The following are the outputs of the real-time captioning taken during the Twelfth Annual Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Geneva, Switzerland, from 17 to 21 December 2017. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the event, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> MARILYN CADE: So we will open the meeting with a panel and a board. That was a little joke. Thanks so much for coming to this session. And I'm going to just give a quick ‑‑ so the session is entitled Two Networks will Shape your Digital Future. And I'm just going to say it, a very brief historical comment about this workshop because it almost didn't happen. And that is because in the community within the Internet Governance and many other communities that talk about Internet policy there is yet to be an appropriate recognition that if you do not have power of some kind it is impossible to somebody consistently and reliably connected to the ‑‑ I was getting there. If you do not have power that generates electricity, we walked through this experience, submitted an excellent workshop and several of the multi‑stakeholder advisory committee members rejected it and rated it very low, which was quite a big shock to me.
And so I went to the MAG representatives from Ghana, Fiji, Senegal, et cetera. And they made a very determined pitch to educate their other MAG members and not only are we doing the workshop, but it is no longer 60 minutes. It is 90 minutes. So I think we owe Garland a big vote of appreciation. And we also owe of our speakers who will be arriving from Ghana a voice of appreciation because he is the MAG member revolt within the MAG to make sure that people understood the importance of power.
We have spent quite a long time within the IGF understanding the importance of connecting the next billions. In fact, we have had Intersessional work connecting the next billions, 1, 2 and 3 series. And I would just want to mention that the work that the IGF USA that I am affiliated with we first began ‑‑ we provided comments on the first round of Intersessional comments to the IGF MAG and my co‑Chair was Manu from the State Department. And Manu will talk further in his comments about what inspired him to go on and become so directly engaged in these issues.
So we already have begun to understand within the IGF that no access is not enough. You have to have capacity building, affordable devices and affordable access. That is, as we were saying earlier there has been a lack of recognition of extreme concern and problems that exist in the electrical energy area.
I also want to mention and note that the work that IEEE is doing in picking up the follow‑up to Global Connect in the area of advancing solutions and I hope they will talk a little bit more about that as well.
So if we are committed to the promise of a more connected and turned on world where everyone has access, it is affordable and able to use that access to improve their lives, to find health care information, to run more businesses and just maintain communication within the English families more as long as they are around the world, we have to step up to understanding. And I don't mean the people in this room. I know you are concerned and interested. But we have to step up to helping to build the understanding about the importance and the interdependency of the Internet and electricity.
The technological breakthroughs that are happening now and they are going to hear about some of them are going to help us make that access much more affordable. But I look at this as probably the first of what I hope will be many discussions about the two networks.
I am now going to introduce the lightning speakers and they have about a five‑minute slot each. They will speak in order. And after they speak I would ask Vint Cerf will take ten minutes to add his comments on this. And then we will open it up for questions. We have a remote hub and we will try to hear them in their questions, but we will also ask them to type their questions and send them to Garland so that we can read them out even if we don't actually hear the speakers.
Let me now turn to our first speaker who will speak in two segments. And we will kick off the first segment by talking to us about why they became so interested and involved in connecting the next billions.
>> NII NARKU QUAYNOR: It is a pleasure to be with you and other global leaders in the Internet development space. I think for me when I look at the realities on the ground the reality of 4 billion people without access to the Internet potentially, the reality of 1.2 billion people or more without access to electricity, the reality of 2.5 billion people or more who are not banked, meaning they don't have no bank accounts, no access to finance.
An observation to maybe start the discussion, they have one thing in common. They are probably either in Africa or in Asia in terms of where they reside. There is a couple of other factual kind of things that I want to lay on the ground which is that in certain areas, for example, in rural India and Africa and Asia, a lot of their reality is spending 30 cents a day and they are not spending it on energy access but on kerosine lighting. Thinking about their limited access to basic technology and kerosine expenses are rising. So it is becoming even harder for them to apportion their budget. But there is a linkage for us to think about how much they are spending on charging their phones. There is a worldwide ‑‑ there is great worldwide focus on these issues. And I think it is worth mentioning.
The World Bank companies like MasterCard have committed to trying to achieve universal access by 2020. That's a multi‑stakeholder effort to bring more attention to how you can help people access an account, electronic instruments to store money. And it is all done in recognition of the value of digital technology and actually bringing financial transactions and making that a reality to people.
The other I think worldwide effort to talk about is the Sustainable Development Agenda and how we won't be able to achieve any of it without electricity, without access to finance, without Internet. Another kind of global effort that Marilyn wanted me to focus on which is the Global Connect effort. It was a U.S. Government effort that was launched three years ago that counted 40 countries as partners. And now I think that the vision of the Global Connect effort has really been carried very mightily by IEEE, by the World Economic Forum but a lot of multi‑stakeholder organizations which is fantastic. Maybe there are certain lessons that we take away as we try to promote these development projects. It is most valuable to make Internet access a foreign policy and to have senior leaders like Secretary Kerry and President Obama to say that the Internet is fundamental to all aspects of life, the role for the U.S. to play or U.S. or not in trying to promote global Internet access.
