UNESCAP launches 2007 flagship publication
By Dionisia Tabureguci
IN the face of an expected slowing of US economy in 2007 nudging Asia into what has been described as “uncertain times”, Pacific Island economies are forecast to experience “robust growth”, according to the 2007 Economic and Social Survey of Asia and the Pacific, the flagship publication of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP).
In a worldwide launch of the survey report, titled: Surging Ahead in Uncertain Times, UNESCAP executive secretary Kim Hak-Su said although Asia and Pacific nations were rapidly emerging as engines of global growth, there were key questions.
“What will drive our growth if the U.S economy slows down in 2007? Ten years after the Asian economic crisis, is the region once again becoming more vulnerable to shocks? Has the region learnt to live with high oil prices? What kinds of opportunity and challenges does China present to trading nations in Asia and the Pacific? How do central Asian countries cope with the appreciation of their currencies in the face of rising oil prices?”
While indeed growth will be robust for PICs in 2007, they lag behind their Asian peers, most of whom have long instituted economic and structural reforms and policies on good governance, transparency and accountability.
The report estimates Pacific’s average growth at 3.7 percent in 2007, on par with last year’s 3.8 percent. Although considered robust by UNESCAP, the growth is not enough to push forward the standard of living of Pacific islanders.
“Much higher levels of economic growth are required if Pacific island countries are to raise their living standards significantly in the face of rapid population growth,” said Herve Beaver, head of UNESCAP Pacific Operations Centre.
“For the future, there remain many big challenges that Pacific islands have to meet. The poor investment climate in many Pacific island countries is depriving them of much needed investment to sustain higher economic growth. Limited scope for export diversification and poor infrastructure continues to be a problem in many countries,” Beaver said.
The report identified internal challenges faced by PICs as poor investment climate, maintaining political stability, limited scope for export diversification and poor infrastructure.
External challenges, of which PICs had little control, were noted as being geographical isolation, trade liberalization and higher oil prices.
The prevailing high oil prices, although expected to ease in 2007 as global economy slows, has posed and will continue to pose considerable challenges for policymakers in Pacific island countries, with only PNG expected to benefit from the windfall, it being the sole producer and refiner of oil in the Pacific region.
“For other Pacific island countries, high oil prices have reduced their terms of trade and led to the deterioration of their trade balances and current accounts. The 250 percent rise in the price of West Texas Intermediate petroleum has translated into sharply higher import bills and to higher costs for businesses and consumers, thereby reducing incomes and stoking inflationary pressures. And the cost of international air travel is rising just as tourism was beginning to improve in several Pacific countries,” the report said.
The report noted that PICs had implemented various policy measures in order to manage shocks from this cost but for most, the option of exploring and developing alternative renewable energy sources is the only logical one to take in order to ensure sustainable and less costly energy supply in the long term.
In terms of social challenges, the report identified the rapid rate of urbanization and subsequent rise in unemployment due to lack of economic activities as root cause of what has been perceived as increasing urban poverty in the region.
To manage this, the report suggested that PICs developing countries “develop a clearer vision of how they want their urban development to go in the future, how they might get there and who will be responsible for the different tasks.”
“Policies aimed at poverty reduction could first aim at rehabilitating those in dire danger of losing their lives due to extreme poverty – and second at providing sustainable income generating opportunities,” it said.
In a special study it also carried out as part of this report, UNESCAP research showed that the Asia-Pacific region loses US$42 to US$47 billion a year due to restrictions on women’s access to education and another US$16 to US$30 billion a year because of gender gaps in education.
It is not clear how much of these figures may be attributed to the Pacific because of lack of reliable statistics.
NOTE: This article was published in the Islands Business Magazine (www.islandsbusiness.com) as article titled: ROBUST GROWTH FOR THE ISLANDS, p.52, May 2007 edition.
here and there; out and about; fiji-time.....
Sunday, 13 May 2007
Reviving JCC will depend on island nations: Urwin
The elusive United States/Pacific Island Nations Joint Commercial Commission
By Dionisia Tabureguci
REVIVING the United States/Pacific Island Nations Joint Commercial Commission (JCC) is something that Pacific Island Countries (PICs) may want to see happen but instead of trying to lobby for support from the US, it has been suggested that they first try to help themselves.
Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat (PIFS) Secretary-General Greg Urwin told Islands Business last month that the JCC will feature on the agenda of the 2007 Pacific Islands Conference of Leaders, scheduled to be held in Washington D.C this month.
Attention on it will focus on a list of suggestions from PIFS on market mechanisms.
“As you know, the JCC has not done much benefit to the parties involved. The US is telling us not to invent new arrangements but to make use of what is already in place. But we will be taking to the US a list of suggestions on market mechanisms,” Urwin said.
The JCC was proposed by US President George Bush Snr at the United States-Pacific Islands Summit held in October 1990 at the East-West Centre in Hawaii.
The MOU to establish it was signed on January 12, 1993 by the United States and the then 13 independent Pacific nations.
Although not strictly a trade arrangement, the JCC is the closest that PICs have come to collectively having any form of market access mechanism with the US.
The MOU, according to a speech delivered in Fiji in 2005 by former US ambassador to the Pacific, David Lyons, contained eight specific functions that relate to trade and investment, all of which were open to discussion within the JCC context.
“Included among them were provisions for information exchanges, dialogue mechanisms, education programs, private-sector development, and monitoring program effectiveness,” Lyons had said.
However, past efforts to make the JCC work for the islands have not quite amounted to substantial progress, and as time passed, the idea had slid to and from the backburner as Forum member countries shifted efforts to pitching either for their own relationships with the US or other group access frameworks.
In his 2005 speech though, Lyons had pointed to the JCC as the Pacific’s best hope in getting somewhere with the US and that any effort to try for a duplication here of something that the US already has with groups of countries in other regions is likely to be wasted.
JCC, he had said, was the Pacific’s best bet and that there were elements to it that merited more Pacific attention to get it up and running.
“One enormously valuable aspect of the JCC is that it very nearly approximates a TIFA, or Trade and Investment Framework Agreement. TIFAs are not well known but they are de factor precursors for Free Trade Agreements or FTAs. One U.S expert told me last year that the U.S will not negotiate an FTA with a country with which we do not already have a TIFA. He also said that the 1993 JCC agreement is 90% of the way to a 21st century TIFA,” Lyons had said. “Now I am not saying that the U.S will jump from the JCC to an FTA – we won’t. What I am saying is that a near-TIFA is a very good thing, one not to be ignored.”
Despite the as-yet non-alignment of PICs to the JCC and what it has to offer, past efforts to use it to facilitate trade and investment have resulted in the establishment of a JCC secretariat based at the East-West Centre in Hawaii, the yearly meetings of PICs leaders and US government officials in an event called the Pacific Island Conference of Leaders and a promising document after this annual event in May 2005. Titled: “Draft Proposal on ways to reinvigorate the U.S/Pacific Island Nations Joint Commercial Commission”, this attachment to that meeting’s summary record reaffirmed the U.S stand that the JCC MOU would be the best platform “for any future approach to Washington, DC regarding market access and closer economic relationships at the regional level.”
“In addition, for positive momentum to be re-established by the JCC, whatever activities are undertaken should be concrete (i.e., practical and clear), achievable (i.e., limited in scale), and mutually beneficial to the PINS (Pacific Island Nations) and the U.S. We all understand that the real challenge to trade and investment agreements of all kinds, irrespective of good intentions, boils down to this question: ‘is it translatable into sustained doable action at the national political and economic levels?”
It was further recommended that PICs consider “an incremental, doable, and more focused approach to Washington, DC, using the trade and investment promotion mandate of the JCC as the primary vehicle for developing mutually beneficial economic and specific commercial projects under the JCC arrangement.”
