Those who are outside you please Get in so that we can
start. There are participants online. Woke up early
to participate to this meeting. So we appreciate if you, If you can start. You
Good afternoon. I hope that you enjoyed your
lunch and you are ready for the afternoon session. So the afternoon session will be focusing on regulation for connecting. They are connected in the IGAD region, as we have discussed this morning, as we celebrate that now, 40% of Africans, 20% of Ethiopians and 40% of Kenyans are connected. There are, unfortunately, the majority of Africans that are still not connected, and we need to see how we can connect them, because we don't want them to lose the opportunities that all of us in this room have. So one way of connecting the unconnected is by putting in place the regulation that will connect them as quickly as possible.
Therefore, we are going to discuss
various strategies, various experiences in the region, and see how we can learn from each other. To moderate
this session, we have invited
someone who has been helping us for a long time, he was very supportive, especially in the first internet development conference. That's Robert. He's a network engineer, tech lead from meta initially, and Robert brings over 17 years of experience in telecom and global internet infrastructure, specializing in the design, deployment and operation of some of the largest networks in the world. He has served as a network engineer Tech Lead at meta and Amazon AWS global networking team. Previously, he worked as a design and support network engineer for the in Ethiopia during the implementation of the telecoms Engine infrastructure in the 2007 and 2008 Robel is a passionate, is passionate about advancing Africa internet infrastructure technology, particularly in East Africa, and actively collaborates with various stakeholders in the region, including Internet Society. Thank you.
Hello everyone. Thank you David for the production. Right? So in today's session, as Dr David mentioned, we will delve into
the critical role of the internet regulation in achieving affordable and widespread internet access across the IGAD region. We will also explore examples and experiences from Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda and also from Brazil. Additionally, we will also highlight recommended regulatory frameworks and policies to further expand equitable internet connectivity in these countries. So this session will be divided into two parts. The first part will be into a presentation which will go around 75% 75 minutes. Let's see how that will fare, because we started in a delay time. And then the second part is a Q and A panel, which would actually take questions from you, as well as from pre determined some warm up questions. There will be breaks, especially a 10 minute break after between these two parts. So please stay tuned. So without further ado, let's move to the first presentation by Miss Mavis Mongan. It apologize for ruining your last name who is a program officer in ITU regional office. Miss Mavis, an ICT professional with 20 years of experience in policy, regulation and digital transformation, is a program officer at itu Africa, supporting regional ICT initiatives. She previously led universal access projects at otras, enhancing services in underserved areas. An active member of ISOC Zimbabwe, IEEE and the Zimbabwe Institute of engineers. Mavis holds degrees in electronic engineering, renewable energy and it low. She advocates for ICT as a tool for community empowerment and Gender Equality. Please welcome Ms Mavis to the stage. You
Hey, thank you very much. Robelle, good afternoon,
colleagues, all protocol observed. Mike has been introduced. My name is mevis mnganze. I'm with the ITU regional office for Africa. Today, I'll try to take you through regulation for connecting the unconnected in the ICANN region. I'm just happy that in the morning, first session, we managed to address some of the pertinent questions to do with connectivity and related issues, even though there was a question to say, which should come first, we all know that connectivity remains an important gateway into the digital ecosystem for everyone. I'm sure, all of us. The moment we arrived here, we were looking for the Wi Fi password that just shows us the importance of connectivity. Thank you. So I'll go into my presentation to start with I just gave a brief background of the regulatory landscape in the I
the operator. And then we also have in terms of some of the summaries,
it is quite disheartening to note that in terms of some of the sub regions within the African continent, we remain one of the sub regions with the lowest ICT indicators in terms of connectivity and mobile broadband penetration. We have, on one end, Kenya, which has very good ICT indicators. And in between countries, maybe like Somalia, Uganda and the likes, and we have some who are lagging behind a lot. And I'm sure the reasons why this is happening is there are various reasons. So as you can see, we have a map there which shows fiber connectivity through the region. That is the the submarine cables and the different points where they connect in the region, and those points are very critical to the region, because they are bringing internet to us, or they bring connectivity with the rest of the world, because they are the international gateways. So in terms of the undersecable lending ports, we have them indicated there. I'm not sure whether, in terms of the capacity, it's still the same. This could have changed between when the documentation that I referred to was written and now. But generally that gives us a picture of how it is like. And then, in terms of the remaining countries in the region, they access their internet through the other countries, through terrestrial fiber. And some I've seen that it's through satellite, but in terms of the terrestrial fiber links, the highlighted there for Ethiopia, Ethiopia, South Sudan. And lastly, we have connection through Kenya in Tanzania for in the port that is Mombasa and Dar es Salaam, which provides connectivity to the land locked countries. But we find that even though we have this connectivity to non locked countries, we still have a high cost of connectivity in those land locked countries. So what it means is, as a region, we need to come together, to come up with strategies that will allow us to reduce the cost to the land locked countries and also to those countries which already have sea ports. And then in terms of regional exchange points, these are also important in terms of connectivity, I noted that we have three major ones in the regions which are actually enabling exchange of traffic within the region, within certain countries, but we don't want have one which is overly for the IGAD region. And then in terms of our major challenges as a region, we have faced the infrastructure challenge, there is inadequate ICT infrastructure, which makes it very difficult for everyone to be connected, limited broadband coverage, insufficient power supply. Power remains one of the most important issues, which is critical to the spread of ICT infrastructure. And then there's also the issue of the terrain itself. And then in terms of rural areas, I think this is an issue across all of Africa, where we have dispersed populations such that to connect rural populations, at times it becomes very expensive and an economic for private sector players, or even for government players, and then we have regulatory barriers, like has been indicated with complex licensing procedures. And then we don't have a policy harmonization as a region. So at the moment, most of the issues each country is moving at its own pace and with his own policy frameworks. And you also find that in terms of regional regulatory integration, in terms of ICT, we don't have one regional body that is bringing coherence to the whole industry. We have some of the member states belonging to iako, some of the member states, they also belong to commerce, which also has an ICT arm, which is helping in shaping policy. But overall, everyone, I think, is a member of the ITU, where we also have a lot of benchmarking policies and regulations which can be used. And then we also have economic constraints. So the next question is to say, What has the region done? The region has two major initiatives which I've seen, which are aimed at increasing access to ICT infrastructure and connectivity, which is the eastern Africa regional digital integration project and the egard regional infrastructure master plan. So both of these plans, over and above all the other different infrastructure which they touch on, they also touch on the issue of ICT connectivity and regional connectivity and integration. So this is very critical, and I believe that if these two plans are implemented, they could have a huge impact in terms of regional connectivity and integration at large. So in terms of the policy frameworks within the region, those are some of the similarities between countries and the differences, we find that most of the countries have established some regulatory bodies to oversee the ICT sector, and there is a common focus on improving connectivity, data protection and cyber security. And then there are offers towards liberalization and competition, of which you find that competition plays a huge role in terms of ensuring that connectivity is widespread, because once you have competitors who start moving out of the major cities to go and look for new customers in other areas that previously we wouldn't Consider, and then there are some differences in that we are at various stages of regulatory framework development. And then there is a difference in terms of regulatory sort of digital economic development and consumer rights, like I indicated, we have Kenya with the highest number of metrics. And then they are different approaches that are being used to various issues. All those issues are a result of not having a coherent regional approach. So in terms of now regulating for connectivity, what exactly can we do to ensure that we regulate? Maybe I'll start by giving a background to why we need to regulate. The first issue is actually in terms of market liberalization, we have, I think, one country where there is still only one player in the ICT industry, which, on itself, in itself, is stifling in terms of competition. It means that there is no competition. So there is actually no incentive for a lot of things, and consumer protection and related issues might actually be overlooked because we have no option and we have no choice. There's only one option, so and then there is the issue of introduction of competition, consumer protection and rights, standardization and type approval of equipment, which is key to connectivity and regional integration. And there's also the issue of benchmarking. So in terms of regulatory frameworks and policies which can be adopted, maybe our first take us back to the global symposium for regulators, which was held last year. This is one of it use benchmark conferences. One of the issues that came there, or the major theme, was to regulate for impact. So what this tells us is that regulation is key to ensuring that there is a connectivity, and also for the continuity of the digital ecosystem. But then regulation has evolved over the years. Is the market and the industry and technology has also evolved so and then, in terms of the ITU 2023, to 2024, to 2027, strategy, it is focusing on universal meaning for connectivity and sustainable digital transformation in terms of connectivity, universal, meaningful Connect. Connectivity is one of the major issues that as a region, we're working on under our regional initiatives, where we want to ensure that each and every African country has the adequate infrastructure to ensure that they are the population is connected. So those are some of the regulatory framework and policies that we're going to look at. So in terms of the first recommendation, or first approach that we would I would want to recommend is use of unified licensing framework and
