanding and engaging more fully with all stakeholders.

A short thing on our thrust at present.

We have four key thrusts for the CTU from a strategic point of view.

We want to be the primary facilitator for telecom development in the Caribbean.

That's one of our core business functions.

We want to be (inaudible) of advice for our governments.

We want to be a major contributor to development of ICT, which Ms. Lewis talked about.

And also one of the early aims of the CTU was to represent Caribbean territories who might be somewhat limited in their resources in international fora.

So the core business of the CTU, essentially, are these two areas: Policy formulation, telecommunications or communications policy formulation, because we are getting in a more converged environment now, and capacity-building in the region.

And a quick look at some of the key projects we are looking at in that vein.

One is harmonization of spectrum management -- harmonization of spectrum management in the Caribbean.

And for this, we have support from Canada and the E.U. and the ITU.

That's one of our key projects, because we want to put a common regulatory environment in place throughout the Caribbean.

To encourage invest: Caribbean center of excellence is one of those capacity-building, major capacity-building initiatives.

We also have support for that from CANTO.

That is the regional association of telecommunications operators in the Caribbean.

The CCAA is an NGO, a United States-based NGO which works to improve investment in the Caribbean and also -- the CTU is the coordinator of the ITU's center of excellence node for the Caribbean.

Center of excellence is a training initiative of the ITU.

And thirdly, our third key project is Internet governance in the Caribbean.

And we are focusing on regional policy formulation and harmonization of Internet governance policies in the Caribbean.

A timeline of our involvement.

We -- I think we -- the Caribbean was spurred into action with the World Summit on the Information Society and Working Group on Internet Governance which, in fact, had two Caribbean members one from Barbados, one from Trinidad and Tobago.

So in early 2005, the CARICOM secretariat requested the CTU to address this issue of Internet governance in the Caribbean on their behalf.

And shortly after -- yeah, shortly after the completion of the report of the Working Group on Internet Governance and shortly before the second session of WSIS, we held our first Caribbean Internet governance forum.

That was in Georgetown, Guyana.

The CTU partnered with the CARICOM secretariat to do that.

And out of that, we realized that it would have been in the Caribbean's advantage to create a regional framework for Internet governance, essentially, looking at what are the key priority points with respect to Internet governance that the Caribbean countries should be focusing on.

Because, as was found from that working group, the scope of Internet governance was very wide.

So it was agreed to begin work on formulating a framework which would help us to focus our efforts in the relevant areas.

And this forum began the process of identifying key areas.

And this forum also looked at what were some of the issues on Internet governance that were going before the second session of WSIS.

A report coming out of that, in fact, helped to inform the participation of the CARICOM secretariat in that second round of WSIS in Tunis.

And that took place in 2005.

So our first Internet Governance Forum took place last year in September.

Coming forward to 2006 -- oh, I -- there is one thing I forgot to mention about that first Internet Governance Forum, which was, we had -- that was where we first engaged with ICANN.

And we had the participation as a speaker of ICANN's chief technical officer, Mr. John Crain.

And John -- John fully supported our efforts, in fact, and came back the following year in May, at our world telecommunication day symposium in Jamaica, and he came back with help this time, in the person of a new liaison for the Caribbean, Mr. Jacob Malthouse, who is here with us.

And ICANN again held a workshop on Internet governance and ICANN issues, essentially, at that forum in Jamaica.

In 2006, we went on to create an online Internet Governance Forum for the Caribbean, in which we were attempting to progress discussion and generate consensus on the specific issues related to Internet governance within the Caribbean region.

And just last month, in Grenada, Jacob was again present at this, we held a second Caribbean Internet Governance Forum, this time in terms of consolidating the resources we have in the Caribbean.

We held it jointly with another group, which was dealing with Internet development issues in the Caribbean, a group called the Caribbean Internet forum.

So we had a joint governance and Internet forum in Grenada.

And it coincided with the global Internet Governance Forum in Greece.

And we were successful in establishing our webcast link between our Grenada site and the Athens site.

And we were able to exchange ideas and compare notes on the proceedings of the two fora.

Coming out of that, out of that joint forum, what we succeeded in doing, in fact, was progressing work on this Internet governance framework for the Caribbean.

And we ended with an outline draft of this regional framework.

And we plan to continue work on it online, via the online forum and via further regional meetings.

We were also successful in identifying some priority areas and projects which would take us forward towards developing in this area.

One key project, in fact, was being able or establishing measures for regional development metrics, putting in place a system so that we can collect and monitor these -- the rate of development in all the Caribbean countries.

And also there were certain specific infrastructure development initiatives, physical infrastructure, ideological infrastructure and content, and, in fact, coming out of that, there has been further discussion along the lines of a Caribbean registry, a Caribbean Internet registry.

But we are very -- at very early stages of those discussions, and we'll have to determine what might be the best way to go forward in that respect.

The CTU continues to take a coordinating -- a facilitating, coordinating role in taking these matters forward.

So in the very short term, we are looking at completing a first draft of this regional Internet governance policy framework document, and I have just listed a few of the key areas in that framework, physical infrastructure, logical infrastructure, which would look at essentially the ICANN-related matters, you know, addressing and registry and that sort of thing.

Internet use and misuse, and security.

Dispute resolution mechanisms.

Development and capacity-building.

And liberties and rights.

So that is a kind of scope of what we have decided to put into our framework document.

And we also plan to get more involved with global Internet governance activities, and hence our presence here and participation in ICANN.

So we expect to be a little bit more involved in the future.

And in the course of next year as well, we expect new submarine fiber cables, or new fiber cables, as Ms. Lewis mentioned, to enable to leap forward the service and help to relieve some of the capacity constraints that we currently have, and hopefully, as well, to improve the affordability of access, which would help to increase both the access, accessibility, affordability, and hopefully effective use through our efforts here.