As once described by Scott Kroeker, JCC official at the East-West Centre, on this revival effort to this magazine: “the objective is to find some small but symbolic victories that the JCC can point to in an effort to build momentum and support from all fronts.”
Two important suggestions that came out of this revival roadmap were:
• The identification, by both sides, of a limited range of goods and services that give specific focus to the JCC, and
• The identification of specific measures and actions that will create and facilitate trade and investment in the specific areas identified
It was also mooted that a closer working relationship be developed between PIFS and the JCC Secretariat and as a result, PIFS was unofficially tasked with the role of getting the island countries to come up with a list of products and services that could be developed and positioned into US market using JCC.
Not much progress however has been achieved where this is concerned.
“Island countries have been less enthusiastic in coming up with a list of products,” said Urwin. “As you can see today (at launch of the 2007 UNESCAP report in Fiji) it is up PICs to develop themselves and create products.”
A flurry of economic assessment reports released by donor agencies recently showed the need for PICs to be more proactive and efficient in dealing with challenges in their economic, social and governance system.
Urwin said taking care of these issues and challenges would then create conducive environment for investment in potential sectors out which new products and services may emerge and which could then be marketed to the US.
He said another issue that PIFS will be talking to US about at the 2007 PICL is the possibility of having Forum member countries gain access, as a collective body, to the US Millennium Challenge Account, an account set up by the US in 2002 to help developing countries but on conditions that they “root out corruption, respect human rights, and adhere to the rule of law, among other things.”
NOTE: This article was published in the Islands Business Magazine (www.islandsbusiness.com) as article titled: MILLENNIUM ACCOUNT TO FEATURE IN US/PACIFIC MEET, p.35, May 2007 edition.
By Dionisia Tabureguci
REVIVING the United States/Pacific Island Nations Joint Commercial Commission (JCC) is something that Pacific Island Countries (PICs) may want to see happen but instead of trying to lobby for support from the US, it has been suggested that they first try to help themselves.
Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat (PIFS) Secretary-General Greg Urwin told Islands Business last month that the JCC will feature on the agenda of the 2007 Pacific Islands Conference of Leaders, scheduled to be held in Washington D.C this month.
Attention on it will focus on a list of suggestions from PIFS on market mechanisms.
“As you know, the JCC has not done much benefit to the parties involved. The US is telling us not to invent new arrangements but to make use of what is already in place. But we will be taking to the US a list of suggestions on market mechanisms,” Urwin said.
The JCC was proposed by US President George Bush Snr at the United States-Pacific Islands Summit held in October 1990 at the East-West Centre in Hawaii.
The MOU to establish it was signed on January 12, 1993 by the United States and the then 13 independent Pacific nations.
Although not strictly a trade arrangement, the JCC is the closest that PICs have come to collectively having any form of market access mechanism with the US.
The MOU, according to a speech delivered in Fiji in 2005 by former US ambassador to the Pacific, David Lyons, contained eight specific functions that relate to trade and investment, all of which were open to discussion within the JCC context.
“Included among them were provisions for information exchanges, dialogue mechanisms, education programs, private-sector development, and monitoring program effectiveness,” Lyons had said.
However, past efforts to make the JCC work for the islands have not quite amounted to substantial progress, and as time passed, the idea had slid to and from the backburner as Forum member countries shifted efforts to pitching either for their own relationships with the US or other group access frameworks.
In his 2005 speech though, Lyons had pointed to the JCC as the Pacific’s best hope in getting somewhere with the US and that any effort to try for a duplication here of something that the US already has with groups of countries in other regions is likely to be wasted.
JCC, he had said, was the Pacific’s best bet and that there were elements to it that merited more Pacific attention to get it up and running.
“One enormously valuable aspect of the JCC is that it very nearly approximates a TIFA, or Trade and Investment Framework Agreement. TIFAs are not well known but they are de factor precursors for Free Trade Agreements or FTAs. One U.S expert told me last year that the U.S will not negotiate an FTA with a country with which we do not already have a TIFA. He also said that the 1993 JCC agreement is 90% of the way to a 21st century TIFA,” Lyons had said. “Now I am not saying that the U.S will jump from the JCC to an FTA – we won’t. What I am saying is that a near-TIFA is a very good thing, one not to be ignored.”
Despite the as-yet non-alignment of PICs to the JCC and what it has to offer, past efforts to use it to facilitate trade and investment have resulted in the establishment of a JCC secretariat based at the East-West Centre in Hawaii, the yearly meetings of PICs leaders and US government officials in an event called the Pacific Island Conference of Leaders and a promising document after this annual event in May 2005. Titled: “Draft Proposal on ways to reinvigorate the U.S/Pacific Island Nations Joint Commercial Commission”, this attachment to that meeting’s summary record reaffirmed the U.S stand that the JCC MOU would be the best platform “for any future approach to Washington, DC regarding market access and closer economic relationships at the regional level.”
“In addition, for positive momentum to be re-established by the JCC, whatever activities are undertaken should be concrete (i.e., practical and clear), achievable (i.e., limited in scale), and mutually beneficial to the PINS (Pacific Island Nations) and the U.S. We all understand that the real challenge to trade and investment agreements of all kinds, irrespective of good intentions, boils down to this question: ‘is it translatable into sustained doable action at the national political and economic levels?”
It was further recommended that PICs consider “an incremental, doable, and more focused approach to Washington, DC, using the trade and investment promotion mandate of the JCC as the primary vehicle for developing mutually beneficial economic and specific commercial projects under the JCC arrangement.”
As once described by Scott Kroeker, JCC official at the East-West Centre, on this revival effort to this magazine: “the objective is to find some small but symbolic victories that the JCC can point to in an effort to build momentum and support from all fronts.”
Two important suggestions that came out of this revival roadmap were:
• The identification, by both sides, of a limited range of goods and services that give specific focus to the JCC, and
• The identification of specific measures and actions that will create and facilitate trade and investment in the specific areas identified
It was also mooted that a closer working relationship be developed between PIFS and the JCC Secretariat and as a result, PIFS was unofficially tasked with the role of getting the island countries to come up with a list of products and services that could be developed and positioned into US market using JCC.
Not much progress however has been achieved where this is concerned.
“Island countries have been less enthusiastic in coming up with a list of products,” said Urwin. “As you can see today (at launch of the 2007 UNESCAP report in Fiji) it is up PICs to develop themselves and create products.”
A flurry of economic assessment reports released by donor agencies recently showed the need for PICs to be more proactive and efficient in dealing with challenges in their economic, social and governance system.
Urwin said taking care of these issues and challenges would then create conducive environment for investment in potential sectors out which new products and services may emerge and which could then be marketed to the US.
He said another issue that PIFS will be talking to US about at the 2007 PICL is the possibility of having Forum member countries gain access, as a collective body, to the US Millennium Challenge Account, an account set up by the US in 2002 to help developing countries but on conditions that they “root out corruption, respect human rights, and adhere to the rule of law, among other things.”
NOTE: This article was published in the Islands Business Magazine (www.islandsbusiness.com) as article titled: MILLENNIUM ACCOUNT TO FEATURE IN US/PACIFIC MEET, p.35, May 2007 edition.
Nauruans close to new Constitution
PHOTO CAPTION: front - Mrs Ruby Thoma, Chairperson, Nauru Constitutional Review Commission;
back row from left to right: Dr Guy Powles, Commissioner; Mr Winnie Tsitsi, Assistant to
Commission; Mr Leo Keke, Commissioner.
PHOTO SUPPLIED BY: Katy Le Roy, legal adviser to the Commission and UNDP consultant.