simplified licensing. Some countries within the region have actually already started implementing a unified licensing framework. So what this means is that a player just gets one license which will allow them to offer all the various services that they can offer. We still have some countries which are where the licensing framework is different, where you need to get license per service. This is stifling, because what it means is, as the industry changes and as technology changes, there might be need to review this license, the license that an operator has. So it actually discourages operators. So a unified licensing framework allows an operator to get a license once and for all, which they can use to deliver various ICT service and also simplifying the procedures for licensing helps to ensure that new players can easily obtain licenses and enter the industry. So it reduces the barriers to entry into the ICT industry. And then we look at Regulatory Sandboxes. Regulatory Sandboxes are something that has that is currently being encouraged a lot all over the world. This is because of the rate at which technology is changing. So a sandbox is sort of like an experimental approach to regulation, where a regulator can put certain parameters and conditions for the use of a certain service over a trial period, whilst they try to determine, in terms of how the technology works, the best way to actually regulate, and what it means in terms of the sector. So while doing this, the new technology can actually be implemented, whilst at the same time, we are also building the regulatory capacity to understand how best to deal with the new technology. Maybe I can give examples in terms of Starlink, which is relatively new to most countries. We had issues across maybe Africa as a whole, where some countries easily adopted Sterling. Some could not, because they could not understand it in terms of regulation. So something like a regulatory sandbox can actually be used by a country for a trial period or for a certain period of time, what is they try to understand how best to regulate that technology and then technology neutrality and spectrum management. It is important that the licensing framework, or the regulatory framework allows for technology neutrality. Previously, some countries have issued maybe licenses for for GSM. Or something like that. And then as technology evolves, we've seen that maybe this has become redundant, or it has become a hindrance in terms of development of the market. And then the issue of spectral management. Various spectral management policies have a different effects in terms of connectivity. So this depends, sorry, this depends on, on the on the country's aim in terms of spectrum usage, and that is, and also in terms of adapting to change, you find that as new technologies come, there are different requirements and new requirements in terms of spectrum which might not have been foreseen initially when licenses were issued out. So it is important that we adopt forward looking spectrum management policies which will allow for technology changes to be adapted without disturbing how the industry is is working. And then there's issue of infrastructure sharing. We cannot over emphasize this. It has been talked about in the morning, and it's still something that we're still going to say so spectrum infrastructure sharing can be at different levels, from physical infrastructure to dark fiber, to even active equipment, such as maybe modern setups and so forth. So this is still very important that regulators consider such when they come up with regulatory frameworks, to make sure that there is incentive, or even at times, to make sure that it is mandatory for players to share infrastructure so that they reduce the cost of connectivity and also encourage players to build infrastructure in new areas which had not been built before. And then we have a universal access services and tax incentives. It is also important to have such legislation and regulation to allow for UAS, and this can come in terms of Universal Service Obligation, where, on issuance of a license, you might give an operator targets in terms of what they should have achieved, in terms of, maybe, say, after five years, we should have coverage in the major cities and also in certain small towns and small rural areas as part of the licensing agreement, and then we can also have universal service funds, and a lot of other innovative approaches can be used here to ensure that There is connectivity in those underserved and marginalized areas which normally would be left out. And then multi sector regulation. Multi sector regulation is something that is that has already gained momentum in the developed world, where regulation is not focused to one industry, like a city, but you can have maybe regulation of all infrastructure facilities under the same roof. So this will mean that when you are implementing the electricity, maybe a backbone, you also use that same backbone to build your fiber infrastructure. You also maybe use railway railroads, the water infrastructure for various other services which would need to to be planned at the same time. This reduces the cost of planning and the cost of rollout for all consent. There are some challenges with this approach in terms of the technical skills required and also agreeing and coming to a common understanding of how various services can all be implemented at once, but it has shown that they are advantages to actually adapting such an approach and then the other regulatory issues which need to be taken into consideration. It's public private partnerships in terms of how the regulatory and the legal frameworks allow for this to come in, you'll find that in terms of the region, this is one of those components that is lacking. For some countries. There is very limited investment from the private sector. It is important that we encourage the investment from private sector. And then there's also the need for agile regulation. This is to say that regulators should always be on the lookout and understand the trends that are happening in the industry, so that they can quickly adapt to the changes and ensure that countries do not lag behind because regulation and police are taking forever. Yes, it is true that technology, the rate of technology development will always outpace regulatory changes, but we also need to be more agile. And then there is a issue of harmonization of regional policies. Like I indicated before. We don't have a regulatory a regional regulatory Association for the whole sub region. This would help in ensuring that we have model laws and guidelines that can be used and adapted by each country to ensure that once we need to integrate infrastructure in all the countries, we are using the same standard and we have the same understanding of what needs to be done. And then we also have the issue that I indicated before, issues like internet exchange points, I believe that regulation should actually look at these issues, because they reduce the cost of connectivity at country and regional level. So it is important that they be taken into consideration other new developments, like community networks. We've seen a lot of countries now, they are adopting this for last mile connectivity and to ensure that the speed of sorry, the cost of connectivity for marginalized communities, is reduced. But a lot of countries, they do not have regulations which will ensure that community networks can thrive, because most of the times, a community network might not be able to compete at par with an ISP or a commercial network, but they need to be protected, because they are essential to ensuring that connectivity gets to those marginalized areas. And then there's also issue of last mile connectivity. We always need to take this into account in terms of the technologies, the regulatory frameworks need to be made in such a way that they ensure the efficient utilization and re utilization of spectrum in the last mile, to ensure that this scarce resource is actually used by everyone. Is required, and then So in conclusion, I can say that the region has many challenges, and these challenges can actually be overcome if we come together and look for innovative ways that we ensure that we build the infrastructure that is required, and there are still many more strategies that we could explore together, individually, as countries and at regional level, which can actually help in ensuring that we get universal and meaningful connectivity, not just connectivity For the sake of connectivity. Thank you very much. You
Thank you. Thank you. Miss Mavis, so there won't be any Q A in this part of the session,
there will be a Q A panel later in the in the next part, so you can put all your questions at That panel. So next is,
is Dr, term, million. Million. Haile Michael, Deputy Director General, ECA,
Mr. Million, highly is a seasoned expert in information technology and telecommunication law with over 15 years of experience in policy, strategy and Regulatory Affairs. He holds a Master of Science in it and telecommunication law from the University of Southampton, UK, and a Master of Laws from R Maya University. He specializes in telecommunication law, internet regulation, personal data protection, cyber security law and internet governance, his work drives innovation and policy excellence in the digital space. So please welcome Mr. Billion to the stage. You
thank you Robert for the introduction. Good afternoon, everyone.
My name is million helemke. I'm Deputy Director General of Ethiopian communication authority. So today I'm going to give you a short briefing on regulation of all regulation governing connectivity in Ethiopia.
So I have actually four topics to address
today. The first one is, you know, the overview and key component, component of connectivity is in Ethiopia. And then I will try to access current connectivity landscape in Ethiopia. And the third part just will dwell on regulatory framework, is governing or enhancing connectivity in Ethiopia. And finally, just I'll talk about the challenges that face connectivities in Ethiopia.
To start with, the government of Ethiopia aims
to provide a full range of communication services to all population, regardless of their geographical location and social social economic status, you know, and other traditions. So the government provide, you know, affordable inequality services to its citizen, whether they are, you know, economically capable, or whether they are living in the rural areas or in the cities. The government aims to provide quality service with affordable prices. To achieve this end, the government has actually introduced liberalization in Ethiopia, the introduction of telecom liberalization in Ethiopia, enhanced connectivities actually, to clearly understand, you know, the what this liberalization has brought is better. Just to see some figures you know, from the operators before the introduction of liberalization. That means, in the year 2021 the number of subscribers, or telecom subscriber in Ethiopia was 64 million. But after the introduction of you know this liberalization, the market is open to the private sector in the number of telecom user or subscriber has increased, you know, to 81 million. As just within the matter of three years. You know, the number of the telecom subscriber has increased. If we see the mobile internet user, it increased, you know, from 21 million to 45 million. So it's just almost the number of internet user was around 21 million in the year 2021 but in the year 2024 this is the figure taken from, actually from 2024 Jon, it becomes 45 even if we look the fixed broadband user, actually the number of fixed broadband user was almost 487,000 then now it becomes like, you know, 747 so the mobile subscriber in penetration has become now 74% the mobile internet penetration has become 41% so and if we see even the internet, the international gateway capacity, if we see et alone, you know it has the capacity of 1.8 terabyte per second. If we look the internet, Safaricom, Ethiopia, it has 120 Gb per second. Actually, there is also