I will stop at this point and invite my colleague, Mr. Bevil Wooding, to continue.

[ Applause ]

>>JACOB MALTHOUSE: Sorry, just before you start, Bevil, it looks like Sharil wants to make a quick point here.

>>SHARIL TARMIZI: Sorry, I just -- I missed the start of the session, I was just wondering whether there's an opportunity to interact after this, because there's something that he presented in his presentation that I'd like some clarification with, if that's okay.

>>JACOB MALTHOUSE: Sharil, that's correct, there will be a question and answer session, one the panel --

>>SHARIL TARMIZI: Something in your slides that I really like very much.

>>JACOB MALTHOUSE: Do you want to make the comment now?

Okay.

>>BEVIL WOODING: Thank you very much.

Good afternoon, all.

I will be presenting the Caribbean ICT roadmap.

And let me just put this section of the presentation into context.

In 2006, as both Nigel and Ms. Lewis mentioned, the CTU embarked on a strategic planning exercise to define a relevant ICT roadmap that would help advance or improve that ICT score.

The purpose of this exercise involved the identification of projects and initiatives that would be in support of the greater adoption or more widespread adoption and use of ICTs throughout the Caribbean region.

This has identified six areas of focus which I will touch on briefly: Capacity-building, governance, education, infrastructure development, policy development and harmonization, and legislative and regulatory frameworks.

In identifying these areas of focus, we were directed by the following guiding principles.

And it's important to list these out, because they really much, to a very large extent, the guiding principles found inside of the ICANN bylaws.

And they include regional engagement, synergistic development, consultation, multistakeholder consultation, accessibility, proactive, self-initiating.

Stakeholder development, self-sustaining.

Action-oriented outcomes, and harmonization.

And you can tell from these guiding principles that the focus really is on defining relevant indigenous solutions that take into account the diversity of the region, but at the same time, seek to find common platforms for development of partnership and regional advance.

Out of these core areas or core focus areas, five pathfinder projects have been identified.

And this presentation goes into some detail about the pathfinder projects, and then puts them in the context of a Caribbean ICT roadmap.

So, quickly, the pathfinder projects are the setting up of a Caribbean domain registry. And this discussion, in fact, has been significantly advanced through some of the interactions here in Sao Paulo.

Setting up an e-learning pilot project with specific emphasis on policy awareness and connecting disconnected communities.

Developing a local content-sharing pilot, starting with government information services being put online.

Fourthly, harmonize Internet governance framework.

And fifthly, disaster preparedness and management, identifying opportunities for ICT to be used to solve some of the region's disaster preparedness and management issues.

I will just identify the key elements inside each one of these pathfinder projects.

For the Caribbean registry -- and these projects, let me say, are still very much in the conceptualization phase.

And what we've been doing over the past several months in terms of going into early 2007 is finalize the scope for these projects.

The key elements for the Caribbean registry would include a shared platform for domain registration services, including local customization, the ability for the various territories in the region to leverage a common platform, but then still tier a bit to meet their own specific needs and positions.

Value-added services, including small business or small community sites that will allow for rapid adoption and takeup of the Internet and for content local development, development of local content.

e-commerce support, and other value-added services.

Other elements include the establishment of regional IXP, data collocation initiatives, disaster preparedness and recovery initiatives, and a common dispute resolution policy for the Caribbean region.

The second project, e-learning pilot, the key elements is focusing on targeting disconnected communities.

And the initial focus would be on identifying opportunities inside of some of the larger territories, Guyana, Belize, Suriname, and coming up with programs that will provide direct, relevant, and tangible benefits inside of these territories.

Establishing community -- computer access facilities and delivering training and development programs through the use of e-learning initiatives.

The third project, local content development.

We have identified the government information service information interchange as a project that will leverage immediately on the available content that is produced out of the government information services divisions or, in some cases, the information ministries in certain jurisdictions.

This project will involve news audio and video programs being brought to a single content repository and then being made available online and on the traditional media.

Again, the idea here is to facilitate greater awareness of local issues across the region.

Even though the region is fairly close, there's still a significant divide in terms of the understanding of what has taken place inside of each of the territories.

This will provide a single point of access and also provide access to a source for government information.

Caribbean Internet governance, key elements here, Nigel has touched on this, finalization of the draft Caribbean IGF, and initiation of the policy harmonization process.

Fifth, project disaster preparedness.

Risk assessment, and then followed by development of an Internet tool kit that will look, for example, at the collocation of Internet services between those territories in the region that don't have the capacity to support or develop their own Internet services infrastructure.

So how does this all fit in and fit together? We have identified this Caribbean ICT roadmap.

And you see that the goal is toward a Caribbean knowledge-based society.

This graphic -- this graphic the five or six steps that we have determined as milestones inside that process.

So from getting started, the first plan of attack -- and that has already begun -- is to formalize partnerships, make increasing -- take increasing steps to become involved and to seek out those who are like-minded and willing.

Get government support to CTU, because its constitution has a unique position in terms of its ability to leverage governments in the region, finalize the project scope for the pathfinder projects and begin the initial project groundwork.

This will then move on to commissioning those pathfinder projects, moving towards ICT-driven innovations, supporting, in particular, and facilitating regional ICT-enabling environments, encouraging private sector, public sector initiatives and partnerships, show-casing ICT innovators and innovations throughout the region.

And this will involve identifying those projects that we feel are and can serve as models for encouraging and incentivizing those who are still considering or wondering how and what can be done in terms of ICT development in the region, gaining momentum, accelerating takeup, and then, finally, moving toward a full-fledged knowledge-based society in the region.

Increase investment, increase government involvement, increase economic opportunity, and a knowledgeable, connected Caribbean.

We feel this is not, by any means, out of our reach.

