The call for universal broadband

I found the ITU’s recent broadband report surprising pragmatic in many respects, despite a press release that needlessly distracts with hyperbole.

The report, A 2010 Leadership Imperative: Towards a Future Built on Broadband, does not call for broadband to be considered a basic civil right – that was a press release addition from the ITU’s Secretary General.

ITU Secretary-General Dr Hamadoun Touré today challenged global leaders to ensure that more than half of all the world’s people have access to broadband networks by 2015, and make access to high-speed networks a basic civil right.

Why did the ITU chief issue such a strong statement that has been erroneously attributed by some to the work of the Commission?

Considering the poor civil rights records of so many members of the UN, the mind wanders trying to sort whether his statement was driven by noble leadership, naivete or arrogance. In the lofty language of international diplomacy, a call for a new basic civil right has specific meaning. My jaded cynicism doubts that broadband ranks with other basic civil rights that are unenforced in so many UN member states. 

The closest that the Broadband Commission came was an action item that said:

The United Nations General Assembly is asked to note the recommendations of the Broadband Commission for Digital Development and in particular the concept of ‘Broadband Inclusion for All’ and its mapping to achieving the MDGs in relation to the relevant resolutions of its Second Committee and to acknowledge the work of the Commission in support of Article 19 of the Declaration of Human Rights. [link added]

Is that a clear call for broadband to be declared a basic civil right?

However, the report itself makes for interesting reading. In particular, there is support for the emergence of mobile broadband as a viable access alternative in the section entitled “Technology: Futureproofing Technology.”

In planning the roll-out and deployment of broadband networks, it is unlikely that any single technology will be able to provide all the answers. Optical fibre is desirable at the core of the Internet, and for the majority of backhaul traffic, to achieve a high-capacity backbone, but at the edges of the network, and in particular in the hands of end-users, it is most likely that mobile devices will deliver many broadband applications and services.

As I wrote yesterday and last Friday, we need to be far more flexible in our vision for connectivity solutions. Getting the best fitting broadband solution to all Canadians means having more than one kind of solution available. The ITU’s report is crystal clear on this point.

Depending on local conditions such as geographic location, economic prosperity, rural or urban environments and local terrain, there is a role for a host of different technological solutions in providing broadband access – from cable to fixed wireless; from satellite to microwave; from xDSL to mobile technologies; and many more. Policy-makers should seek to adopt a technology-neutral approach as regulation needs to accommodate new upgrades of current technologies, as well as future technologies which do not yet exist.

There is a strong endorsement of satellite technologies for broadband:

Satellites also provide invaluable solutions, particularly for providing capacity in hard-to-reach rural areas and for providing the essential backhaul capacity needed by other operators to reach their customers. Recent catastrophic events have also highlighted to governments the important role played by satellites for achieving emergency preparedness and responding to events (such as the earthquakes in Chile and Haiti and the floods in Pakistan).

Through technology agnostic lenses, we can see that market forces, prodded by policy leadership, have succeeded in ensuring all Canadians already have access to a broadband internet service. No one participating in the CRTC’s upcoming ‘Obligation to Serve‘ proceeding should find inspiration for a new universal broadband service obligation by misinterpreting the ITU secretary general’s call for broadband as a basic civil right.

As Wire Report wrote earlier in the month [pay wall], there was no Canadian representation on the ITU’s Broadband Commission. It will take some further analysis to see whether our industry and consumers interests coincided with recommendations that emerged out of a Commission that had strong representation from our major trading partners.

A couple weeks ago, SaveOurNet.ca asked, “Where does Canada stand if internet access is declared a right.” All Canadians have access to broadband under the ITU’s definition. Indeed, all Canadians have access to at least one broadband service operating at more than an order of magnitude beyond what is called for.

I think there has been enough attention on the plumbing. We need to focus on getting more Canadians to drink from the taps.