Amendments to address accountability
By Dionisia Tabureguci
THE people of Nauru are in sight of an amended Constitution, one that promises to be more responsive to their needs, safeguard their resources and financial welfare and oblige public office holders to be more accountable and transparent.
In what has been described as an “important milestone for Nauru and its people and a great opportunity for Nauru to strengthen its Constitution in a democratic manner”, Nauruans went to the polls last month to elect 18 people to serve on a 36-member Constitutional Convention. Nauru’s Parliamentary Standing Committee on Constitutional Review (CRC) will appoint the other 18 members.
The task of this Convention will be to debate the findings and recommendations of the island country’s Independent Commission on Constitutional Review, a three-member team appointed last year by the CRC to undertake an independent assessment of Nauru’s 39-year-old Constitution. The Commission was also tasked to make recommendations based on public views that had resulted from last year’s call for public submissions.
“The Convention will start deliberations on Monday 23 April and will sit for approximately six weeks, to debate the recommendations contained in the Commission’s Report,” Commission’s legal adviser and constitutional lawyer Katy Le Roy said.
The Independent Commission was chaired by Ruby Thoma, historically Nauru’s only woman Parliamentarian, while other Commissioners included Nauru lawyer Leo Keke and Pacific constitutional law specialist Dr Guy Powles.
Upon the release in late March of the Commission’s report, Thoma said the Commission was of the belief that it had been able to come up with recommendations for amendment “that address the concerns of the people of Nauru about past abuse of public funds and lack of government accountability” and that if adopted, the changes would “result in a significant improvement in the way the institutions of government operate.”
“The Commission has examined all the views that were expressed at the forty public consultation meetings held last year and all the written submissions received by the Commission. The clear message from the public is that they have lost trust in their public institutions and they expect much greater accountability. The recommendations that we have made reflect that and suggest a way forward,” Thoma said.
Nauruans called for a constitution review in 2004 amid increasing public concerns about the way the Rene Harris government was using public funds.
This led to public outrage and massive protests on the island, led by the then opposition members of Parliament who are now incumbent members of the Ludwig Scotty Government.
“When we took over in 2004, there was basically no financial system in place, the Treasury had not produced accounts for years and the public had no knowledge of where the money had all gone. It was extremely alarming,” said David Adeang, Nauru’s Minister for Finance and Foreign Affairs.
Dr Kieren Keke, Nauru’s Minister for Health, Sports and Transport and who introduced the Bill that created the Standing Committee to review the Constitution in 2004, said: “the people of Nauru had repeatedly called for a review of the Constitution and the government has responded.”
Present day Nauru and its group of revolutionary leaders emerged from a recent history peppered with doubtful dealings by the previous government, which had seen the near collapse of the island country’s Phosphate Royalties Trust (NPRT), stripped it of a number of prime assets and drove the national state of affairs to the edge. Where Nauruans were once the world’s richest people by per capita basis, the rationalisation by the Scotty government in 2004 saw Nauru’s public servants, including President Scotty, receiving standard wages of A$140 a fortnight.
Now on a much firmer keel and well into the high seas of its economic and structural reforms as set out by the Scotty government’s 20 year National Sustainable Development Strategy, Nauru plans to set sail back to the waters of prosperity guided by an amended Constitution.
The formation of the Constitution Convention is a part of phase four of Nauru’s six-phased review process.
Any decision made by the Convention will be submitted to Parliament at around June.
RECOMMENDATIONS
Among recommendations in the Independent Review Commission’s report and which will be debated by the Convention are:
• that Nauru should have a popularly elected President, rather than a President elected by Parliament,
• that the Speaker should be someone who is not a member of Parliament, to avoid deadlocks that have plagued Nauru
in the past,
• the abolition of appeals to the High Court of Australia and the provision for an appellate division of the Supreme Court of Nauru,
• the establishment of a Public Service Commission,
• that the Director of Audit be made an independent officer of Parliament
• a number of amendments to the finance provisions of the Constitution including strict requirements to account for all public revenue and expenditure
• the introduction of a leadership code and office of ombudsman
NOTE: This article was published in the Islands Business Magazine (www.islandsbusiness.com) as article titled: NEW CONSTITUTION TO ADDRESS ACCOUNTABILITY, p.31, May 2007 edition.
******
Alisi Tuqa is PITA’s new training coordinator
A profile from Pacific Islands Telecommunications Association
(www.pita.org.fj)
PHOTO: Alisi Tuqa
Photo supplied by: Alisi Tuqa
By Dionisia Tabureguci
MEET Alisi Tuqa, new training coordinator for the Pacific Islands Telecommunications Association (PITA), a job that is getting increasingly important as PITA members in the region face the changing world of ICT.
Tuqa comes to PITA with a knowledge background in ICT, having spent four years with the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat (PIFS) as a Researcher in Infrastructure, covering civil aviation, urban management, energy and ICTs.
It was there, she says, where her interest and work in ICT began and have since developed and grown.
“I clearly remember my first year at PIFS and working on the Pacific ICT Survey with PITA and recalling the barriers to ICT development in the region,” Tuqa said in an interview with Islands Business magazine. “One that was clearly evident was the sets of barriers/obstacles pertaining to human resources and institutional capacity – namely, the lack of qualified people in the ICTs sector, (but this is changing as more people are taking up ICT courses/training); retention issues (losing what qualified people had to Australia and New Zealand, etc); and the limited and lack of funds dedicated to training in both private and public sectors,” Now directly involved in the development of the Pacific’s pool of ICT knowledge and skills, Tuqa knows only too well that the need for training those involved in this field comes with a sense of urgency, as things change very fast.
“For a sector such as telecom/ICT, developments are so rapid and ongoing that one needs to be continually updated and on the same token be aware and well versed on those updates. And that includes training and/or information sharing, whether it be technical training (on new systems, models, technology) or more generic business type training (pertaining to HR. financing models, legislation and policy, etc).”
She added that while the PITA membership, including its core membership of regional telecommunication companies, are a varied group, a common issue is the need for continued training and the coordination of this need from PITA is important in that training is pooled. “This allows several members to attend a training session, as opposed to one member trying to coordinate and convene training solely for their staff. This can be very expensive so it is always a worthwhile arrangement to convene regional training for the telcos.”
PITA’s training schedules try to cover a broad area of the telecommunication business, whether it is technical, finance or human resource. An example of this, said Tuqa, is the Pacific Network Operators Group (PacNOG), a weeklong training for Pacific network operators and administrators held every year in June. Other trainings planned for the year, Tuqa said, include: training on Access Technologies (on wireless and fixed; and for converged platforms); on network planning and operations; on fraud and revenue assurance; and GSM roaming.
“PITA is focusing training in these area because it’s what members have requested for and for training such as fraud and revenue assurance, it’s in great part due to increasing trends of fraudulent activities affecting the telecom sector and which is taking place in the region,” Tuqa said.
“A key factor is liaising with consultants, experts and trainers to be able to come and conduct these trainings; particularly for the very technical training, it’s important that we nail these down as soon as possible so we can guarantee having the required trainers and experts to come and deliver the trainings. Sourcing funding too is vital to assist with training delivery as we have very limited resources.”
Tuqa said this year’s training is scheduled to begin next month (May) after endorsement of training budget from PITA members at this month’s Annual General Meeting in Tahiti.
“We’re looking to convene around 12 trainings this year and that is separate from workshops/seminars/meetings we convene in partnership with organizations such as Asia Pacific Telecommunity, International Telecommunications Union, Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat, etc.”
(NOTE: This article was published in the Islands Business Magazine (www.islandsbusiness.com) as article titled: New Training Coordinator, p.28, April 2007 edition.)