We feel that as a region, there exists a commitment, there exists a brief this can be done.

So what we need to collectively do is to work together, speak, discover each other's resources and strengths, and really leverage the unique connectivity that exists in a region from a relational standpoint, from a belief and vision and value standpoint, and use that to define a truly relevant indigenous regional advance for ICT going forward.

And with that I invite you all to join us as we head along this pathway to Caribbean knowledge-based society.

Thank you very much.

[ Applause ]

>>JACOB MALTHOUSE: Thank you, Bevil.

I might, -- before we move to the next speaker, ask if Sharil would like to come and make his point so we don't keep him sitting here in case he has other meetings.

Thank you, Sharil.

>>SHARIL TARMIZI: Thank you very much, Jacob, and I apologize for having to do this. I am triple-booked today.

But I would like to share a perspective from the presentation made by Nigel just now and Mr. Wooding, Bevil.

I am actually very happy to see that although it's actually beyond ICANN's scope and mandate, that shows a lot of thoughtfulness that goes into the required building blocks that you must have in order to have the information society and I am very, very encouraged by this because this is actually a very concrete, very well thought out steps towards meeting the Millennium Development Goals under the World Summit on the Information Society. So I just wanted to congratulate that.

Can I get a copy of the presentation? Because I would like to share that with others and say, look, this is how these guys have looked at it. It is very logical. You have taken from the physical layer right up to the applications and the content layer.

So you have obviously thought that process through. Although it's beyond what most of us here in ICANN or in the GAC do. But this is certainly an example I would like to share with others.

I just wanted to make that comment.

Thank you.

>>JACOB MALTHOUSE: Would anyone like to make a response or can we move to the next speaker?Bernadette Lewis.

>>BEVIL WOODING: Well, I say thanks for the comment. We have been trying to be comprehensive in terms of the approach, and hopefully we will be able to generate the support from around the Caribbean that we need to in order to make it a reality.

>>SHARIL TARMIZI: Sorry. We now have to go and do the board thing, so you will have to excuse us.

>>JACOB MALTHOUSE: Thank you very much for making the time to come.

We are now going to move to a presentation on user perspectives in the Caribbean by Carlton Samuels who is the CIO of the university of the West Indies, and we will just get his presentation set up here.

>>CARLTON SAMUELS: Okay. Good afternoon, everyone. I want to bring greetings from the University of the West Indies and to thank ICANN for giving us the opportunity to say a few words on the user perspective from the Caribbean basin.

Just a Few words about the University of the West Indies.

The University of the West Indies is a reasonable university supported by 15 governments in the Caribbean region.

We have three major campuses, one on the island of Barbados, one in Trinidad and Tobago, and the third in Jamaica at Mona.

We have about 40,000 students registered and attending classes in several faculties.

We have faculties of pure and applied sciences, faculty of law, faculty of engineering, faculty of the social sciences, and we have specialized schools in mass communications and several other areas.

The University of the West Indies is perhaps the largest single institutional user of Internet resources in the Caribbean.

In fact, because of geography, the university is probably more dependent on Internet resources and telecommunications resources than most institutions elsewhere.

And now to my prepared slides.

I want to talk about these few issues. I want to make the case that the technical infrastructure impacts user participation in Internet. That we need a robust infrastructure to enable and support administration of resources, including the Internet in our area of operations.

That we need a new and harmonized policy framework to drive both administration and participation.

And we need a sustainable model for capacity building and development in the region.

We are emphatically in agreement with those who have seen before me that the issues of the Caribbean islands are congruent with those of small island developing states, so-called SIDs. And these issues are predicated by geography, and so our perspectives are quite often informed by the geographical consideration of small island states sitting in several million square miles of ocean with small populations with limited resources and small economies.

Culture intersects with respect to language and history.

Bernadette spoke earlier on of the number of language groups that are used in the Caribbean region, and she didn't develop the point too much, but certainly there are lots of variations on these language groups, and they are important constituencies in the Caribbean region that make use of these language groups.

I speak, for example, of Creole languages in Haiti, in Suriname, in Dominica, in St. Lucia, in Jamaica, and so on.

Strategic issues. We, for us and for users, the issue of the creation of an infrastructure that is fit for purpose is a major strategic issue.

Remember, I say that it is the infrastructure that informs participation.

The role of advocacy at all levels in the development of that infrastructure is very critical. And when I say "advocacy at all levels," I am talking about how we speak to governments, how we speak to civil society, how we speak to the corporate entities and the telecommunications providers. All of these issues.

We certainly believe that the Internet space, in particular where the ICANN activities intersect, in terms of registries, it's very important that we support the development of registries. Some are fledgling, some are yet to be born but certainly we believe that registry development will also impact penetration and use of the Internet. And users definitely would benefit from that.

We see a very vital role in advocacy and capacity building from ICANN. And we are happy to say that, so far, the intervention of John Crain in our original IG governance forum in Jamaica and in Guyana and the continued role of Jacob Malthouse in sending the message and helping us to spread the message is very critically important and we certainly would like to see that continued and strengthened and expanded.

Why is it we care about it in well, we talk about user involvement, but we want to let it be understood that the Internet is now a third rail with respect to social and economic development and with respect to dissemination of information by virtue of it being the largest media distribution channel available to us in the regional, where there is information sharing, where there is information gathering, where there is information that is required for social and economic development, and the means by which you can utilize this information to develop economic basis is important for the development of individual users everywhere in the Caribbean.

We also believe, and we are unanimous on this, that the knowledge economy is the last best opportunity for the Caribbean countries.

We are small island developing states with limited economic potential from manufacturing our basic economies that are agriculturally based are threatened, and so we believe that transformation to another economy is going to be beneficial for all of our citizens.