a progress in terms of telecom tower. You
know, before the introduction of this liberalization, the number of telecom tower in Ethiopia was around 7000 but last year, Jon, the number of tower has become, you know, 11,500 there is an increase of 4400 pounds. Or there is an increase of 60 to 62% if we look even the fiber line in the year 2021, it was around 21,000 kilometer, then it becomes 32,000 kilometer. So you know, the introduction of telecom liberalization in Ethiopia has enhanced connectivities. So the
legal and regulatory
framework of the telecom the telecommunication sector has a direct correlation with enhancement of connectivity in Ethiopia when the market is open for the private sector. Actually, the nation was trying to craft, you know, new laws and new policies and new illegal and regulatory frameworks. So this legal and regulatory framework has a direct correlation, or in relationship with the connectivity in the country. So here actually, we have like, 15 or 16 legal and regulatory frameworks. But here just try to access, or to look, you know, some of the legal framework that has, you know, a close relationship with the enhancement of connectivity in the country. The first legal instrument is the communication service proclamation number 11, 42,019, this is the proclamation which liberalized the telecom market in Ethiopia. If we look article 19 of this proclamation, it opens a door, you know, for the private sector to engage in telecom sector. So this proclamation can be taken as a policy document, even because it gives, you know, a direction for the private sector, you know, to engage on the telecom sector and enhance connectivities. The other legal framework which has an influence on the enhancement of connectivity in Ethiopia. Is the telecommunication licensing directive. This is the directive which govern, you know, the whole region of licensing, or telecom licensing in Ethiopia. It has expanded license types. Actually, before the enactment of this directive, we have, we had only limited the license types, but with the introduction of this directive, we were just able to expand the license category. So this directive has generally categorized, you know, licenses into two parties, individual license and class license, individual license is as a kinds of license, which is issued to an entity on the basis of competition or bid. And we have actually two kinds of license, under individual license, that is unified telecom license and IX P under class license. We have actually 11 or 12 types of licenses. So we have issued, you know, almost 1000s of license and on the basis of this directive, actually, if we see, then the unified telecommunication license in Ethiopia, we can find, you know, we can find terms and conditions that govern, you know, the telecom operators. So in these terms and conditions, the telecom operator has a coverage obligation. So actually, this is a kind of license which is given to the telecom operators. In Ethiopia, we have two operators now. So these two operators as a coverage obligation. This obligation can be identified as population coverage and geographical coverage. Population coverage. It refers to the service as operators provide to the population to live in specified areas. Geographical coverage is it's a kind of it refers to the area that the operator, you know, provides services. So on the basis of these two coverage obligation, the regulator has said, a clear and measurable target for the telecom operators. So this obligation has been measured, you know. And one, for instance, if we see, actually the argument of the new entrant in Ethiopia in relation to this obligation, you know, Safaricom, when it comes to the market, actually it was three years ago, we have given them a coverage obligation was in terms of population and geographical coverage. For instance, in terms of population coverage, we have given them a target of 40% to cover in two years. So they achieved, you know, voice and text coverage, 42% if we look, you know, the broadband internet, they are able to cover 40% of the population. You know, within two years, if we see the geographical coverage, actually, we have classified this coverage into highways, major road, airport, economic zone, blah, blah. So geographically, if we see the highway, we have given them the target of, you know, 50% that they are able to achieve. You know, voice and Texas, 52% and
boys,
so they are able to cover, you know, the
5052 person for voice and text, and they are able to cover, you know, 50% for broadband, if we see the airport actually, we have given them the target of 75% together in two years, they are able to cover almost 92% at the end of the two years. If we see the Special Economic Zone, like industrial zone and industrial park, we have given them 100% target, and they fulfill this requirement, they cover 100% of the industrial and ICT parks. The other actually they're being given, you know, the obligation to cover large, medium and small cities. So within two years, they are able to cover 446 towns in Ethiopia, even we have given them zone uncovering the target was certified, but they are able to cover, you know, 55 zone within two years. So this is actually related to our licensing directive and the other legal and regulatory framework, which is clearly related to the expansion of, you know, connectivity in Ethiopia is the universal service regulation. This regulation, as you as you see, as a draft regulation, a public consultation has been made. You know, regarding this consultation, we have received, actually input from local and international stakeholders. Now this draft proclamation or regulation is on the hand of Council of minister. We are expecting this regulation to be adopted very soon. So in this regulation, actually, we have said that the objective so there is a universal access fund. So this universal access fund will be used to give services to the rural areas that are either answered or underserved to low population density area where professional service is not commercially viable for operators. And we will give support, as you know, to the people even living in the larger cities, but you know, to the poor people living in the large metropolitan Cities. We have to use this money to provide so
Country,
international organization, so, political and from The International. Thank
The moment,
and
not not
of Using
the universal access fund second phase is, you know, we are planning to use this money to support the expansion of ICTs and E services for school, houses, facilities and public organization. We also aim to enhance ICT skills, capacity building, addressing skill gaps. We have also actually a plan to develop, you know, local content. Local content is very important, especially to bridge the gap of, you know, digital literacy in Ethiopia. So we have a plan, you know, to develop local content special projects, especially that's coming from non governmental organization, like community network. So if we say this much regarding universal service, what is the status of universal access fund in Ethiopia? As I said before, we don't start actually collecting this money yet. But you know, we have get a small support from the oil bah. So through this support, we are planning a major borderland project that's in refugee camp areas. So we have a plan, actually, to use this money to enhance connectivity and refugee camp areas, and we have also get, you know, support from JICA to provide broadband network access and digital skill training to TV station. So these two projects can be taken as a pilot project for Ethiopian communication authority.
The other actually, we have also other legal and regulatory frameworks
which is closely related to connectivity. This is communication service and regulatory fee directive. This is actually one of the directive which determine the price of spectrum in Ethiopia. As you know, if the price of the spectrum is so high, operators or service provider will not be interested to extend services to the rural area. So when we determine this fee actually, we have taken into account innovation and expansion of connectivity in Ethiopia. So our spectrum fee, or our spectrum price, is relatively, you know, low. So this directive is very important in ensuring you know connectivities in Ethiopia. The other directive is infrastructure sharing and collocation directive. This directive help us you know the new entrant to share infrastructure with the incumbent operator, so it has actually a cumulative outcome of extending, you know, Internet and Internet connectivity in Ethiopia. So according to this directive, the incumbent operator has an obligation actually to lease or to share its infrastructure to the new entrants. Actually, they already shared infrastructure in Ethiopia. So it has a direct implication on extending connectivity in Ethiopia. And the other one is the telecommunication interconnection directive and drumming. We have this legal framework as well. It plays, you know, a crucial role in extending connectivity in Ethiopia. I think this is some of the legal framework we have in Ethiopia. But you know, when we come to the last part of this presentation, we just find the challenges to connectivities. We have been trying to expand, you know, connectivities in Ethiopia, but we have also encountered some problem. One of the major problem in Ethiopia is lack of fraud, accessibility in Ethiopia. Ethiopia is a very mountainous country, sometimes the service provider. Providers are required, you know, to bring this heavy towers to mountainous areas. So this is a challenge, actually, in Ethiopia. And second is the lack of power, especially in the rural areas. Sometimes operator is interested, you know, to extend networkers in the rural area. But in that specific area, there may, may not be, you know, enough power so that discourage them, you know, to extend their services. Actually in some places, you know, the operator went and established their network, their operation and cost is so high. So this can be taken as the challenge. And there is lack of digital literacy in Ethiopia, in some places where there is, you know, enough connectivity people may not utilize. You know, this infrastructure very well because of, you know, lack of digital scale of digital literacy. So this is actually the challenge we have been facing so far. So in order to solve this problem, actually, we have been engaging with different government institutions. So we believe that, you know, this problem will be elevated in the coming time. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Million,
next the next presentation would be done by Mr.
Barrack Otieno. Mr. Barrack is a management information system specialist with over 20 years of experience. Is a leader in the internet infrastructure governance and policy development as general manager of the African top level domains organization. He has advanced technical reforms, supported the NSEC program and played a key role in the Africa domain delegation. He leads the Kenya School of internet governance and chairs the association of community networks in Kenya. Mr. Barrack also serves as CTO of Ari net, providing connectivity to over 30,000 community members in Western Kenya, and he has held leadership roles in ICANN, in the Internet Society Kenya chapter advocating for digital inclusion and sustainable Internet growth in Africa, please welcome Mr. Barrack to the stage.
Good afternoon. Good afternoon. I hope you're not getting into safe mode for the conscious knowledge. So I'll go straight to the presentation when the two great speakers, I hope we can keep up my presentation so that I proceed without any further ado.