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(www.pita.org.fj)
PHOTO: Alisi Tuqa
Photo supplied by: Alisi Tuqa
By Dionisia Tabureguci
MEET Alisi Tuqa, new training coordinator for the Pacific Islands Telecommunications Association (PITA), a job that is getting increasingly important as PITA members in the region face the changing world of ICT.
Tuqa comes to PITA with a knowledge background in ICT, having spent four years with the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat (PIFS) as a Researcher in Infrastructure, covering civil aviation, urban management, energy and ICTs.
It was there, she says, where her interest and work in ICT began and have since developed and grown.
“I clearly remember my first year at PIFS and working on the Pacific ICT Survey with PITA and recalling the barriers to ICT development in the region,” Tuqa said in an interview with Islands Business magazine. “One that was clearly evident was the sets of barriers/obstacles pertaining to human resources and institutional capacity – namely, the lack of qualified people in the ICTs sector, (but this is changing as more people are taking up ICT courses/training); retention issues (losing what qualified people had to Australia and New Zealand, etc); and the limited and lack of funds dedicated to training in both private and public sectors,” Now directly involved in the development of the Pacific’s pool of ICT knowledge and skills, Tuqa knows only too well that the need for training those involved in this field comes with a sense of urgency, as things change very fast.
“For a sector such as telecom/ICT, developments are so rapid and ongoing that one needs to be continually updated and on the same token be aware and well versed on those updates. And that includes training and/or information sharing, whether it be technical training (on new systems, models, technology) or more generic business type training (pertaining to HR. financing models, legislation and policy, etc).”
She added that while the PITA membership, including its core membership of regional telecommunication companies, are a varied group, a common issue is the need for continued training and the coordination of this need from PITA is important in that training is pooled. “This allows several members to attend a training session, as opposed to one member trying to coordinate and convene training solely for their staff. This can be very expensive so it is always a worthwhile arrangement to convene regional training for the telcos.”
PITA’s training schedules try to cover a broad area of the telecommunication business, whether it is technical, finance or human resource. An example of this, said Tuqa, is the Pacific Network Operators Group (PacNOG), a weeklong training for Pacific network operators and administrators held every year in June. Other trainings planned for the year, Tuqa said, include: training on Access Technologies (on wireless and fixed; and for converged platforms); on network planning and operations; on fraud and revenue assurance; and GSM roaming.
“PITA is focusing training in these area because it’s what members have requested for and for training such as fraud and revenue assurance, it’s in great part due to increasing trends of fraudulent activities affecting the telecom sector and which is taking place in the region,” Tuqa said.
“A key factor is liaising with consultants, experts and trainers to be able to come and conduct these trainings; particularly for the very technical training, it’s important that we nail these down as soon as possible so we can guarantee having the required trainers and experts to come and deliver the trainings. Sourcing funding too is vital to assist with training delivery as we have very limited resources.”
Tuqa said this year’s training is scheduled to begin next month (May) after endorsement of training budget from PITA members at this month’s Annual General Meeting in Tahiti.
“We’re looking to convene around 12 trainings this year and that is separate from workshops/seminars/meetings we convene in partnership with organizations such as Asia Pacific Telecommunity, International Telecommunications Union, Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat, etc.”
(NOTE: This article was published in the Islands Business Magazine (www.islandsbusiness.com) as article titled: New Training Coordinator, p.28, April 2007 edition.)
******
Get involved in ICANN processes, says Vocea
Photo: Savenaca Vocea
Photo Supplied by: Savenaca Vocea
By Dionisia Tabureguci
STAKEHOLDERS in the region’s telecommunications industry have been urged to become more involved in issues that are related to the progress of the development of the Internet and a way of doing this would be to keep a tab on work done internationally by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).
ICANN is an internationally organised, non-profit corporation that has the responsibility for Internet Protocol (IP) address space allocation, protocol identifier assignment, generic (gTLD) and country code (ccTLD) Top Level Domain name system management, and root server system management functions.
ICANN’s Regional Liaison officer for the Australasia/Pacific Island region, Savenaca Vocea, said there is a lot happening in the Internet space, and which makes ICANN, as a global coordinating body of the Internet’s system of unique identifiers, well placed to provide current and useful information that should be shared to the Internet community.
“As a ICANN’s liaison in the region, I play a facilitating role in engaging with various stakeholder communities like ccTLD registry bodies, governments, industry players, NGOs and end-user community organizations to promote how best ICANN’s mission and mandates can be of service to the region in terms of preserving a single interoperable and stable Internet system,” Vocea said in an interview with Islands Business Magazine.
“ICANN has been making presentations at, and attended, various industry stakeholder events of PITA (Pacific Islands Telecommunications Association), PacINET (Pacific Internet - annual meeting of Internet Society’s Pacific Islands Chapter) and Pacific Network Operator Group (PacNOG) and other stakeholder groups are sent information but I’d say the knowledge of ICANN is known amongst stakeholder groups in the region. One thing that has taken some time to understand is the ICANN process of decision-making and how one can participate in the various advisory committees and supporting organization that advises ICANN. My role is also to address this and to and encourage more participation from the region to get their voices heard,” said Vocea, who took on the job late last year.
He said active participation was important as some discussions and decisions made by ICANN do impact the way people can run their businesses. An example he cited was the IPV6 address space issue, which would see more IP addresses available internationally that what can be made available by the IPV4 system that is currently being used.
At some point, he said, the development of IPV6 would mean that ISPs and network operators everywhere, including the Pacific region, would have to upgrade their systems in order to facilitate the change as required by the market.
Another hot issue and also at the top of ICANN’s discussion list was the issue of Internationalised Domain Names (IDN), where domain names can be represented by local language characters from non-ASCII scripts, for example Arabic or Chinese. It may not be so hot in the Pacific but would at some point be important factors that would have some implications for operators in the region.
The ICANN processes are also accessible to governments through the Government Advisory Committee (GAC). “The GAC’s key role is to provide advice to ICANN on issues of public policy. In particular, the GAC considers ICANN’s activities and policies as they relate to the concerns of governments, particularly in matters where there may be interaction between ICANN policies and national laws or international agreements. This in itself is a useful benefit for government regulatory departments to participate and contribute to ICANN matters. Membership of GAC is open to all national governments, distinct economies as recognised in international fora, and multinational government organizations and treaty organizations,” said Vocea.
Considering that the Internet was also fast evolving and that related issues would touch upon daily lives of Internet users, individuals and organizations can also participate in ICANN’s activities by becoming a part of its extensive network via membership of one of its ‘At-Large’ organizations. “‘At-Large’ is ICANN’s name for individual Internet users who want to be involved in issues that affect individuals’ use of the Internet’s domain name system. ICANN At-Large consists of an international At-Large Advisory Committee (ALAC) and user groups throughout the world working together to form five Regional At-Large Organisations (one in each geographic region) that inform the world’s Internet end-users in issues that affect the future of the Internet,” Vocea said.
At-Large organisations, he added, are also instrumental in ICANN discussions concerning issues that affect ICT development in general.
Vocea said his role as liaison officer for ICANN in the region gives an opportunity for stakeholders in the Pacific to have a closer link to the activities of ICANN and in this way, they may be able to play a more active role in the development of the Internet where it concerns their interests.
“The Pacific has historically had limited representation in ICANN circles, so this role will also ensure that Internet stakeholders and the community at large have a chance to receive and be able to comment on policy discussions that may impact the region before any final decisions are made,” Vocea said.
NOTE: This article was published in the Islands Business Magazine (www.islandsbusiness.com) as article titled: GET INVOLVED IN ICANN PROCESSES, SAYS VOCEA, p.26, April 2007 edition.