In building the infrastructure the resilience and survivability of that infrastructure is important. Those of you who know the Caribbean will know that we are threatened every year by storms, hurricanes. And we also have some active earthquake faults in the region. So our ability to continue to survive and to prosper with connectivity to the Internet is important to us. That is why resilience and survivability in the infrastructure is important.

Some of the things that are important to us as they intersect with ICANN activities is the hardening of our DNS server architectures so that we can survive and the world can find us when there is a natural disaster. And I have included some of the things there that would be good outcomes from hardening of our DNS server infrastructure.

We also support the implementation of the technical standards for IP version 6 and other standards. Those are important to our forward positioning and well-being.

The fact is that we want all our citizens to be connected. The fact is that we want our citizens to be connected and then to use the resources effectively for their own social and economic well-being.

Policy very many framework. We believe ICANN can help in this regard by helping us to import best practices that are known elsewhere and proved elsewhere to our own efforts. That is critically important.

One example of this is branding and marketing. One of the most important outcomes and I say most beneficial outcomes from these meetings is the opportunity to network with like-minded individuals and organizations that are here at this meeting.

We want to -- while we applaud and we encourage and we are encouraged by our participation and our invitation to participate by ICANN in these meetings, we are concerned that the regional divisions that ICANN now follows might be amicable to long-term Caribbean interest if we are, as Caribbean people, not embraced through partners. You see, we are part of a Latin American-Caribbean region and sometimes in these meetings, not just ICANN but just about every regional and multilateral organization we are so grouped. The Caribbean sometimes ends up being an afterthought. So in this case we are very pleased that ICANN saw it fit to invite us, and not just to invite us but to enable us to be here.

Capacity building.

Just about every speaker before me has noted that education and training is a major area of need. We certainly believe that this is one area that ICANN can and is helping us. And we expect this to be deepened and to continue.

We are talking about engagement at every level, vertical and horizontal. Because any engagement at every level inures to the benefit of individual users. It includes helping governments to frame policy, helping civil society to be knowledgeable about the issues pertaining to Internet use and so on, helping Internet users to understand what the possibilities are for connectivity, and the utilization and so on.

The point we're making here is that education and training is critical to the evolution of not just regional administrative capacities and capabilities but also to the enabling of our citizens to participate in the Internet revolution.

I said before that the regional participation in ICANN activities is critical to improvement in the Caribbean's situation. And one of the barriers to participation of course is the cost for participating.

And so we always are hopeful that when these things are considered in ICANN that the participation -- not just the ability to participate but the real measures to help us to participate -- are seriously taken into consideration.

We are making a special appeal to ICANN to understand how their participation in supporting the broad education initiatives now going on in the region might inure to the benefit of individual users.

Everywhere in the region, education reform is being undertaken by the governments of the region.

These reforms are predicated on pervasive integration of ICTs in the education process, from teaching and learning to administration.

The role of the Internet is variously described as strategic by every single spokesperson, stakeholder, in these initiatives.

Technology training is a major part of these initiatives.

We have to teach stakeholders, users how to use technologies in order to advance their real interests, be it educational or economic.

>>JACOB MALTHOUSE: Carlton, just about out of time.

>>CARLTON SAMUELS: We believe the CCT registries could become a focal point for monitoring and benchmarking ICT developments, and we certainly support the multistakeholder collaboration which would be required in this case.

And we need new business models to exploit Internet resources at all levels.

We believe that our multistakeholder participation will enable us to develop new business models to help us in this regard.

Affordability has been spoken about before. And effective use has also been spoken about before.

I want to end by telling you that we need more evangelists. And wherever we can find them, from whatever organization, those will be heartily welcomed in the region.

Thank you very much.

[ Applause ]

>>JACOB MALTHOUSE: Thanks very much for that presentation, Carlton.

I'd now like to turn to Dr. Oscar Moreno from NIC PR, to provide an introduction to NIC PR and a little bit of an overview for the ICANN meeting that will be coming up next June in San Juan.

>>OSCAR MORENO: Well, thank you very much for inviting me to ICANN; to Jacob, to my brothers and sisters from the Caribbean, for sharing all of these few days, the problems of the region and trying to find solutions to address them.

And also, all the brothers and sisters also who are present that are also from the Caribbean or other parts of the world that are helping us, too.

So my presentation will be on the dot PR. I'm sorry, I have to -- I cannot look back.

It's....

So in 1986, we established the Gauss research laboratory which is the parent organization of the dot PR. And we are grounded on the research organization which is Gauss lab.

So the mother of the dot PR is a research organization. So our point of view is based upon research and development. So I want to point out that in '86, that was done.

And then in '89, we wrote a proposal to NSF to connect Puerto Rico to the Internet. And as a consequence of that, we obtained -- I requested dot PR and we have managed it ever since.

I want to point out that in the '99 or so, when looking at the problems that we had on people telephoning and making comments or complaints, I decided that we have to fully automate the registry, and we started. And in 2000, we had the first version of this automatic interface, or API, for the registry. And then in 2003, e-commerce was established on the side, so we implemented e-commerce.

So this idea of e-commerce is very important. For example, we, in 2004, established a portal for the University of Puerto Rico for the chancellor to be able to receive donations. And that was an important initiative of that.

And then also in 2005, an important technological advance is that we put into the servers, secondary servers in Germany, and another one that has the anycast technology.

So we decided that this was very important to develop the technology to be very sturdy.

Then finally, we started to realize that we needed to make more money, so we opened the root to registration at the price that will be -- help us obtain money to develop the kind of projects that we felt were necessary.

And also, in 2006, the IPv6 was put into the servers.

And then another important point, we realized that we needed to help Puerto Rico and the Caribbean get into touch with organizations, international organizations and so we started -- with ARIN, we started to talk to them about having a conference in San Juan. And this conference was geared not only to Puerto Rico but actually really to the region.