The previous speakers have ably set the scene for what I'm going to talk about, and I'm going to focus on community networks, which have been mentioned as a complimentary access model, and hope to enhance our understanding of the same and also just share the Kenyan experience,
right? Thank you, yeah, so I wear many hats as ah has
been presented and ah, my desire is to ensure that the internet is for everyone. So sometimes you go this way and find a road block that blocks that aspiration, and we try and get work around through various initiatives. So my presentation will cover the areas that are indicated on the screen. What is a community network? I know that's a potential question that could be ringing in most of our minds. I'll also touch on community networks tools. I'll touch a bit on the journey of community networks in Africa. Talk about doctors in community networks, especially regulatory agencies. I'll share the case study from Kenya. I'll also share some of the key initiatives that are revolutionizing the regulatory landscape in Kenya and some proposed best practices that eager and Horn of Africa countries can consider. It's interesting that most of us are interrelated or brothers, so what happens in one country affects the other I like over landing or traveling, and I'm part of a group that occasionally comes into Ethiopia or goes across into the other African countries. And the constant issue is connectivity, because most of the people who travel work from home or work from wherever, and
creativity,
as I talk about community networks, let me also At the Internet Society. I'm one of the facilitators. We've just
opened the call for a new cohort, and whatever I'm going to speak about, if you want further engagement, I kindly request that we meet in those spaces, the Internet Society, courses, I'll talk about the courses at the end, we can have greater engagement. I'm passionate about this subject, so if we meet there, we'll be able to discuss more how it can benefit you. But loosely defined, a community network refers to telecommunication infrastructure designed by the community to address communication issues that are relevant to a particular community. Now in Kenya, we've had a challenge, because we have traditional ISPs that exist, just like other Commonwealth countries. We have tier one, tier one license, tier two license and a tier three license. Of course, a tier one license is given to the mobile network operator, a tier two license to gateways, a tier three license to those that build network facilities or network facility providers and those that sell internet or application service provider. Now we are having a tier four license, and I'm going which is being proposed. Actually, the discussion is supposed to end tomorrow. So in the afternoon, I will be trying to put together my comments so that we can be able to submit the same to the communications authority. While at that, I want to salute the communications authority of here, the deputy director from the communications authority of Ethiopia, reaching out to the community, and my challenge is, when the door is opened, please reach out and support we are in an era of multi stakeholderism. So for us in Kenya, the communications authority has opened the door for us and supported us to be able to address some of the gaps that we have talked about in communication. Community networks provide users the only way to access the internet, in many cases, in those unserved and underserved areas, they are generally focused on end user needs. They also build deeper knowledge on ICTs, and they help to localize income. It's interesting to pay attention to the internet economy. I'm also in the world of domains. And I always say, if you buy a.et you keep the money in Ethiopia, isn't it? Who operates.et is ethos telecom? Yeah, if you buy a.com probably the money goes somewhere else. So we it's also good that as we talk about connectivity, we understand the economics around the internet. Something interesting about community networks is that it is the they they help us to leave the reality of our communities. My experience deploying community networks is you can connect a home and they will pay you after two months. Or sometimes they don't have cash to pay you, they will look for another way of paying you. You know, our communities have butter trade, isn't it, in exchange for connectivity, and that's the spirit, or what we call Ubuntu in Africa. As we talk about community networks, it's also important to pay attention to the actors. There are three main actors in community networks. We have the micro we have the messo and we have the macro actors. This is why I said that we need to meet in that community networks class the micro actors refers to the community where the community network operates. For instance, I learnt yesterday that we are in bole, isn't it? Bole is a particular community that is probably different from the other one I know, I think is bishoft. That is probably very different from bishoft, isn't it? You may find that the income levels in bole are very different from the income levels in bishoft Two. So if you are connecting people in bole and bishoftu, the people in bole might easily pay you cash. They might easily pay you with mobile money. But it might not be the same case with bishoftu or another town that is far away. The second major actor is the messo actor. This is the actor that functions as a catalyst and or supports the community, usually by bringing knowledge, skills, expertise or partnerships to the community. So it could be the Internet Society of Ethiopia, for example, or it could be an NGO that has the expertise and skills that is bringing connectivity in that particular connectivity in that particular area. Then we have the macro level, which is composed of organizations that influence how the community network integrates into the telecom sector. In this case, the regulator in Ethiopia, my the previous speaker who was before me, that's a macro actor. They will determine if you will participate, or if you won't participate, if they call you an illegal operator, you will not operate. If they allow you, you will operate. Governance is a critical component of community networks, and I have mentioned the role of the regulator. The regulator is key because community networks rely on spectrum, and spectrum is a highly regulated resource. Remember, the airlines use spectrum. The ships use spectrum. We use spectrum for radio and for various telecommunication course reasons. So it's a very important resource that needs to be managed. Community networks rely on the unlicensed spectrum, basically referred to as the industrial, scientific and medical band, normally the 2.4 and 5.8 gigahertz band. Many countries treat unlicensed spectrum differently. There have been efforts to also open up spectrum bands like 6g in Kenya, if you try to set up a network on 5g you encounter a lot of noise. Now we can no longer use 2.4 because there are a lot of devices out there, and this is the reason why the regulator is a critical player in this community network conversation. Having said that there are many challenges that come with deployment of community networks. Number one, there there is varied understanding in many countries based on level of engagement between the different actors their their varied understanding on water community network is not sometimes you may find that an area, just
a community network, can start in an underserved area or area, and it can be non discrete. Then that area starts developing for whatever reason, and then you find that it's now competing some of the biggest reparators in the room. The question then starts being asked on is this a community network, or is this a commercial is that tension? On the other hand, remember, community networks provide connectivity. Connectivity comes
at a cost. In the past, there was the feeling that community networks should not charge, but at the end of the day, this main service providers that provide community networks with connectivity need the money to survive. Yes, I can see Professor kashoda laughing. He has supported some community networks in our country, and the worst thing is, when you are unable to pay your bills at the end of the month as a community network, that's another conversation that needs to be had. The other issue is assessing whether a community network will benefit from and be able whether a community will benefit from and be able to sustain a community network. The other issue is planning the construction of a community network in Kenya, the communication authority, the ICT authority, expects the same standards that mainstream operators use in building networks to be applied by community networks, because, remember, you are connecting hospitals in real lives. So it's
not an experiment. If you decide that you're going to do it, then you have to
do it right? So even though we talk about community networks from research and development perspective, the expectation is that they will address real life solutions or challenges. I see my time is almost up and I'm just starting. I thought I had 25 minutes, but I stand guided at what point, 15 minutes. Thank you very much. Let's look at some of the African countries that recognize community networks. Of course, we have Kenya, we have Uganda and we have Lesotho, which have enacted acts at different levels that recognize community networks. And it's my hope, just as the deputy director has indicated, that Ethiopia will also join the band wagon and many other countries, I will touch a bit on the journey of community networks in Africa. It's interesting that this may not be a very new subject, but the first summit on community networks I recall was held on 22nd November 2016 at the University of Nairobi, I recall Dr Dawit was there championing for it the way he's doing it here. Prior to that conference, a survey identified 37 community network initiatives in 12 African countries. 25 initiatives were considered active at that particular time. The number there was such a number of presentations which I will not touch. I will not touch on at this time. But in Kenya, after that particular conference, we had the tuna panda community network that was launched in kibra. And during the Africa Internet Summit in 2018 the community. The community attended a session on community networks that actually went and assisted in the deployment of the tuna pan community network. Had the Umoja Community Network that was deployed under the stewardship of chicks. And after that, in 2020 we had a hairy community network, but I helped to initiate in Kisumu, along the lecture, along the Victoria,
having said that currently we have about 20 community network
initiatives in Kenya, and I believe by the end of this year we will have over 50 community networks. We have an association that I have the privilege to chair, and we expect that our focus this year is going on ensuring that the community networks actually comply to the communications authority of Kenya guidelines or requirements. We have held a school of community networks, which was hosted in Kisumu in March 2022, we also had a National Summit of community networks last year, supported by the communications authority of Kenya. And this is what has spared or inspired the numbers of community networks to grow so typically, when you look at how a community network operates, as much as when it comes to connectivity, return on investment is a key requirement community networks seek to ensure that the community is actually able to utilize the internet and digital services meaningfully. I'll come back to that as we move along. I will skip the journey for community networks in Africa, but we've had a number of initiatives, largely championed by the Internet Society and the Association of progressive communications to build the body of community networks in Africa. And there's a map of community networks in Africa. If you visit apc.org
I will skip straight to the case study on development of regulatory frameworks for community networks in Kenya, and then I'll come back to address some components of my Currently, there's a widespread review of the telecommunication regulatory framework
in Kenya to make it current and relevant. Um, from 2023 Minister of ICT
in Kenya actually created an ICT sector working group
to review key Media and Communication laws in the country. The motivation was the need for law, for the laws and policies to be updated, to incorporate emerging technologies such as AI and big data. We have been relying on the Kenya Information and Communications Act, which was enacted in 1998 and so you can imagine why we need to change it, or why there's a feeling that we should change it, but it has been working for us, and I think it is the tool that has been at the forefront of the progressive activities that, sorry, of the progressive development that we have had while at that the Government of Kenya has prioritized the digital super highway as its flagship project. I don't work for the government for the record, but I'm going to to clarify where as community networks, we have been impacted by some of these tools. So the digital super highway comprises 100,000 kilometers of fiber optic cable. Government, I believe, will implement 52% of this, while the private sector, academia and other actors will implement 48% so we have, for instance, the National Research and Education Network Professor kashoda will be speaking later, which is also playing a major role, similar to what the community networks are doing. But Kenneth has been in existence for a long time, and it is actually supporting some of the community networks as a backhaul service provider. The other objective that the
government wants to achieve is to deploy 20, 25,000
hot spots across the country, and as community networks, we have sat with the government and different government agencies and pledged our share of this particular hot spots. So how do the communities networks deploy them. Most of the community networks work with development partners. For instance, in Kenya, we have worked very closely with the Internet Society Kenyan chapter, with the Internet Society Foundation, and I'm happy to report that over 80% of the community networks have been built with the support of the Internet Society. Most of these activities that we are talking about have actually been achieved with the support of the Internet Society, and I believe that the chapter in Ethiopia can also be able to achieve this. It is worth noting that we currently have over 5000 government services that are online in Kenya, which has necessitated more complementary access methods, or more complementary access models. Previously, when the Deputy Director General was presenting, he talked about the geographic obligations, and you find that most service providers will focus on areas that are profitable. Probably they will focus on Addis Ababa, or probably they will focus on bole, probably they will focus on Nairobi, because there is money. In fact, in Nairobi alone, there are over 100 community there are over 100 Internet Service Providers that's competing for a share of the 10 million citizens that are there at the end of the day, it's all about money. But we have parts of the country that are bigger than Nairobi, yet they have no service provider. In fact, when it comes even to telecommunication, I have had a, let me be politically correct, that in some places, service providers switch off general base stations because then it's, it's it cost them a lot to operate them in areas where there is no return on investment. Most of them rely on average revenue per user. But what happens to the people that are in those areas? Most of them are our relatives. Most of us in Africa, you have a home in the city and you have a relative in the village. Woe unto you. When your job ends, that's when you realize that life is hard in the village, isn't it, because you relocate with your laptop, and then it is useless because you cannot connect to the internet. And this is where, why and where community networks are important. So because of the the 5000 government services that are online. It doesn't matter if you are a Kenyan citizen who is in Mandera and another person who is in Nairobi. If you need a government service, it needs you need to go online. The difference is, the person who is in Nairobi has quicker and easier access to the internet than the person who is in Mandera. We had an interesting scenario yesterday when we came in, when we were asked to fill in some health forms at the airport, and all of us started sweating. I was so glad there was noone on the line, but I ended up taking, I don't know, 20 minutes or something, just to fill in that form. And I was really complaining. Professor kashoda. I said at least, at least they've made it easier for data to be collected. But I was telling him, I wish I was filling form paper form. I would have left this place already and see I was already frustrated because of connectivity. I'm saying that on a light note, there is always room for improvement.