****
Why countries in the Pacific need to be part of ICANN
Islands Business Magazine interviews Savenaca Vocea, ICANN's Regional Liaison for the Australasia/Pacific Islands region.
By Dionisia Tabureguci
SINCE the arrival and gradual deployment of the Internet worldwide, Pacific Island countries have been able to partly lessen the economic challenges of their isolation through better connectivity and access to increasingly faster and cheaper methods of communication.
Businesses can now cut communication costs, commercial machineries are able to improve efficiencies, new businesses and employment opportunities are created and a wider section of society are now discovering that the Internet can be a useful empowerment tool,
But how much do Internet stakeholders in the Pacific really know about the Internet, the issues associated with it the organisations that oversee it?
Islands Business Magazine interviews Brisbane-based Savenaca Vocea, who represents the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) in the Australasia/Pacific region as its liaison.
ICANN is responsible for the global coordination of the Internet's system of unique identifiers. These include domain names (like .org, .museum and country codes like .NU, .FJ), as well as the addresses used in a variety of Internet protocols. Computers use these identifiers to reach each other over the Internet. Careful management of these resources is vital to the Internet's operation, so ICANN's global stakeholders meet regularly to develop policies that ensure the Internet's ongoing security and stability.
Vocea is from Fiji and started his career at Telecom Fiji Ltd where he spent 14 years. He moved on to work at the Pacific Islands Telecommunications Association (PITA) and recently performed both Liaison (Pacific) and Policy Development Manager roles for the Asia Pacific Network Information Center (APNIC).
He is also involved in the committees of PacNOG (Pacific Network Operators Group), APRICOT (Asia Pacific Regional Internet Conference on Operational Technologies and SANOG (South Asian Network Operators Group). Vocea joined ICANN in October last year.
ISLANDS BUSINESS MAGAZINE: Who is ICANN and what role do you play as its regional liaison officer in the Australasia/Pacific?
VOCEA: The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is an internationally organized, non-profit corporation that has responsibility for Internet Protocol (IP) address space allocation, protocol identifier assignment, generic (gTLD) and country code (ccTLD) Top-Level Domain name system management, and root server system management functions. These services were originally performed under U.S. Government contract by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) and other entities. ICANN now performs the IANA function.
As a private-public partnership, ICANN is dedicated to preserving the operational stability of the Internet; to promoting competition; to achieving broad representation of global Internet communities; and to developing policy appropriate to its mission through bottom-up, consensus-based processes.
As a ICANN’s liaison in the region I play a facilitating role in engaging with various stakeholder communities like ccTLD registry bodies, Governments, industry players, NGO’s and end-user community organisations to promote how best ICANN’s mission and mandates can be of service to the region in terms of preserving a single interoperable and stable Internet system. Also ICANN as an organisation benefits from hearing first hand what the region are discussing or is a hot issue to be addressed in the region. When it comes to policy decisions and information sharing, then those stakeholder groups that are impacted by these decisions can at least have an input to the decision making process.
ISLANDS BUSINESS MAGAZINE: How can stakeholders in the region use your appointment as an opportunity to benefit from?
VOCEA: With the appointment, Internet stakeholders (civil society, business, governments, end user community) in the region can also engage with ICANN through its Regional Liaison to respond to or receive information in relation to ICANN. To date ICANN has 7 Regional Liaisons working under the Global and Strategic Partnerships to deliver against business plans consistent with ICANN’s operations and strategic plans. My previous work alongside most telco/ISPs through the Pacific Islands Telecommunications Association and APNIC has provided me useful understanding of the industry in the Pacific helping me to progress and transition into ICANN. My new role in ICANN allows me to carry out outreach relating to ICANN’s mandate, support or engagements with industry players and stakeholders in the region, while having a good understanding given my experience of the Internet industry and issues important to the region overall. There is so much happening in the Internet space and ICANN as a global coordinating body of the Internet's system of unique identifiers is well placed to provide current and useful information that should be shared to the Internet community. The Pacific has historically had limited representation in ICANN circles, so this role will also ensure that Internet stakeholders and the community at large have a chance to receive and be able to comment on policy discussions that may impact the region before any final decisions are made.
ISLANDS BUSINESS MAGAZINE: In your view, what is the level of awareness of stakeholders in the Pacific region for ICANN processes?
VOCEA: ICANN has been making presentation at, and attended, various industry stakeholder events of PITA, PacINET and Pacific Network Operator Groups (PacNOG) and other stakeholder groups (like ccTLDs) are sent information so I’d say the knowledge of ICANN is known amongst the stakeholder groups in the region. One thing that has taken some time to understand is the ICANN process of decision-making and how one can participate in the various advisory committees and supporting organisation that advises ICANN. My role is to also address this and encourage more participation from the region to get their voices heard. A challenge is to get people to be involved, so ICANN has tried very hard to make participation easy by encouraging those concerned to subscribe to mailing lists to post comments, or listen in real time to when ICANN meetings are held, read real captions of speakers and join a chat room to again post comments. The unfortunate thing here in this region is the different time zones but up to date information can now be accessed via the ICANN website. Active participation ensures that regional and country issues can be raised and addressed based on what policy topics are discussed. Some of the discussions and decisions do impact the way people can run their business and it is useful to always track what is going on in the global arena. Also there is a vast opportunity to network with peers during real time meetings.
ICANN recently appointed a GM for Participation whose role will be to encourage and boost global participation and representation in ICANN.
ISLANDS BUSINESS MAGAZINE: Can governments in the region also get into ICANN processes?
VOCEA: ICANN receives input from governments through the Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC). The GAC’s key role is to provide advice to ICANN on issues of public policy. In particular, the GAC considers ICANN's activities and policies as they relate to the concerns of governments, particularly in matters where there may be an interaction between ICANN's policies and national laws or international agreements. This in itself is a useful benefit for government regulatory departments to participate and contribute to ICANN matters.
Membership of the GAC is open to all national governments, distinct economies as recognised in international fora, and multinational governmental organisations and treaty organisations. For more information about the GAC see www.gac.icann.org
ISLANDS BUSINESS MAGAZINE: As a person involved in the area of telecommunications in the region for awhile before moving on to APNIC and now ICANN, how would you describe the changes in the ICT industry since Internet usage started to pick up in the region? What do you think of connectivity in the Pacific region and how can we improve upon it?
VOCEA: Based on my experience I would observe that ICT has been the buzzword for some time now and in the Pacific many sector make references to ICT as a driver for development. Telcos have been a key stakeholder in this large ICT space providing for infrastructure development and planning and implementing new services for communications. In the Pacific most are the gateway to ensuring its country is interconnected and accessible to the global Internet. With the advent of the WWW (world wide web) and the many new on-line applications and transactions happening at the edges the end-user customer and hosts have a greater expectancy of having reliable, stable and a secure Internet to carry out their activities. As in most sectors, customers that have competitive providers will benefit from pricing, connectivity and speed. However that is not to say that in some Pacific monopolistic markets, they will not provide the best services they have for their customers. Leaving Viti Levu aside because of direct connection via the Southern Cross Cable Network, I'd suspect that even within other parts of Fiji there are still issues with connectivity and getting sufficient speed that customers experience. For those Pacific Island countries dependent on satellite connectivity to the outside world, achieving reliable connectivity and speed is a business decision that ISPs, telecom providers and their satellite upstream providers will make and it really boils down to their own negotiation. But not necessarily so as for example Satellite coverage in the Pacific region is limited to only a couple of major satellite players. Often we hear: why won’t there be more satellite providers or undersea cable operators in the region? Do these existing upstream providers carry enough bandwidth themselves to offer to their customer the telecom companies or can the telecom concerned pay for the extra demand in bandwidth? Now if there is only limited bandwidth capacity that needs to be shared amongst all the countries in the region that peers with existing satellite providers, then there is also a problem. It's a case of user pays and I'm sure that with increased demand and with the right pricing model one can surely have a better position to negotiate. Reports from telcos in the region still suggest that voice/telephony is still king as the highest percentage of their revenue is derived from voice rather than data and Internet. But with the trends currently taking place in the Internet space, I suspect that in time there will be more infrastructure deployment to cater for increased demands in services.