So they coincide that some of the organizations in the U.S. are interested. And I shouldn't say in the U.S. I guess ARIN is really North America. But also ICANN is a completely world organization. So both ARIN and ICANN were very interested in developing the Caribbean, so we decided that it was important to share. So Jacob asked me to talk about the plans for San Juan ICANN.

And one of our plans is to have it emphasize the real aspects of the -- to develop the region. In a sense, this forum here is a show of the seriousness that ICANN takes upon this matter of developing the Caribbean.

So also, I want to point out in this slide how another important point that we have done is that on the technical side, we developed DNSsec for our servers, and the DNSsec makes the DNS secure. And we decided to go into DNS servers because we had an attack in about 2000 for the government where the government side was redirected to a pornographic site. So that was a pretty humiliating experience. As a consequence, we decided we needed to change that.

So we are one of the first sites in the world that have implemented that, and that comes partly from our interest on the area cryptography since that's one of the areas where the lab does research. And also the fact that we had an experience in this important area.

Furthermore, another point I want to make, which is -- in there is our interest in helping the Puerto Rico develop and use more the Internet, and in particular, use more the dot PR domain. And in order to do that, we developed an alliance with the local version of the Department of commerce in Puerto Rico, which is Compania de Comercio y Exportacion, and there what we are doing is we are developing a site that will put e-commerce for the small and medium businesses in Puerto Rico.

So this is really some important project that we have that we are very happy with the way it is going.

And furthermore, we also have done -- have an alliance with the Chamber of Commerce of Puerto Rico where we go further and we are actually putting some of our research into doing watermarking in order to provide security to the digital certificates.

And this is also an important element that we are doing in Puerto Rico, which we are also very proud.

Finally, but not -- last, but not least, we obtained the ICANN meeting for June.

And this is something that we are looking forward, very strongly we are working to make it into a very successful meeting.

And I must say that there are many people here who are helping with that.

And so thank you to everybody who is helping us in that.

So what are the lessons that we can draw upon in the Puerto Rico case? We have two points we want to make.

First is collaboration, collaboration, collaboration.

It's essentially to collaborate.

And so we have collaborated with international organization, ICANN, ARIN.

I must point ought that DENIC, the German registry, which has been very helpful throughout the year, LAC TLD, our lab, the government.

And also, the idea that drawing upon research and development was an important lesson, too.

So we decided in 1999 that it was very important for us to develop our on expertise.

And by doing that, we have been able to use that in order for Puerto Rico to develop further.

We have bought things from outside that will not be able to do these, develop, which is actually cheap for our own people.

So our Web application is very good, this API that we have developed.

And it has the capacities where actually the users can change their DNAs.

I mean, the user itself really manages all the domains they have into a very intuitive and very nice way.

So our philosophy is simple.

It's really at the moment, we have become just very recently a not-for-profit organization.

But we were before managed just in that way, and the fiscal agent is the University of Puerto Rico.

But the lab is the one who manages the domain.

And our philosophy is simple.

When we have money, then we reinvest back into the development of Puerto Rico in all kind of ways.

We have some projects, some of which I already mentioned.

We have a partnership with the University of Puerto Rico where we developed this site for the chancellor, which he received donations.

The partnership I already mentioned with the company of commerce and exports of Puerto Rico.

The newspaper, El Nuevo Dia, with the government.

And then we have the Internet exchange, which I will mention a little bit.

And then as before, the meetings with ARIN and ICANN.

And I want to go further, of course, into the dates of the meeting.

One is April, and the other one is June.

So please, all of you are invited to come to that meeting.

And in order to develop these meetings so that the region will really profit, this is really essential, we have engaged ICANN and ARIN into workshops.

And then we're going to have two workshops.

In February, we are going to have a workshop in the Virgin Islands for all the participants of the region in order -- and this is by invitation only, but everybody from the region, please, that is interested in coming to that -- and I hope all of you are interested -- then we can get a great place, I like to invite you to this workshop in the Virgin Islands.

And then another workshop we are having that we are talking to Jacob about doing this workshop later in February, and this will go about these plans to do a registry for the whole Caribbean.

And that is a very important project, too, a very important workshop.

So this I mentioned already, this alliance with the company of -- and this is the page that we are developing.

And you can see it has the capacity to receive -- different ways where you can actually have e-Commerce.

And so it's a very nice page.

>>JACOB MALTHOUSE: Dr. Moreno, five minutes.

>>OSCAR MORENO: So we have many countries that buy our domains.

And the bigger pie region is really the companies that have a strong presence in Puerto Rico.

The yellow one are American companies that don't necessarily have such a presence.

And all the others are countries from all over the world.

And the idea, I present these that we are hoping to get a similar presence for this registry we are planning for the Caribbean.

So the exchange is a very important project.

And the idea of the exchange is that -- and Mehmet here was one of the important -- he's now with ICANN, but he was with us before.

And he's -- he was a very important person for the development of this idea.

The idea is, if you are going to -- if you have two ISPs -- and typically, those ISPs are not connected, and you have people connected to the ISPs, and they are actually sending a lot of data -- that data goes all over the world and comes back and is very wasteful.

It's very wasteful in two manners.

It's bad citizenship because not necessary data.

But also, you are wasting your own bandwidth.

And so the idea of IX is -- therefore, is to provide local traffic to keep it local.

And this is very good, because you save bandwidth.

But further, you develop the businesses in the place, because by -- for example, Citibank in Puerto Rico is -- has the page in the U.S. But the instant you have an IX, then that will be -- the clients will tell you, but why -- the other bank, Bank De Popular that has the local page is faster.

So then they will be forced to do a page in Puerto Rico and that will provide more business in Puerto Rico.

Thank you very much.