Some of the key initiatives that have revolutionized the regulatory landscape in Kenya,
and I've listed them. Number one, I will start by mentioning that the government has acted as a catalyst for the legal and regulatory reforms in Kenya. With all due respect, I have to acknowledge what past and present governments have done, and I think it should be the same case for other African countries. Governments are critical when it comes to connectivity, development partners such as the UK aid GIZ you said the World Bank have also supported systemic interventions aimed at number one, promoting diversity, number two, equity and number three, inclusivity in the community network space. Since December, I have been involved in a project that is supported by the UK aid to train about 10 million citizens on basic digital skills in Kenya, and I was involved from development of the curriculum. And right now there's actually training that is taking place on a mass scale, alright, on a mass scale. Um, I've been alerted to wind up. Uh, let me just finish with this slide again. There's been a lot of review of the licensing frameworks. We have the community network service provider license that I've talked about currently, we also have a tier four license, which is a new license, and the whole objective is to lower the cost of licensing to allow local players to actually participate in the local community networks ecosystem. The current tier four license follows a study that was conducted last year, spearheaded by the dynamic spectrum alliance with the support of UK aid to ensure that licenses are affordable and within the reach of local communities. There's also been a focus on data protection, which has been championed by the Office of the data protection Commissioner. So as I conclude, some of the proposals that I would encourage eager countries to consider are focus or encouragement of government as a catalyst for regulatory reforms. Multi stakeholderism as a key pillar for regulatory reforms. There are many solutions within government, private sector, civil society, academia and the technical community that can solve the challenges that we face. Investment in research and development to facilitate development of locally relevant solutions. Most of the developments that I've talked about in Kenya have emanated from the university ecosystem. Research and educational networks play a critical role as a catalyst in this space. And of course, private sector invests non governmental organizations are key in ensuring that there is digital literacy. Investment in capacity building and capacity development is critical. ISOC I mentioned is providing a platform with many of these courses. Infrastructure sharing and cloud facilities should also be encouraged to lower the cost of connectivity at the last mile, one of the greatest costs that community networks face is actually back hauling between the cities and the rural areas, and we've seen that data centers can significantly lower this cost by ensuring that the connectivity is accessible locally. And lastly, I indicated that decentralization of the data centers will be key in enhancing last mile access. Allow me to stop at that in the interest of time, I will be back during the panel. Thank you for your attention.
It's always great to hear experiences from other countries, community workspace, so thank you. So last session, or the last speaker would be Mr. Rihan
Duarte. After this, there will be a 10 minutes break, so feel free to go outside and some coffees.
Mister rihan Duarte is a senior manager for Public Affairs at abrinit,
a Brazilian association of internet service providers. He has over a decade of experience in Policy and Government Affairs. Bring it
fosters dialog and collaboration with the Brazilian government, Congress, industry, civil society and international stakeholders. Obviously, Jean worked as a consultant, specialization in tech and telecom,
holds degrees in political science and business management with the focus technology and innovation
policy. So welcome,
Mr. Everyone. Can you hear me? Well, good morning from Brazil and good afternoon to all of those present. I'm very sorry I could not be there in person this time, and I really hope to join you in person in future editions of this conference. And I really like to thank you gene society for this invitation. I will be sharing my presentation at BC, if you can see it. So again, just in the presentation, my name is Jean dua. I'm a senior management, Manager of Public Affairs for aborigin which the Brazilian association of internet service providers, and I would like to start this presentation, talking a little bit about who we are. So Whois we are the largest nonprofit organization representing the Internet Service Provider ecosystem in Brazil. Right now, we have over 2000 members. We were established in 2009 and we are present. Our members are present all across Brazil. And we hope to bring you some good ideas and showcase the Brazilian fixed broadband ecosystem. To has a good ideas. We have some, some good examples of what we can do in focus, in fixed broadband. And mostly I'll be, I'll be touching up on community networks. We'll be working on the for profit companies in Brazil. We are a democratic and open organization. Our leadership is based on volunteer work. So they own their own companies, they work at their companies, and they donate some order time to bring chi to make sure we are, you know, progressing in a good way, the internet industry in Brazil, I'm part of the local staff, so we are overseen by an eight member board of directors who oversees our daily activities in a brinci, we work to advocate for public policy, to support small and medium sized companies and advancing universal and meaningful connectivity in Brazil, I would we care a little bit more about the case. In Brazil have shown very good evolution in ICT indicators in the last 20 years. As you can see, we have the number of connected homes grew six fold in the last 20 years. We went from 8 million connected homes in oh seven, 2007 to 53, million just the end of last year. So the percentage of connected homes grew from 27% in 2010 to over 84% in 2024 so we we're doing very good work on connecting the country, mostly on fiber and on optical fiber networks. This is the work of a very decentralized and competitive market. We have over 21,000 internet service providers in Brazil, and most of these providers are small operators, so only 581 ISPs in this 21,000 universities have over five times 5000 clients. And you see only seven have over a million clients, and that is including the three National Beef telco operators. So we have four, three national players, four regional big players, and whole universe of small providers working within their communities, within the municipalities, to connect people in Brazil. So you can see here, I'll talk a little bit more about the direct regulation side that we split the market into the big telcos, the three national operators and the regional ISPs. So the regional ISPs are the ones driving the expansion of infrastructure in Brazil. These are small companies operating in perhaps one or two cities most of the time. These smaller leaders. They are usually small companies. They started out as a family company and maybe fully attending neighborhoods of their own cities. Then they grew to attending the host cities. Maybe they expanded to adjacent municipalities Bay, but they have been building this bottom up connectivity infrastructure in Brazil, mostly with private capital, private investment, and they've been doing great work in the last especially in the last 10 years. As you can see, they grew from 3 million back in 2015, 32, million connected homes by small operators just last year. And you can see most of this investment was made in small cities. So the big operators, they focused on where small team post lucrative. So they focused on the big, big cities in Brazil, so over 500,000 inhabitants. So that's where most of their connectivity goes to. While small operators, they working from the small cities. They usually they started as a business in these small cities, they saw the opportunity to invest in connectivity, and so they did. That's how we started with this beautiful expansion of fiber networks in Brazil. We play a very important role these small companies. Has a whole, they hold the group, they hold six, around 60% of the market share. But individually, they are very small companies most of the times. So they have up to 5000 clients. And they're working in their own cities, their own communities. Usually know the whole city knows who the owner of the ISP is? They have any problems, they will know shout on WhatsApp or on the telephone directly to the company owners, because they know them. They have a personal relationship with these people, and they've been driving a very important
advancement of internet connectivity in Brazil,
and this competition is also driving a number of end use benefits. Not only are people being connected, but average speeds are going up. The contracting average speeds are going up we share with the average contract for home broadband in Brazil is over 400 megabytes per second, and the prices are also going down. We have more speed for lower prices at more and more locations. That's what competition is arriving in Brazil. So right now in Brazil, around 65% of the homes are connected on fiber networks, mostly on fiber to the home networks, and most of these new additions have been made by small operators. And how did we get here? It's a good story of how regulation that helped drive market forces. I think Mavis on the first presentation, really said regulation is key, and this is true for the Brazilian case, as the regulator moved away from a command and control regulatory model, very much based on monopolies, to a more open and focused on competition, Reducing the public the regulatory burden for small operators, reducing barriers to new entries, promoting competition. We really saw the number of small operators rise. The competition rose, and we had many benefits as we reach out. What does this mean? Really? In Brazil, we are essentially dividing the market in two groups of companies, the those with significant market power, those who can impact directly the competition and small scale operators. So small makes small scale operators are those less than 5% of the national market share in any given market, so let's say in fixed telephone lines, in fixed broadband or in mobile collaborations. So this small scale operators, they started out in fixed broadband and fixed landlines. But as they grew, just in a few years ago, in the 5g option, we had some small scale operators, the first time in Brazilian history, really playing a major role in a spectrum option for 5g and we hope that this will be the case moving forward, that we can expand this model of competition towards the the mobile operating market as well
in Brazil, that their first
initiatives towards this asy metric regulation started in 2005 so nearly 20 years ago, but the more stronger relations on this side started really in 2012 that's when you start to see a more significant rise in the number of operators and the Also in the number of connected homes in Brazil. We started out with a very innovative regulation, which was the general plan of competition targets in Portuguese is the bgmc battle, provided this first concept of what a small scale operator was in back in 2012 this small scale operator was any operator with less than 50,000 subscribers. We updated that that concept in 2018 to the 5% national market pool. But the idea was to, you know, reduce license fees, make it easier for unified license in Brazil. We also created, you know, we digitalized the licensing process so operators did not need to travel all the way into the capital in Brazil to get a license. They could do it over the internet. Anna tell has also promoted the regulator has also promoted a lot of education on the company sites. They promoted ebooks on how to become an ISPs, or, or what, what would the steps be to start a new ISP in Brazil? So this all the way back in 2012 that's when we really started to see a very strong movement for the ISPs in Brazil. Also in the last few years, Anatol has created an official committee. It's called the small scale providers committee, the CPP in Portuguese, to have a formal committee where regulators and companies sit at the same table to discuss and coordinate regulation. What are the main objectives? What are the main challenges that you're facing? So this is all to say that we have a lot of dialog between the companies, between small operators and the regulator to make sure that we are moving towards meaningful and universal productivity in Brazil. And what we say when we mean this asy metric regulation is that you have a small number of companies that have this significant market power that they can, you know, keep their wit competitors out of the market and added regulatory burden, they have obligations for providing wholesale access to supporting infrastructure. The regulator actually created an online platform where the players are obligated to provide recording in progress that resale offers on boarding infrastructure. So this means, these means long distance data transit. This can mean sharing towers and all of this, all of these infrastructure. So they are obligated to have a formal offer to any and all operators in the market. This hasn't been a really useful tool yet, mostly because market these big companies, they still resist on doing in doing business through this platform, but we have seen a lot of coordination and cooperation between the small scale operators. So they so they try to ensure infrastructure. They try and build infrastructure together to reduce costs. And we have seen also a very good investment in public internet exchange points infrastructure in Brazil, and we are moving together as a as a community for connectivity.