ISLANDS BUSINESS MAGAZINE: Does ICANN work closely with telecom operators in the region? If so,what sort of help, etc does it provide for the better access of Internet in the region, which is said to have unique challenges in terms of economics of scale, isolation of many islands, etc?
VOCEA: ICANN is appreciative of the fact that industry associations like PITA exists for telcos/ISPs in the region and to this effect are preparing to sign an MOU with PITA for closer collaboration and working relation in the Internet space. Although ICANN may not assist directly in any technical implementation at the country level, people networking has been a key success when engaging with people from the region. There is always information to be shared and leads given on particular issues about the Internet. It is not in ICANNs mandate to advice governments of directions and models they should approach but to provide information that can help facilitate discussions on certain Internet issues like DNS (Domain Name System), ccTLD and root-server. This facilitation role has been evident and well received in the WSIS (World Summit on the Information Society) and IGF (Internet Governance Forum) where governments have been represented.
ISLANDS BUSINESS MAGAZINE: What role do ccTLD registry operators play and how important is ccTLD to a country? As ccTLDs may be considered national assets, can countries in the region assume more control over theirs?
VOCEA: ICANN, through the IANA, delegates responsibility of a country code top-level domain registry to a party once it is agreed that the delegated party will carry out all responsibilities of the ccTLD registry for that country. The ccTLD registry holds the database of all the domain names under its two-letter country code, and operates the computers that make domain names of that country visible on the global Internet.
IANA will delegate this responsibility to an entity that is the result of a decision making process involving the local Internet community and local Government. It is up for the parties within the country to decide how they wish to operate their domain, and under what rules. IANA's requirement is primarily to make sure the technical aspects work correctly, and certain minimum standards are met.
ISLANDS BUSINESS MAGAZINE: There have been many developments in the international arena with regards to the Internet. You cite a few examples: Internationalized Domain Names, the IPV6 address space, handing over of centrally coordinated identifiers to ICANN, new top level domain names, etc. What implications do these developments have on Pacific island countries, the Internet and the Internet and telecommunication businesses/regulations in the Pacific?
VOCEA: Within the RIR (Regional Internet Registry) space, a hot topic for some time now has been the scarcity of IPv4 address space especially receiving new allocations from RIR’s when the global pool of public IPv4 address space will be harder to get. It is for this reason that IPv6 was developed and has been marketed to ISPs and network operators as a solution to extend numbering in their networks. My understanding of the issue in the Pacific is that operators and service providers are aware of the IPv4 run-out issues and will take the necessary steps when the need arises.
Another top issue on ICANN agenda is the Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs). These are domain names represented by local language characters. Such domain names could contain letters or characters from non-ASCII scripts (for example, Arabic or Chinese). Many efforts are ongoing in the Internet community to make domain names available in character sets other than ASCII.
These "internationalized domain name" (IDN) efforts were the subject of a 25 September 2000 resolution by the ICANN Board of Directors, which recognized "that it is important that the Internet evolve to be more accessible to those who do not use the ASCII character set," and also stressed that "the internationalization of the Internet's domain name system must be accomplished through standards that are open, non-proprietary, and fully compatible with the Internet's existing end-to-end model and that preserve globally unique naming in a universally resolvable public name space."
In my discussions around the region with some ccTLD registry and service providers, it appears that IDN is not on their radar at the moment for reasons being that in the region most are using the ASCII code in everyday written communication.
It is however still important for the regional operators to monitor and track what is happening globally in the Internet space.
ISLANDS BUSINESS MAGAZINE: What implications does the competition in the registrar market have for the Pacific region?
VOCEA: This model of having registrars in the pacific context is not widespread at the moment. But for the few countries in the region that have one registrar handling all registrations of their domain names, it can be viewed to provide useful service to the registry in terms of marketing the domain name to increase registrations. Any revenue derived or sharing between the registry and registrar is outside ICANN mandate. But certainly adopting a model of opening up to competitive registrars may greatly impact on the load of the local ccTLD registry as they have to take on more registrations. It can be both a good and bad thing but different models and policies exist so that the registries and registrars can negotiate amongst themselves for the best way forward in running their operations.
ISLANDS BUSINESS MAGAZINE: In reference to your work as “to update and share ICANN information on particular policy decisions or matters that are currently being discussed that will impact the region.” What have been some of these decisions in the last two years or so and what have been their implications to the Pacific region?
VOCEA: ICANN puts out a call for comments on issues and policy proposals that are contentious and seeks advice from the supporting oganisations and advisory committees. Before the Board makes a decision on these – it is important to get a wider representative view from the stakeholder groups that will be impacted as well. For the telcos/ ISPs and ccTLDs in the region they should at least contribute or share their comments with the rest of the Internet community contributing to ICANN decision making. In the past two years at least it would have been useful to get feedback on issues like:
-discussions surrounding new sponsored Top Level Domains (sTLDs);
-their position on the ICANN strategic plan;
- input to discussions surrounding Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs),
- input on regions for the ccNames Supporting Organisations, and participation in the ccNSO supporting organization;
-input on discussions surrounding Whois
- input on other issues under ICANN’s mandate that may be relevant to stakeholders in the region;
ISLANDS BUSINESS: Finally, the ICANN global network (and you mention this too) does cater for ‘individuals that want to be involved in issues that affect individual’s use of the Internet’s domain name system and the future of the Internet’ via APRALO (Asia Pacific Regional At-Large Organisation). If the use of APRALO is encouraged as such, how do issues taken to it finally filter into the main ICANN decision making processes? And why should Pacific islanders, organizations, businesses, groups, etc align themselves to a mechanism like APRALO?
VOCEA: (from www.apralo.org)
"At-Large" is ICANN's name for individual Internet users who want to be involved in issues that affect individuals' use of the Internet's domain name system. ICANN At-Large consists of an international "At-Large Advisory Committee" (ALAC) and user groups throughout the world working together to form five "Regional At-Large Organizations" (1 in each geographic region; "APRALO" in Asia Pacific) that inform and involve the world's Internet end-users in issues that affect the future of the Internet. ICANN At-Large provides crucial contributions to ICANN's work on such matters as:
* guidance on how internationalised domain names ("local language" domain names) are implemented;
* how new top-level domains (i.e. .info, .name, .museum, etc.) are introduced;-
* How to manage the implementation of a new IP addressing system to make sure there are enough unique addresses so the Internet can grow without constraints or instability
These are just a few of the issues that affect individual users worldwide currently being worked on at ICANN. At-Large is also a leading voice for ICANN stakeholders on Internet Governance and issues related to WSIS follow-up, and helps raise awareness of key Internet resource issues that affect ICT development.
If a group you are involved with wants to influence the decisions that shape the Internet, apply to be certified as an "At-Large Structure" and participate in ICANN decisions critical to the Internet's end users. “At-Large Structure” certification is free, easy, and done via email. Groups interested participating in ICANN At-Large are encouraged to complete an application available online and email it to.
NOTE: This is the original transcript of a Savenaca Vocea interview, published in the Islands Business Magazine (www.islandsbusiness.com) as Interview: Savenaca Vocea, ICANN's REGIONAL LIAISON FOR THE AUSTRALASIA/PACIFIC ISLANDS REGION, pp 46,47, May 2007 edition.