[ Applause ]

>>JACOB MALTHOUSE: Dr. MORENO, thank you very much for that presentation.

I'd now like to turn over to ARIN to give some of their perspectives on the dialogue.

>>RAY PLZAK: Good afternoon.

My name is Ray Plzak.

I am the president and CEO of the American Registry for Internet Numbers, ARIN.

I want to thank you for inviting me to be here this afternoon.

I'm going to share with you some perspectives.

Some of this is going to be part of an educational exchange that's going on this afternoon.

And so there will be a little technical fluff in here.

I'm not attempting to make anyone a network engineer.

Talk a little bit about the RIRs, where they came from, and then spend more time talking about ARIN and its processes and servers.

So very quickly about I.P. addresses, it's a number.

That's all it is.

And there's two versions of it, IPv4, IPv6.

And the primary difference is that there are a lot more of IPv6 than there are of IPv4.

But more importantly, I.P. addresses identify Internet path points, a source, and an intermediate point in a destination.

And the things that it doesn't do are also important.

I.P. addresses don't identify the location, the geographic location of these path points.

They don't tell you who has it.

They don't tell you who gave it to them. And they don't tell you why they got it.

They are numbers.

So who provides these? ICANN, through the IANA function, provides I.P. addresses to the Regional Internet Registries, who in turn either provide them directly to consumers, or provide them through a national Internet registry, a local Internet registry or an ISP, who in turn can provide them to consumers or who in turn can provide them to additional service providers.

And some important things are is that they're provided on a nonpermanent basis in accordance with policy.

And RFC 2008 defines the loan concept in that I.P. addresses are not property.

I.P. addresses are not the same as domain names.

They are identifiers.

Domain names are labels.

I.P. addresses locate points on the Internet.

A domain name maps a name to a unique I.P. address.

An I.P. address is computer friendly.

A domain name is people friendly.

An I.P. address is used to move information.

A domain name is used to store information.

An I.P. address is not property.

And in several cases and instances, domain names can be considered to be intellectual property.

So a quick look at the RIRs.

The history of the RIRs, their source goes all the way back to the early 1980s, to the first policy, which was that if you wanted an I.P. address, just see Jon, of course, referring to Jon Postel.

Through the '80s and into the early '90s, the U.S. government, through contracts, operated the Internet registry.

Then, beginning in the early 1990s, the U.S. government got out of the Internet registry business, and beginning in 1992, you see the formation of the first Regional Internet Registry, the RIPE NCC.

And culminating in 2005 with the fifth Internet registry, AfriNIC.

ARIN was formed in 1997.

And it was at that point that all U.S. government contracting of the Internet registry ceased from ARIN.

LACNIC emerged.

And from ARIN, RIPE NCC, and APNIC, AfriNIC emerged.

So today, this is the service regions of the RIRs.

There are five of us.

And we have collaboratively formed an organization called the Number Resource Organization.

And it does the functions that are shown on the screen here.

So, about ARIN.

First of all, you see here a map of the ARIN region.

And it consists of Canada, the United States, which everyone immediately associates with ARIN, and several islands in the Caribbean and the north Atlantic.

And by "several islands," I mean there are quite a few islands in the Caribbean that are in the ARIN region.

The CTU, that list of countries that was shown earlier, 15 of those 17 countries are in the ARIN region.

The ARIN region covers a large amount of the geographical area of the Caribbean, and also included is the islands north of the Caribbean, the Bahamas, Bermuda, so forth.

So what does ARIN do? Our mission statement says that we apply the principles of stewardship, and that as a nonprofit corporation, we allocate Internet protocol resources; we develop consensus-based policies; and we facilitate the advancement of the Internet through information and educational outreach.

Carlton, we are glad to be an evangelist.

So just give us the platform.

We will be there.

We are a not-for-profit.

We charge fees for services, not number resources.

Three types of categories of services: Registry services, organization services, and policy development process services.

We are 100% community funded, no funds are received from any government.

Only those people that use our services pay for our -- our operations.

We are a membership organization.

We're open.

We're broad-based.

We have members of the private sector, the public sector, and civil society in the ARIN organization.

We are community-regulated.

We have community-developed policies.

We have member-elected boards of trustees, a member-elected advisory council, and awesome of our processes are open and transparent.

How does ARIN provide I.P. addresses? This chart shows how it happens.

But, essentially, a person has to decide that they want one.

They then examine the existing policies and determine whether or not they meet the criteria.

If they don't, they go to a service provider.

However, if they do, or feel they do, they can apply for the -- for the I.P. address.

And there's a criteria, of course, as defined by the community through the policy development process.

The application is then made to ARIN.

And after some administrative processing, which involves ARIN accrediting the organization to make sure that the person that's trying to obtain the resource is who they say they are, the resource is -- is allocated.

So a little bit about the policy development process.

The I.P. address management requires good stewardship.

It requires judicious management.

Because we want to ensure fair distribution.

We want to meet the technical requirements of the -- of the technology, and we want to enable the administration.

To ensure fair distribution, we have to conserve this resource.

It is a finite common resource.

We want to prevent capricious consumption.

And we have to take into consideration network top apologies.

We have to have criteria that is clear, complete, concise, simple, and obtainable.

Technical requirements require from the standpoint of the routing table, aggregation, and, most importantly, the I.P. addresses have to be viewed as unique.

Two people, two points on the Internet cannot have the same I.P. address.

And lastly, the policies must enable administration.

They have to be neutral, impartial, and consistently applied.

And all policies are developed along these principles.

So very quickly, the policy development process is open, no accreditation's required to participate.

It's inclusive.

It's accessible.

It's transparent.

Everything is documented, published and accessible.

That includes the policy development process itself, includes the policies and the procedures used to implement those policies.

And it's developed bottom-up.