And to I think, to sum up a bit,
we also we see a lot of the challenges that were the previous presenters pointed out, I think, as we move towards universal connectivity in Brazil, as we are getting closer to 90 and 100% of homes connected, and see that challenges to reach This the unconnected, they still unconnected in Brazil are very similar to what you're seeing in Africa as well. We really hope to see a bit what you're doing, and maybe we can talk a little bit more on the community network. And let's say this complimentary Connectivity Framework we see the regulator is also moving towards a new regulation specific for community networks. Abhi is also working on capacity building with community networks to make sure we can work together to reach this unconnected communities and we need, let's see.
And going back to two points made by Mattis and million as
well, we've seen the impact of reduced license fees of anato has also provided a waive license for really small operators. So operators with less than 5000 customers, you are not obligated to have a license. Only. After you have more than 5000 customers, you are obligated to go and get your license. We have a reduced fees. So back in 2012 the licensing fees for Brazilian operators would be around 9000 Brazilian eyes. In 2013 we exchanged the fees, reduced the fees, so right now we can get a license for 400 has. So that's a big difference. You can also have unified license and you have waived licensing obligations for equipment, and million also touched on the
coverage obligations. Brazil does not have coverage obligations
attached to this, to its licenses, to the fixed Mark fix it Robin licenses, when we have the coverage obligations attached to spectrum options. So whenever you make it a bit and you win the opportunity to to explore the spectrum, then you have coverage obligations tied not only to the mobile market, but sometimes also just infrastructure and fixed broadband infrastructure marking in Brazil. So
thank you for this presentation. I hope I brought some of the Brazilian
Brazilian straight to you, and I hope it was informative, and looking forward to the Q and A session.
Okay, so short, break in minutes, break some coffees next door.
Some coffees next
door entry to grab some tea. Rest my breakfast for 10 minutes, so at 4:10pm, then we'll have some Q and A panel.
Hello.
Time, so I apologize I have to cut short some of the question areas.
Originally, I wanted to bring some questions from myself and from the ISOC Ethiopia chapter, but in respect for the time, I'll just start with the Q and A from the audience. So if anyone have some questions, please feel free to raise it.
The meantime, I will ask the first question.
So this question is
to miss Marvis, so in the earlier presentation, you mentioned the
GAT region have a unified regional regulatory
framework or some aspirations toward that.
So my question is, how does this unified regulatory framework influence the success of the local internet access or the
critical access within a country in the EGOT region, like, how does it work? The hierarchy of the EGOT regional framework, the regulation
framework, versus the local country framework. How do they interact? Then, how does the successful
outcome is in short terms
of okay in terms of the Unified licensing framework, this mainly first
refers to a country level where you are looking at A unified licensing framework, where you are not licensing according to service, but you are just looking at the sector, where you're saying telecom service or ICT services, but then it's the regional level. Basically you want to build synergies to ensure that you have the same understanding and a similar framework so that you can be able to easily integrate and build on synergies in terms of the skills and the capacity that you have to interconnect. And then we talked about some of the key infrastructure that you can consider it regionally for, like a regional Internet exchange. So when you have a similar or a unified regulatory framework for something like an inter a regional Internet Exchange, it allows you to build that Internet exchange with buy in from everyone, with a proper understanding of how it will be run the economy, the economies that associated with that, how it will reduce cost, whether you are selling traffic to each other or you're just appearing and it also gives you an edge internationally, because now you are able to negotiate instead of buying internet traffic, you can negotiate for peering as a region, once you have adequate traffic at regional level. And you are saying, instead of us saying we're buying bandwidth from local, international service providers, we are just exchanging traffic. It's an equal on an equal basis or an equal footing. Thank you very much. So it is. It is more of
collaboration, of truth, success. There is no enforcement of you know, you have to do this XYZ. Then if, if the other country regulator doesn't enforce that. Then there is it is more of like a win, win situation, I guess, right.
Is there any other question from okay?
Good evening again,
asking this question to all of you, any of you can answer, and
the question we've been we we've been in the discussion about whether to promote community networks that are not for profit, kind of operators, or just to promote local operators
that are often for profit organizations that operate almost in the same way. One One focuses on the business, while the other one is about building
the community. Which do you think they are complimentary with the large numbers of unconnected people in Africa? Which one appears
from the data you have, which one appears to be reaching and connected faster.
So this, this seems to be more regional.
Mr. Barra, thank you. If I attempt to
the question is interesting, but let me attempt to propose
a workable answer based on
experience. I think the reality is uniform across Africa. For the last two years, I've been training human rights defenders in Kenya, and prior to the training, we normally do questionnaire to find out where they stand. Normally, we 50 from the 47 counties in Kenya, and when
we do a quick survey, what we realize is, you'll always
find that only about 30% of them meaningfully utilize the internet and ICTs. And I think when I looked at some of the statistics that were shared here, it seems to collaborate with the number that was presented, 30% I've listened to GSMA, they also talk about about 30% meaningful usage of ICTs in the country, meaning that we have about 70% the case of Kenya, of people that are still unconnected, underserved or are not connected in a meaningful way. So you find that, for instance, community networks provide a variety of avenues. In some places, we find it has a bureau people come to charge their phones. For charging their phones, it provides hot spots for them to access connectivity. They also want to learn. There are five or six computers where they can go into and be able to learn from there. If you look at a traditional operator, how they operate, they'll come into your house, most likely because you've made an order. Somebody will connect the infrastructure, a contractor, someone else, the knock at the main office will complete the connection, and they will not engage in any digital literacy. They will not engage in any survey to find out what your issues are. So this is the main difference between community networks and traditional operators. So the other thing is community networks normally and employ youth from the local community. Largely, you'll find for the main telcos, they will get expertise from all over the world. So you find the expert yes, that are working the community network, because it doesn't have money, it has to rely on itself. It has to rely on somebody who will walk to work in the local community. Whatever money is generated calculates in the local community, as I presented in my presentation earlier, here we are moving opposite. Internet is going to be local. If you look now, in many places, people want to communicate in their local language. That's why I talked about Bode and I talked about Bishop too. People want to communicate in a local language. People want meaningful things in their context. Want to do that on the internet. And for that reason, I think it makes sense if the community networks are actually locally owned and supported, having said that there is a possibility that a community network can grow. The question is, what is the growth trajectory, or what is the growth path? And that's where the regulators actually provide an opportunity for community networks to grow through the tiered model. They may start without money, but if they generate income, or if the community is rich enough, then they can grow into a tier one network if they can fulfill the requirements of the regulator. Thank you. Good insight.
Let me try to just add one more question on this topic, and then I'll go to the next question from the audience. So
speaking of the community network regarding Ethiopia, what has been the experience so far since the regulative Regulatory Act has been enacted? What have been some of the challenge? Okay, thank you very much.
With regard to community network, actually,
we don't have, still legal and regulatory framework, but we don't understand, you know, the importance of having this community network in Ethiopia, as they are able to bridge the gap of connectivities in areas, especially where there is no enough connectivities. So we have been doing, you know, the necessary study, especially where this community network will be engaged. So I think we don't have a specific regulatory mechanism to handle, you know, community network, but I don't mean that, you know, city NATO doesn't have a place in Ethiopia. We understand their role, and we have been just trying, you know, to make them engaging, you know, in Ethiopia. So actually, there has been some sort of initiation in Ethiopia, we know. So we have been trying, you know, to create some sort of opportunities for them just to engage, actually, you know, one of the reason we delayed, you know, in engaging community network provider in Ethiopia is, you know, the liberalization itself has been made. You know, very recently we didn't know that, you know, the area where, you know this community network really engaged with we didn't do, you know, enough studies
in Ethiopia,
so that delayed us, but now we have completed these studies, so I think we will just try to include them in the coming time. Thank you, Mr. Million, if I may,
just to add a bit on the point, I think it was a very good question. And absolutely, do you think we have some
points from Mr. Ryan? It's just to point out on the community, community for profit, not for profit side of the question as well. I think they are absolutely in the case of Brazil, they are absolutely complimentary. And Angie has been working trying to get ISPs and community networks to work together more and more in Brazil, I think on the question of speed, of how fast can we connect people? I think maybe this will be much more related to local let's say geography, population density. Perhaps if you have a more dense local or city, a for profit organization will be faster in in Brazil, where you have a low density population, community networks have been faster in connecting people. So actually you need both of them, because when we when we talk about meaningful and universal connectivity, we do not have one answer to all our problems. We need to look at different options to arrive at that. Give me Sudha,
thank you very much for the opportunity. From the start of the day, we have been talking about how
the regional integration can be very much helpful the infrastructure development and also the regulations that that must be improved in order to give their Africa its own content. And Madam, as you said earlier, the creating internet exchanges, regional Internet exchanges, keeping local content local should be very much appreciated. And I just want to say to Eric and that the main point here is infrastructure.