By Dionisia Tabureguci
SINCE the arrival and gradual deployment of the Internet worldwide, Pacific Island countries have been able to partly lessen the economic challenges of their isolation through better connectivity and access to increasingly faster and cheaper methods of communication.
Businesses can now cut communication costs, commercial machineries are able to improve efficiencies, new businesses and employment opportunities are created and a wider section of society are now discovering that the Internet can be a useful empowerment tool,
But how much do Internet stakeholders in the Pacific really know about the Internet, the issues associated with it the organisations that oversee it?
Islands Business Magazine interviews Brisbane-based Savenaca Vocea, who represents the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) in the Australasia/Pacific region as its liaison.
ICANN is responsible for the global coordination of the Internet's system of unique identifiers. These include domain names (like .org, .museum and country codes like .NU, .FJ), as well as the addresses used in a variety of Internet protocols. Computers use these identifiers to reach each other over the Internet. Careful management of these resources is vital to the Internet's operation, so ICANN's global stakeholders meet regularly to develop policies that ensure the Internet's ongoing security and stability.
Vocea is from Fiji and started his career at Telecom Fiji Ltd where he spent 14 years. He moved on to work at the Pacific Islands Telecommunications Association (PITA) and recently performed both Liaison (Pacific) and Policy Development Manager roles for the Asia Pacific Network Information Center (APNIC).
He is also involved in the committees of PacNOG (Pacific Network Operators Group), APRICOT (Asia Pacific Regional Internet Conference on Operational Technologies and SANOG (South Asian Network Operators Group). Vocea joined ICANN in October last year.
ISLANDS BUSINESS MAGAZINE: Who is ICANN and what role do you play as its regional liaison officer in the Australasia/Pacific?
VOCEA: The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is an internationally organized, non-profit corporation that has responsibility for Internet Protocol (IP) address space allocation, protocol identifier assignment, generic (gTLD) and country code (ccTLD) Top-Level Domain name system management, and root server system management functions. These services were originally performed under U.S. Government contract by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) and other entities. ICANN now performs the IANA function.
As a private-public partnership, ICANN is dedicated to preserving the operational stability of the Internet; to promoting competition; to achieving broad representation of global Internet communities; and to developing policy appropriate to its mission through bottom-up, consensus-based processes.
As a ICANN’s liaison in the region I play a facilitating role in engaging with various stakeholder communities like ccTLD registry bodies, Governments, industry players, NGO’s and end-user community organisations to promote how best ICANN’s mission and mandates can be of service to the region in terms of preserving a single interoperable and stable Internet system. Also ICANN as an organisation benefits from hearing first hand what the region are discussing or is a hot issue to be addressed in the region. When it comes to policy decisions and information sharing, then those stakeholder groups that are impacted by these decisions can at least have an input to the decision making process.
ISLANDS BUSINESS MAGAZINE: How can stakeholders in the region use your appointment as an opportunity to benefit from?
VOCEA: With the appointment, Internet stakeholders (civil society, business, governments, end user community) in the region can also engage with ICANN through its Regional Liaison to respond to or receive information in relation to ICANN. To date ICANN has 7 Regional Liaisons working under the Global and Strategic Partnerships to deliver against business plans consistent with ICANN’s operations and strategic plans. My previous work alongside most telco/ISPs through the Pacific Islands Telecommunications Association and APNIC has provided me useful understanding of the industry in the Pacific helping me to progress and transition into ICANN. My new role in ICANN allows me to carry out outreach relating to ICANN’s mandate, support or engagements with industry players and stakeholders in the region, while having a good understanding given my experience of the Internet industry and issues important to the region overall. There is so much happening in the Internet space and ICANN as a global coordinating body of the Internet's system of unique identifiers is well placed to provide current and useful information that should be shared to the Internet community. The Pacific has historically had limited representation in ICANN circles, so this role will also ensure that Internet stakeholders and the community at large have a chance to receive and be able to comment on policy discussions that may impact the region before any final decisions are made.
ISLANDS BUSINESS MAGAZINE: In your view, what is the level of awareness of stakeholders in the Pacific region for ICANN processes?
VOCEA: ICANN has been making presentation at, and attended, various industry stakeholder events of PITA, PacINET and Pacific Network Operator Groups (PacNOG) and other stakeholder groups (like ccTLDs) are sent information so I’d say the knowledge of ICANN is known amongst the stakeholder groups in the region. One thing that has taken some time to understand is the ICANN process of decision-making and how one can participate in the various advisory committees and supporting organisation that advises ICANN. My role is to also address this and encourage more participation from the region to get their voices heard. A challenge is to get people to be involved, so ICANN has tried very hard to make participation easy by encouraging those concerned to subscribe to mailing lists to post comments, or listen in real time to when ICANN meetings are held, read real captions of speakers and join a chat room to again post comments. The unfortunate thing here in this region is the different time zones but up to date information can now be accessed via the ICANN website. Active participation ensures that regional and country issues can be raised and addressed based on what policy topics are discussed. Some of the discussions and decisions do impact the way people can run their business and it is useful to always track what is going on in the global arena. Also there is a vast opportunity to network with peers during real time meetings.
ICANN recently appointed a GM for Participation whose role will be to encourage and boost global participation and representation in ICANN.
ISLANDS BUSINESS MAGAZINE: Can governments in the region also get into ICANN processes?
VOCEA: ICANN receives input from governments through the Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC). The GAC’s key role is to provide advice to ICANN on issues of public policy. In particular, the GAC considers ICANN's activities and policies as they relate to the concerns of governments, particularly in matters where there may be an interaction between ICANN's policies and national laws or international agreements. This in itself is a useful benefit for government regulatory departments to participate and contribute to ICANN matters.
Membership of the GAC is open to all national governments, distinct economies as recognised in international fora, and multinational governmental organisations and treaty organisations. For more information about the GAC see www.gac.icann.org
ISLANDS BUSINESS MAGAZINE: As a person involved in the area of telecommunications in the region for awhile before moving on to APNIC and now ICANN, how would you describe the changes in the ICT industry since Internet usage started to pick up in the region? What do you think of connectivity in the Pacific region and how can we improve upon it?
VOCEA: Based on my experience I would observe that ICT has been the buzzword for some time now and in the Pacific many sector make references to ICT as a driver for development. Telcos have been a key stakeholder in this large ICT space providing for infrastructure development and planning and implementing new services for communications. In the Pacific most are the gateway to ensuring its country is interconnected and accessible to the global Internet. With the advent of the WWW (world wide web) and the many new on-line applications and transactions happening at the edges the end-user customer and hosts have a greater expectancy of having reliable, stable and a secure Internet to carry out their activities. As in most sectors, customers that have competitive providers will benefit from pricing, connectivity and speed. However that is not to say that in some Pacific monopolistic markets, they will not provide the best services they have for their customers. Leaving Viti Levu aside because of direct connection via the Southern Cross Cable Network, I'd suspect that even within other parts of Fiji there are still issues with connectivity and getting sufficient speed that customers experience. For those Pacific Island countries dependent on satellite connectivity to the outside world, achieving reliable connectivity and speed is a business decision that ISPs, telecom providers and their satellite upstream providers will make and it really boils down to their own negotiation. But not necessarily so as for example Satellite coverage in the Pacific region is limited to only a couple of major satellite players. Often we hear: why won’t there be more satellite providers or undersea cable operators in the region? Do these existing upstream providers carry enough bandwidth themselves to offer to their customer the telecom companies or can the telecom concerned pay for the extra demand in bandwidth? Now if there is only limited bandwidth capacity that needs to be shared amongst all the countries in the region that peers with existing satellite providers, then there is also a problem. It's a case of user pays and I'm sure that with increased demand and with the right pricing model one can surely have a better position to negotiate. Reports from telcos in the region still suggest that voice/telephony is still king as the highest percentage of their revenue is derived from voice rather than data and Internet. But with the trends currently taking place in the Internet space, I suspect that in time there will be more infrastructure deployment to cater for increased demands in services.