The community, and only the community, proposes, discusses, and approves policy.

It's a five-cycle process.

A need is determined.

It's discussed in both mail lists and in meetings.

A consensus is determined, whether or not the community wants it.

It is then implemented.

And then, like anything, it has to be evaluated in terms of does it do what we intended it to do.

And then also as technology or circumstances change that require it to be -- to be modified, in which case we now develop a new need.

Real quickly looking at how the ARIN Internet policy evaluation process works, a -- we have an established timeline where the need is identified.

There's a requirement as far as when it can be submitted.

There's -- the ARIN advisory council evaluates it.

And the policy is posted formally.

It's discussed in any meetings.

It's already been discussed in mail lists.

The evaluation of the consensus is done by the advisory council.

A last call is issued, giving everyone one more chance to comment on this policy.

It then has another review to determine if consensus is still there.

And then the ARIN board of trustees ratifies the proposal.

Now, I use the term "ratify" here, because the ARIN board of trustees does not make policy.

What it does do, it ratifies that the process was followed.

The documented process is there are certain steps -- and I've just showed you some of them -- that have to be followed.

Also, from a responsible perspective, it has to determine whether or not the policy could cause harm in terms of litigation, and so there's a legal perspective looked at as well.

So the ARIN general counsel is brought in to assess that.

And also, there's a fiduciary requirement, you don't want to implement a policy that requires ARIN to increase its staff by 20 people or cost $1 million to implement.

So lastly, the staff is then given the policy to execute.

And if you notice, throughout this entire policy process, this is the first time I've mentioned the ARIN staff.

The ARIN staff does not become involved in making policy.

We only facilitate it by providing mail servers and operating the meeting.

And lastly, the community and staff evaluate it, and, if necessary, it goes back through the cycle again.

If -- and you should participate in the ARIN public-policy mailing list -- and this is the forum that anyone can very easily participate in merely by subscribing.

You can raise issues; you can discuss issues.

And all policy proposals, by the way, are introduced on the public policy mailing list and are discussed there.

And the discussion that occurs there is very closely looked at, because this is where most of the consensus is determined from.

The URL here shows how you can subscribe.

ARIN's services are in three areas: Registration, organization, and policy development.

And I will go through them.

From the registration services perspective, we coordinate and management of Internet number resources.

Things that we do in that regard are BOGON testing, in other words when we receive an allocation from the IANA, so people can adjust their routing filters so things will work.

We are also working on a certification service which will allow a more close identification of a particular number address to an organization.

And registration services also includes the transfer of resources between organizations.

Registration services also produces the information that shows up in the WHOIS.

So there is record maintenance done here.

And also, we operate another registry, another version of WHOIS, called the Internet routing registry.

And this is used by network operators to build their routing tables.

And lastly, the records from registration services are also used to populate the reverse DNS zones.

Organization services include our biannual public policy and members meetings.

And also the annual elections for the board of trustees, the advisory council, and also for the Number Resource Organization numbers council, in the ICANN framework, that's known as the Address Supporting Organization's address council.

Organizational services also include the information publication and dissemination.

And so we produce a large amount of material.

We are glad to produce any more material that would be necessarily want to be used by people in their educational efforts.

We freely travel to any location to participate in any education activity.

We have in the past provided some curriculum support for several organizations.

So the only thing that stops us from doing it is by not being asked.

If you don't ask us, we can't come and help.

So, please, take advantage of us.

And so we will do everything we can to help in the capacity building in terms of education and training.

Policy development services include the management of it, and also -- of the process, and also maintaining e-mail discussion lists and publishing policy documents.

How do you get ahold of us? You can call us on the phone.

You can send us e-mail.

We operate two telephonic help desks.

We are the only registry to do so.

One is for registration services and the other one is for billing assistance.

And with that, I say thank you very much.

[ Applause ]

>>JACOB MALTHOUSE: Thank you very much, Ray.

I'm going to turn over now to LACNIC, Sebastian Bellagamba, who is an excellent football player.

And now we'll see how he is at presenting.

>>SEBASTIAN BELLAGAMBA: Yes.

I find out that I used to be younger, yeah.

Good afternoon, everyone.

My name is Sebastian Bellagamba.

I'm representing here LACNIC.

Sorry.

Move to the beginning.

There it is.

LACNIC is the Internet address registry for Latin America and the Caribbean and is the organization responsible for allocating and administrating I.P. addresses and other related resources as Autonomous System Numbers and reverse resolution, in the region of Latin America and the Caribbean.

LACNIC operates on the basis of self-regulation model, according to which the policies for Internet resource administration are developed open and transparently.

LACNIC is an international organization and is established since 2002 in the city of Montevideo in Uruguay.

What are LACNIC's objectives?

I am trying to do quickly because I know we have some time constraints.

In -- objective for LACNIC is to administrate the I.P. resources with responsibility, as well, to guarantee equal-opportunity access to these resources for all of the Internet operators within the region.

I'm sorry.

And to contribute to the development of the Internet within the region and to contribute to generate conditions for the Internet to become an effective instrument of social inclusion and economic development.

Sorry, but my voice is going out.

What LACNIC is not.

We do not work with domain names.

Is not involved in Web page content.

Does not filter traffic.

Does not police the Internet.

We do not stop spam, punish hackers, et cetera.

We do not regulate or govern the Internet in the Latin American and Caribbean region.

RIRs just keep it simple.

We regulate specific resources according to the policies specified by the Internet community in our region.

As Ray already said, ICANN [sic] became the fourth RIR in the RIR system in October 31st, 2002 through an ICANN board resolution in the meeting in Shanghai, China.

And was confirmed through the IANA report in November 7th, the same year.

Here is the list of the territories that LACNIC serves in the region.

There is 29 territories, as I said.