It's regulation, it data centers,
be it deploying fibers or these are the infrastructures that we need here.
So in order to foster this
development
I do think the role of the data centers
for generally, for Ethiopia and for the region as as a whole. Thank you very much. That's a good question. So just before I let Mr. Erik answered I didn't introduce him properly.
So Mr. Erik is a Group Director at wingu Africa, so and I will let him introduce himself in depth after this.
Thank you for the question. So when we talk about infrastructure and data centers, I think they're very synonymous, synonymous, and now one is CO dependent
on the other, and the benefits of having both of those is especially carrier nutrient centers, is that it gives an opportunity for carriers to interconnect locally for an IX to flourish and peer locally, keep traffic locally, saves costs for many of the ISPs, rather than having to go out to expensive subsea cables, and it allows local expertise to grow within a segment, in this case, Ethiopia. So you know, as community grows, as more and more services come in, as more caches come in and things are stored, that will improve connectivity, it will help communities as well, because the cost is no longer going out to external parties and coming back in. And also, I think our Brazilian colleague said that the more competition there is, and the faster the internet becomes for everybody and and in fact, in my experience, and I've worked in Europe, Asia, Africa and Europe is the speeds always increase, and everybody gets a much larger slice of the pie commercially. So I think data centers and infrastructure very much go hand in it, to add that,
where do you see EOPS regulation improvement in the next year or so, to make sure that the local content And
in relation to the local data center growth so it's a good question.
So think what we're seeing is there's a much increased
demand for cloud services. I think a lot of people want to make that jump, but there's obviously hesitancy, as there is always when the market moves into that area, I think we probably need a little bit more investment, or people taking a leap of faith and bringing some cash is and some some cloud services here. So, I mean, it's a little bit chicken and egg. We will get there. So the idea is we we incubate the ecosystem so that we suppliers with customers, and also incubate local talent to be able to provide local services to local cloud providers as well. Very much. Next question start out.
I'm David Bucha from Internet Society.
My question is mainly to Ryan
from Brazil, abd I was very interested by the symmetric regulation, regulation that you mentioned. I don't think that we do have that in many African countries, so I wanted to know how impactful it has been in helping the development of smaller ISPs, and how those ISPs have been able to connect maybe the most difficult parts in the country, And maybe most of all, have these ISPs been sustainable? Are they? You know, have they been able
to sustain themselves? I
think I will stop here. Thank you.
Mr. Brian, yes. Thank you for the question starting from the end, yes, the ISPs
have been very sustainable. It's a growing market we have seen in the last few years. More banks investing in ISPs, buying and helping you know, the larger ISPs consolidate and have a stronger structure. The asymmetric regulation has been absolutely key for the development of the ISPs in Brazil for the small operators, mostly because the companies, the national companies have a large burden, especially when you say regulatory burden. So they need big legal offices. They need big accounting offices, and these would simply not be feasible for small operators, operating with five to 10,000 clients. Let's say so you need a smaller burden. That's not to say that we have any. They do not fulfill their obligations. It's lower burden, but they still need to comply with consumer obligations, quality obligations, so you try to remove the aspects that are focused on controlling bad habits, let's say that this the regulations more focused on controlling market abuses. So it's focused on the larger corporations, and leaves the ISPs more room to grow and to operate. So
I have a question for you related to that. So you mentioned the burden that big ISPs have, and I assume the regulator is
in a lot of
enforcement roles at this junction of time. How does the regulator effectively make sure that there is a balance between the monetary or the commercial side of things versus the social responsibilities. For example, if
going to a remote area doesn't make sense commercially
for a long time, you know how that deal with the balance? A great question as well the regulator. They do within the competition targets, plan, the pjmc. They have a,
not an annual every four years, they were a review of the of the state of competition in every market. So in the mobile, the fixed, grab and all the services and they analyze, how's the competition doing, how's the market evolving, how the company is faring. So every few years, we do a big review of this plan and how we're moving forward. And right now we're in the middle of the current reviewing the PNC. So we're seeing all kinds of debates on how much we can scale back the symmetries if we still need it. There's a big debate here in Brazil right now, and what they do is they have a multi faceted approach. They do not only look at services, but they take advantage as well of the spectrum options to put in obligations that would help other services, not only the mobile goals. So within the five DB spectrum option, for example, we had a lot of obligations related to building public infrastructure in the Amazon region, also in fiber, fiber networks to help large data centers connect in the Amazon wi also very helpful in the future for smaller ISPs in the region as well. So they are taking this multi faceted approach. They look at competition, they review the market, and they also take advantage of the more, let's say, the bigger prices in spectrum to make sure that we are as a as a country, move you're moving forward in connectivity. Next question.
My name is tesfa from bah University. A quick question for, I think Kenya and maybe Praz. So the type of licensing that you get from the regulator and community networks, sharing, if you have an exemption of licenses on top of those unlicensed spectrum like 2.485 regardless. So maybe if you can reflect on that and explain what is the challenges also you face on those unlicensed spectrum, and how much you expect to get also, license from those commercial Barrack. Thank you very much. So in Kenya, we have the community network service provider license, which costs $100
a year. It's different from the tier three network facility provider, application service provider, which combined the cost you anything between 3000 to $1,000 depending on like has been. You know, if you pay late, whether the amount has been, I'm lacking the word, there's a way they can, they can pay depending on the time of the year where you've paid. Um, something interesting is that the community network service provider license is only given to not for profit entities, Non Governmental Organization. Can be a community based organization, can be a foundation, can be a non governmental organization, but you need endorsement from a chief. I'm not sure if we have chiefs in Ethiopia confirm that you are actually making a difference in that particular community. This was done as a compromise, because there had to be a negotiation with the mainstream operators who are wondering, why is it that someone else is paying $10,000 in another person is paying $100 yet they are providing the same service? The other important thing is that community networks are normally last mile operators. So for instance, ethos telecom will be the main provider at the last mile, it is the community network that will provide the connectivity and related services. But because some some people can be rogue if they are not controlled at the Autocom, the only way it can take action against this community network is by reporting them based on their license to be regulator. So that is how the system operates. So we started with a few pilots, which are working with varied success, and we are continuing to try that. I don't know if that answers your question.
Next question,
good afternoon. My name is Juno cow. I'm the Senior Manager at ICANN, the Internet Corporation for assign names and numbers and a
question, my comment is towards director, Assistant Director General, and I think the authority has done really well since it is relatively
new, and it's also really good and insightful to see that you shared
in terms of the market being open, liberalization of the industry. That was really helpful, and I applaud you, and would urge you to keep doing that. It's really good to see the growth, especially in terms of connecting the unconnected. The second question was towards the ITU, you said one of the things that you proposed was a regulator for the region that we didn't have a regular a regional regulator for the specific, I think, region. And my question is to just push back a bit on whether we do need another regulator. We already have, you know, actual I call sadac, has one. Every country has open. Sometimes it's even more than one, if it's on the internet side, where sometimes they might have the DNS industry regulated separately from the main telco regulator. So just a bit of pushback on whether we need another regulator. Thank you for your question. We actually don't need
another regulator. My proposal was actually not on a regulator,
but on a regional regulatory association which brings the regulators together so that they are able to come up with recommendations, with guidelines which guides the region overallly. And these guidelines and recommendations, they are not policy and they are not a full regulation, but they are best practices, which they agree as a region, which will allow them to integrate their networks, to bring together different services in a way that is uniform and acceptable. So in this case, I indicated that there are two already organizations within the region, Yanko and Samuel within comesa, but you find that there is no complementarity between the two organizations, and they could also be working on areas which are similar but differently, such that resources which could be pulled together to push towards a common agenda actually being split and used separately and differently, which is not efficient and economic for the region. Thank you.
So next question is to Mr. Million, you mentioned
a universal access fund that is usually collected during the licensing of the telecom operators, I assume, and that fund is meant to provide funding for projects that which
provide connectivity to underserved or rural part of the areas. How does that functionality work? I mentioned I assume that during your slides, I saw a resource auction
item. How does that actually work?
Mr. Mi, okay. Thank you. Robert, actually,
in my presentation, I have mentioned, you know, universal access. This universal access event has been established by communication service, proclamation level in 2019 but you know, in the proclamation, actually the this fund is only established the source of the fund and the distribution of the fund is not clearly indicated there. So that's why, actually, we have tried, you know, to draft the regulation that manages, you know, the source of this income and the distribution of this income. So, as I said, actually, the source of this fund is the communication service license holder, including unified telecommunication license holder and other class license holder, they should contribute a certain amount of money to this fund, and this friend will be utilized in order to the areas with enough connectivity in Ethiopia. So, you know, we collected this money from the communication service provider itself, and we will distribute this many to the communication service providers in a way of, you know, reverse auction. Actually. Reverse Auction is a type of auction where the traditional role of buyer and seller are, you know, reverse it in, in traditional ways, you know the buyers bidding. You know for a certain product. You know, whenever there is a bid a buyer, you know, a bid for a product or service, and seller, you know, compete to offer the price. But in this case, you know, the regulator identify areas where there is no enough connectivity, and you know, set its own requirement to provide connectivity to that particular so the communication service provider will come up with with their own bid, with their own price, you know, to provide that requirement to the regulator. So, you know, the regulator just will select the bidder which comes up, you know, with the right price or with the Lost price. So this is the way, actually, we will distribute the money to communication service provider. We collect the money from them, and we will distribute this money through reverse auction to communication service providers. So reverse auction is, you know, the regular the regulators, the requirement, and then, you know, the service provider will come up with their own price in order to provide or just to build that project, and then the regulator will select based on, you know, the price they provide. So that is actually one in reverse auction. So it helps the regulator to get the best price. Okay, makes sense. Thank you. Any questions?