ISLANDS BUSINESS MAGAZINE: Does ICANN work closely with telecom operators in the region? If so,what sort of help, etc does it provide for the better access of Internet in the region, which is said to have unique challenges in terms of economics of scale, isolation of many islands, etc?
VOCEA: ICANN is appreciative of the fact that industry associations like PITA exists for telcos/ISPs in the region and to this effect are preparing to sign an MOU with PITA for closer collaboration and working relation in the Internet space. Although ICANN may not assist directly in any technical implementation at the country level, people networking has been a key success when engaging with people from the region. There is always information to be shared and leads given on particular issues about the Internet. It is not in ICANNs mandate to advice governments of directions and models they should approach but to provide information that can help facilitate discussions on certain Internet issues like DNS (Domain Name System), ccTLD and root-server. This facilitation role has been evident and well received in the WSIS (World Summit on the Information Society) and IGF (Internet Governance Forum) where governments have been represented.
ISLANDS BUSINESS MAGAZINE: What role do ccTLD registry operators play and how important is ccTLD to a country? As ccTLDs may be considered national assets, can countries in the region assume more control over theirs?
VOCEA: ICANN, through the IANA, delegates responsibility of a country code top-level domain registry to a party once it is agreed that the delegated party will carry out all responsibilities of the ccTLD registry for that country. The ccTLD registry holds the database of all the domain names under its two-letter country code, and operates the computers that make domain names of that country visible on the global Internet.
IANA will delegate this responsibility to an entity that is the result of a decision making process involving the local Internet community and local Government. It is up for the parties within the country to decide how they wish to operate their domain, and under what rules. IANA's requirement is primarily to make sure the technical aspects work correctly, and certain minimum standards are met.
ISLANDS BUSINESS MAGAZINE: There have been many developments in the international arena with regards to the Internet. You cite a few examples: Internationalized Domain Names, the IPV6 address space, handing over of centrally coordinated identifiers to ICANN, new top level domain names, etc. What implications do these developments have on Pacific island countries, the Internet and the Internet and telecommunication businesses/regulations in the Pacific?
VOCEA: Within the RIR (Regional Internet Registry) space, a hot topic for some time now has been the scarcity of IPv4 address space especially receiving new allocations from RIR’s when the global pool of public IPv4 address space will be harder to get. It is for this reason that IPv6 was developed and has been marketed to ISPs and network operators as a solution to extend numbering in their networks. My understanding of the issue in the Pacific is that operators and service providers are aware of the IPv4 run-out issues and will take the necessary steps when the need arises.
Another top issue on ICANN agenda is the Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs). These are domain names represented by local language characters. Such domain names could contain letters or characters from non-ASCII scripts (for example, Arabic or Chinese). Many efforts are ongoing in the Internet community to make domain names available in character sets other than ASCII.
These "internationalized domain name" (IDN) efforts were the subject of a 25 September 2000 resolution by the ICANN Board of Directors, which recognized "that it is important that the Internet evolve to be more accessible to those who do not use the ASCII character set," and also stressed that "the internationalization of the Internet's domain name system must be accomplished through standards that are open, non-proprietary, and fully compatible with the Internet's existing end-to-end model and that preserve globally unique naming in a universally resolvable public name space."
In my discussions around the region with some ccTLD registry and service providers, it appears that IDN is not on their radar at the moment for reasons being that in the region most are using the ASCII code in everyday written communication.
It is however still important for the regional operators to monitor and track what is happening globally in the Internet space.
ISLANDS BUSINESS MAGAZINE: What implications does the competition in the registrar market have for the Pacific region?
VOCEA: This model of having registrars in the pacific context is not widespread at the moment. But for the few countries in the region that have one registrar handling all registrations of their domain names, it can be viewed to provide useful service to the registry in terms of marketing the domain name to increase registrations. Any revenue derived or sharing between the registry and registrar is outside ICANN mandate. But certainly adopting a model of opening up to competitive registrars may greatly impact on the load of the local ccTLD registry as they have to take on more registrations. It can be both a good and bad thing but different models and policies exist so that the registries and registrars can negotiate amongst themselves for the best way forward in running their operations.
ISLANDS BUSINESS MAGAZINE: In reference to your work as “to update and share ICANN information on particular policy decisions or matters that are currently being discussed that will impact the region.” What have been some of these decisions in the last two years or so and what have been their implications to the Pacific region?
VOCEA: ICANN puts out a call for comments on issues and policy proposals that are contentious and seeks advice from the supporting oganisations and advisory committees. Before the Board makes a decision on these – it is important to get a wider representative view from the stakeholder groups that will be impacted as well. For the telcos/ ISPs and ccTLDs in the region they should at least contribute or share their comments with the rest of the Internet community contributing to ICANN decision making. In the past two years at least it would have been useful to get feedback on issues like:
-discussions surrounding new sponsored Top Level Domains (sTLDs);
-their position on the ICANN strategic plan;
- input to discussions surrounding Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs),
- input on regions for the ccNames Supporting Organisations, and participation in the ccNSO supporting organization;
-input on discussions surrounding Whois
- input on other issues under ICANN’s mandate that may be relevant to stakeholders in the region;
ISLANDS BUSINESS: Finally, the ICANN global network (and you mention this too) does cater for ‘individuals that want to be involved in issues that affect individual’s use of the Internet’s domain name system and the future of the Internet’ via APRALO (Asia Pacific Regional At-Large Organisation). If the use of APRALO is encouraged as such, how do issues taken to it finally filter into the main ICANN decision making processes? And why should Pacific islanders, organizations, businesses, groups, etc align themselves to a mechanism like APRALO?
VOCEA: (from www.apralo.org)
"At-Large" is ICANN's name for individual Internet users who want to be involved in issues that affect individuals' use of the Internet's domain name system. ICANN At-Large consists of an international "At-Large Advisory Committee" (ALAC) and user groups throughout the world working together to form five "Regional At-Large Organizations" (1 in each geographic region; "APRALO" in Asia Pacific) that inform and involve the world's Internet end-users in issues that affect the future of the Internet. ICANN At-Large provides crucial contributions to ICANN's work on such matters as:
* guidance on how internationalised domain names ("local language" domain names) are implemented;
* how new top-level domains (i.e. .info, .name, .museum, etc.) are introduced;-
* How to manage the implementation of a new IP addressing system to make sure there are enough unique addresses so the Internet can grow without constraints or instability
These are just a few of the issues that affect individual users worldwide currently being worked on at ICANN. At-Large is also a leading voice for ICANN stakeholders on Internet Governance and issues related to WSIS follow-up, and helps raise awareness of key Internet resource issues that affect ICT development.
If a group you are involved with wants to influence the decisions that shape the Internet, apply to be certified as an "At-Large Structure" and participate in ICANN decisions critical to the Internet's end users. “At-Large Structure” certification is free, easy, and done via email. Groups interested participating in ICANN At-Large are encouraged to complete an application available online and email it to
NOTE: This is the original transcript of a Savenaca Vocea interview, published in the Islands Business Magazine (www.islandsbusiness.com) as Interview: Savenaca Vocea, ICANN's REGIONAL LIAISON FOR THE AUSTRALASIA/PACIFIC ISLANDS REGION, pp 46,47, May 2007 edition.
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