You have to find out that two important things about this slide.

One is, it's not -- the RIR regions are not the same as ICANN regions.

So maybe some countries that are in the LACNIC region are considered some other region in the ICANN system.

And the second important thing I would like to point out about this slide is that LACNIC is completely trilingual.

We -- all the information, all the e-mails list, everything that LACNIC sends and the Web site and all the forms are in Spanish, English, and Portuguese.

What we do for the promotion of the Internet, the information society in the region, we are promoting IPv6.

Last year, there were an IPv6 tour. We had almost 2,500 participants in ten different countries.

LACNIC is supporting the Forum Latino Americano de IPv6, FLIP-6, the Latin American Forum for IPv6, and several workshops, the IPv6 Task Force in Latin America and several countries, and some research projects.

We are going to see it in the next slides.

The Mas Raices Project, which means "more roots," is a project with the Internet System Consortium for installation of Anycast root service in the region.

There has been already three of those -- three copies of the F root server already installed in the region, one in Chile, one in Argentina, and one in Venezuela.

And there are two more MOUs signed for being developed during 2007, one in Ecuador and one in Panama.

LACNIC also sponsors the FRIDA program, which is a joint venture between LACNIC, IDRC, ICA, ISOC, and GKP.

We are going to see something else later on.

But 26 projects, research projects, has been funded so far.

And in the last LACNIC meeting, two new communities have been incorporated for this support.

At the IXPs or maps, Internet exchange points in the region, and network security.

About the FRIDA program, joint initiative of LACNIC, ICA, IDRC, and ISOC and GKP, grants a small amount of money for research projects in ICTs throughout Latin American and the Caribbean.

In 2004, there were 122 proposals from 19 different countries.

And 12 projects were selected, for a total amount of money of almost $200,000.

In 2005, there were 357 proposals from 21 different countries.

14 projects were selected.

Almost $173,000 were granted.

The version for 2007 of the FRIDA program is being developed already.

In mas Raices, mas roots, the main objective of this program is to install copies of the F root server, anycast copies, and there is the availability for seven copies in the region. We already, as I said, have three installed and two in the process of being installed in Panama, Ecuador.

LACNIC and the eLAC process. eLAC 2007 is a set of measurable objectives related to the development of the information society in the Latin American-Caribbean region.

It was the result of the regional conference of government in 2005 in Rio de Janeiro.

eLAC 2007 include 70 different goals. LACNIC is actively working on 25 and made some achievements on 25 of those 70 goals.

We had a meeting, the last meeting we had was in Guatemala City last May, the last week of the past May. Here you will find some activities we had in that meeting.

I would like to point out that the first security forum was held in Guatemala, a very collaborative initiative in order to get together all the network administrators and set up some collaborative work throughout the region. We had the LAC -- I mean, LACNIC is sponsoring some other organizations' meetings. So in the same week as the LACNIC meeting was held and supported by LACNIC, there was the LACTLD meeting, the e COMLAC meeting, which is an ISP association, a regional one, there was the fourth meeting of the Latin American IPv6 task force, and the fifth meeting of the Internet exchange points in LAC region.

And for having a few numbers, 180 attendees. 69 were already LACNIC members and 111 were new members, new -- first-timers. 20 countries were represented by those members, those people present there.

And you may find all the archives for the meetings at the URL which is in the slide right now.

Clerical announcement. LACNIC is building up new facilities. We are going to have a new house from next Monday on, so you are all invited to visit us. It's going to be a great opening ceremony next Monday in Montevideo.

If you happen to go, you will see something like that. I think the more like. We are just finishing the restoration work.

Another clerical announcement is the next LACNIC meeting is going to be held in the Caribbean. It's going to be in the -- held in Isla Margarita in Venezuela. The correct dates are 21st to 25th of May 2007. So you are all invited to attend that meeting.

Thank you, and that will be it.

[ Applause ]

>>JACOB MALTHOUSE: Well, Sebastian, I think we can confirm that while LACNIC might be trilingual, you are absolutely bilingual and that your presentation skills are at least as good as your skills at football.

So now I would like to open up for a little question & answer and see if there are any questions from the audience. And I'll turn over to Carlton Samuels, just to facilitate that if there are any questions.

>>CARLTON SAMUELS: Thank you, Jacob.

Questions from the audience.

Questions online?

>>JACOB MALTHOUSE: It looks like we had a very informative session.

>>CARLTON SAMUELS: Well, I am very happy to see that. Thank you so much.

>>JACOB MALTHOUSE: Just before we close this session, I wanted to make a point, and it's a point of which I am very proud as an ICANN staff member, because I think it demonstrates that this is a listening organization. The latest strategic plan contains a point on page 9 under the third strategic objective which reflects comments which were made by the Caribbean in the strategic planning session in this meeting.

The point says, "ICANN needs to continue to work with other organizations to build capacity in developing countries."

And I think that's really an important contribution from the Caribbean, and also from many other regions in the world who have voiced the importance of this as a priority.

Also on the last page, page 18, there's a reference to taking account of the aspirations of the developing world, which I think is also important.

So I look forward to continuing this dialogue with the Caribbean and continuing to help facilitate and enable it, and I just wanted to ask if there were any closing comments from our panelists just before we end this session.

>>BERNADETTE LEWIS: I would just like to take the opportunity to emphasize once again the commitment of the Caribbean Telecommunications Union to working with its Caribbean colleagues in ensuring that the systems, the infrastructure is put in place, the educative processes, public awareness programs are there to ensure that Caribbean citizens benefit from access to and are able to use the Internet effectively. And with that, I close.

Thank you.

>>JACOB MALTHOUSE: Thank you very much, Bernadette. And with that we will close this session and look forward to a continuing dialogue with the Caribbean in the future.

[ Applause ]