Hi, Hello, good afternoon. My name is Helena from liquid telephone. My question was actually for Ryan, if he's still on
it was a follow up to what Dr dyed asked earlier about the growth of the small tier ISPs. I was particularly fascinated by the, you know, family owned sort of you know who you message them on WhatsApp. I was wondering if was it the regulation that opened up opportunity for those ISPs to flourish, or was it sort of a business opportunity that pushed regulation in that direction? It's a sequencing question, I suppose so. Thank you very much. Yeah, that is a great question. I'm not sure if I have a
correct answer, right? I think it's can be actually both. I think we are. We had seen some smaller operators before the push in the regulation. But definitely has a country wide phenomenon with has the regulation allowed this small interpreters to continue to do their things. I think it expanded. And you saw more and more of the country. Because, you know, prior to 2012 you should see you have a lot of bureaucracies to fulfill, to actually have a license ISP working in Brazil. So you used to this was a many small business starting up as a local computer shop, local IC shop, or maybe what we call in Brazil, a land house where you could pay to use the internet for a few hours. So they already had some sort of connection due to this internet service. So when the regulation opened up the playing field, we saw the lady, and they invested and started to grow the business from in small steps. So they actually started out in a neighborhood than with city and so on. So I think I would, I would say that some of them already were already operating. They already had some form of business going on. But it was the regulation allowed this possibility to be widespread in the country that we saw that this big movement. I you.
Okay, Mister Barrack,
thank you. Just a quick one on the question that was asked. I just wanted to add that the community network service provider license in Kenya is a unified license combines the application service provider, which allows you to sell internet or related services and network facilities provider. Otherwise, as we go up the tiers, you need to apply separately for an NFP and for an ASP. The other quick point that I want to add is that data center also played a very critical role in democratizing internet, because the fact that they are meet me rooms in the data centers have created options. Sometimes, most of these operators have ended up creating community players that we have had where they are downstream customers. So one of the things that is critical is having these data centers localized. I know it's a financial issue, but it's very critical. Lastly is the issue of network architecture. We are seeing people having networks even by tribe, because they want content that is in their particular tribe. So you'll find Asians their own content, Arabs with their own content, and they're paying for it, which means that they make these networks relevant. Thank you. Interesting. Mr. Joshua,
I hope I'm audible. I just want just about three points earlier, there was a question on data centers. I think we need to indeed encourage local data centers, because the data will be collected, will be relevant in building AI tools, because you all know that AI depends on data. If you look into the history of this ICP, for the time, the talk was big data, big data. Now the talk is AI, which is based on this big data, without this local content stored locally. I think we will not be able to build the AI that we want. My second point was in line with what I think Miss mentioned on having an association for regulators, and I think this is a very good idea, because it's already working in other sectors. Currently, there is an association called the Eastern Southern Africa water and sanitation Association, which is doing a lot of work and aligning management with water and, in fact, regulators of water services the region, this work goes beyond just talk. They get into understanding indicators and measuring these indicators in a common way so as to be able to serve people who are, say, not accessing clean water. This is something we could borrow for enabling us to make more people to the internet. My other point was on something similar to what Mr. Mentioned there, if you look at many of these communities that are hard to reach or that are not connected, they are often border community communities, meaning that you actually have post border communities that you need to build a network for, cross border communities. We do have instances around this region whereby at the border, say, and Congo, you find on the other side of Congo, they are actually using network operators, Visa, WI. So if you definitely find that these communities are even broader communities, and as people here talking, I think we need to work together, not just build communities locally within the country, but need to do what the collaboration these communities and you're running out of time. But I want to ask one question that I believe is important. Think we can, can get one question in. So regarding the community Next, we have explained a lot about how they work and what are some of the challenge and one of the challenge that is the first
in all areas of the connectivity paradigm is the back home or the long haul piece. And you know, in relation the
inter country or inter regional connectivity, Internet Gateway, submarine cables and so on.
I understand that the
IGAD region is at different states of the regulatory framework. So my question is to
like, how does that be improved?
You know, maybe Kenya has gone farther in the in the journey Kenya and Brazil, while maybe
Ethiopia and South Sudan might not. So, how can the regulation help in that case, and then maybe to miss this, the inter country interaction comes up like here. And how can the this
association of regulatory
all this can help on that regard, specific to the back wall and intercontinental or inter regional fiber camps. Maybe I start with Mr. Barrack or
this million
I will start on the issue of building an inter regional network, you'll find that
basically it doesn't mean that it has to be a network that is run by one operator, but basically what it means is there has to be an understanding of how we are interconnecting and ensuring that within each country and jurisdiction, we get the required services and speed.
So
this start like you're saying the networks are hierarchical. So basically, we're looking at the backbone. What backbone should we build for our region and and what does each country need to do in order to come up with this backbone? It might be a process which might take time, because our resources may not be readily available for that. So I believe it's a commitment that requires more than just regulators. It also requires the governments and maybe private and public players to come in to help with the investments that are required to build such an such networks. I could give an example of one company which has done that, but it's not through regulatory efforts, but it's business model. I think liquid has managed to do a network which runs across many countries, enable enabling land locked countries to actually get very good connectivity speeds, because they have designed this network to encompass many networks, sorry, many countries, and having many entry points from the submarines, they have managed to build resilience within the network. And I think those are the important aspects, building resilience, building the capacity as ensuring that there is financial backup from both the public sector to build such a network, so the regional regulatory authority could come in. Is a harmonizing where they help to ensure that they keep an eye on the development, keep an eye on the requirements, and continue to towards that common goal. Thank you. Sorry. Jumping very, very very quickly here. So I was, funny enough,
I was the first international employee for liquid silicon in London. And
when I joined liquid silicon, they'd literally just done the connectivity on Bay Bridge going up towards Harare and Bulawayo. And that was in 2012 and you look where that network went, and the way they did it was through acquisition, and through those acquisition competition, and through competition increased capacities, and if, in fact, it creates an entire ecosystem. Whereas, if you you know, as I say, when I joined liquid, I think there was only zantel and cc liquid. You look now, you've got MTN, you've got Vodafone, you've got so many suppliers. Same story as we went up into lumber Bashi, we were the only people to break a fiber into lumber Bashi. And let me tell you, that wasn't cheap to buy, but if you look at it now, you've got multiple carriers going in there, and everyone is having a commercial advantage. It's not one person. Everybody is so local providers, incumbents as well as commercial enterprises. So I think competition drives
growth and capacity actually
drives revenues up. But, you know, as I said, I've worked in many markets, and there's always a resistance towards us to begin with. And then when they see that, you know, you know, 10% of a billion is much better than 100% of a million, it's, you know, it starts to make a lot more sense. And obviously, from from the data, that's exactly what we want to facilitate, is to make sure that customers have got options and things that connect. And you know, the and the neutrality of a data center, as you say, is very, very important, because it gives a an option for carriers to interact with other carriers where they may not have reach so they buy and sell from each other as well. So it creates a wholesale environment, and so say, just my little bit of experience,
that's a great insight. Mr. Barrack, so quickly, regulation can be a burden, and we felt that on community networks and small players actually can almost you
can pay almost $10,000 in regulation alone, which is very heavy for a small business. So I think self regulation is good, but self regulation comes with a lot of education and proper frameworks, in a sense. So I think that while there's a place for regulation, regulators have a role to be facilitators, whether it's using sandboxes. Number two, the issue of data centers, is critical. I cannot over emphasize that because we think about IX, which are critical in this regional exchanges. They need to be hosted at data centers, simple materials. They don't cost a lot of money to plug into but they make a very big difference in reducing cost of inter connectivity. Lastly, is the issue of infrastructure sharing. It has been a game changer for us in Kenya, because many of the teleports carry us on their infrastructure at very affordable rates. You can data from any company at the data center, IPT or CNS, at a very reasonable cost, and get a carrier or into carriers to help you. So I think those are practices that are going to be again danger in the eager, eager region and the Africa by extension. Thank you. Miss August. Just to add one more thing, which was
brought to mind by what he said, to say is Africans, it's high time
that within our networks, the competition is no longer really on infrastructure, but it's on service. The end user is not concerned on what kind of infrastructure you are doing behind you. So it's really important that we just see infrastructure as a path through which we attain the end goal of providing service to the user. So it is important in realizing that we can share this infrastructure, but differentiating at service level to give us the competitive advantage that we want. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone has Yes,
maybe just some issues, actually, you know, the regulator, even the license, has a crucial renewal and expansion of
infrastructure in one contract. And if there is no,
you know, a proper regulation will just manage the
expansion of infrastructure. You know, things
will just
stop there. So I think there should be some sort of mechanism that, or regulation that boosts, you know, infrastructure in one country. And so I think there is a role from the recruit side, especially, you know, in ongoing, you know, the private sector, to engage more, you know, in this sort of activities. Sometimes, you know, expanding or deploying infrastructure allowed the income and but, you know, there should be some sort of changes to this policy. The private sector should engage in building, you know, infrastructure. So I think the regulation will shape up, you know, the expansion of
infrastructure just in one countries,
this is the point. Thank you. We have run out of time,
so I'd like to thank our panelists, Mr. Barrack, Miss Mavis, Mr. Million,
Mr. Erik, and then virtually, Mr. Joshua and thank you for the lively Q A Panel.