The other thing was really interesting linkage with the finance world and Internet access. That was the first time that we invited finance ministers to talk about Internet connectivity. I think you invited the wrong minister. I think you mean the communications minister. That's my friend. The Internet is a valuable piece of technology. That it impacts, of course, the finance world. And finance minister, you are a similar person in the cabinet in terms of deployment of Universal Service Funds and a lot of decision making that is made. And we want to be playing a leadership role in all of this.
So I think the importance of engaging the finance community in the World Banks and MDBs and really not having a solid approach but a more comprehensive approach.
The final two things that I want to mention in terms of lessons it is really valuable with a Global Connect effort to give more prominence to work that's being done at the head of state level. There are so many fantastic organizations, other organizations that at a country level from Japan and other Governments but they are all doing it without recognition of the broader community. All the impact that they are having and they all benefit with greater political attention, greater support and greater attention and resources because that's what will happen when you get this attention to the work they are doing.
So we had actually done almost a summary of all the global actions that are being done and ended up being valued over ten million dollars. Empowering the technical community to help produce solutions and helping emerging countries and making sure they have access. In many conversations that we have at IGF or elsewhere I myself I am not a technical person who knows how to actually bring connectivity to a refugee camp in Africa. But actually having those people as part of the discussion that we are having today about Internet access and Internet connectivity and having them lead some of these panel discussions is important. But we don't find them in the room. And I think with efforts like Global Connect where we are thinking about energy solutions and connectivity solutions the energy core is good to make tangible process.
>> MARILYN CADE: Thank you. We will come back to you before we go to Vint. I want to go to Kris. I tell you this is his first IGF. And probably when he heard about it he wondered why he was coming. So we will hear who he is and your comments on behalf of Atkins Wireless and any other thoughts you want to share with us, Kris.
>> KRISTOPHER HAAG: Thank you for the opportunity to participate today. I am Kristopher Haag focused on assisting clients with energy telecom. I am a former senior Pentagon official and telecommunications executive. And I may be the only engineer on the panel.
(Laughter).
>> KRISTOPHER HAAG: Maybe not. It is good to have another engineer on the panel. So the lack of electricity in Developing Countries is a major barrier to overcoming illiteracy, generating economic opportunity and attracting foreign direct investment in these economies despite investment in the billions of dollars over ‑‑ the billions dollars over the last decade, remains unchanged. The majority of attempts to close the gap is focused on two areas, expanding centrally planned power goods and deploying small scale standalone power generation solutions which basically resulted in island grids.
Neither of these approaches have made progress in closing that gap due to the remote nature of these communities. In contrast to the electrification gap there has been massive growth in the deployment telecommunications services throughout the world with significant strides made in rural and poor communities. Growth and telecommunications networks have added over 4 billion mobile phone connections in the last 15 years. This growth can be directly attributed to the global nature of telephone networks.
This exponential uptake of mobile phone penetration is not limited to the developed world as much. This growth has occurred in developing rural and poor communities. The main issues that are limiting the ability of these island grids to scale and distribute interconnected networks that provide low cost power can be boiled down in to two areas. First is the lack of adequate revenue assurance models, and the second is the lack of micro grid standards that are enabling interconnectivity.
The lack of revenue sharing models has been addressed over the past decade by prepaid phone cards. This technology exists today to be the same thing with rural micro grids where you are applying smart code banking technology to make sure that people are paying for electricity before it is used. This is something that is somewhat missed. It is missed a lot when you are looking at donor funded projects because the revenue assurance concept is sometimes an afterthought. And it is thought that people will just pay for the electricity because they want it, but once they have the grid there and it is very hard for the local officials who are administering the grid to go and turn off a grid connection.
So if you have a solution that turns it off automatically and they have to go find the individual to pay them that revenue assurance model works and ensures that money is still going back in to the grid. And these become economically sustainable business models.
The second with the application of grid standards. I spent a significant amount of time in Afghanistan looking at all of the different micro grids that were funded by various different donor entities. And what I found is you look at one after the other that ‑‑ specific examples, I think the ‑‑ we looked at 40 micro grids that have been deployed by many different donor agencies. And what was interesting there is that none of them were built on the same standards and they had no ability to buy and sell power from each other. Because we didn't have the ability to buy and sell power from each other. They didn't achieve the benefits of economies of scales through interconnected distributed power solutions that would allow them to really get the electricity prices and the reliability down to where they needed this to happen.
So both were designed, both telecommunications and electricity goods were designed over a hundred years ago. We have seen a massive transformation in the telecommunications grid. And we are beginning to see the transformation now in the electricity grid. So it is this transformation of electricity grid and convergence of electricity networks, data networks and financial networks coming together that will improve access to the poor to low cost electricity, reliable Internet and banking and financial services. All of which are needed for this population to compete in the global economy. Thank you.
>> MARILYN CADE: I was fortunate to be in Afghanistan in March and even within Kabul there are major, major challenges in terms of access to reliable electricity. And we will be hearing more about that later. And I would like to turn to Nilmini Rubin.
>> NILMINI RUBIN: Thank you for having me. This is my third IGF. And I am thrilled to be here. And I am also ‑‑ I work for Tetra Tech with 20,000 people and 130 countries. And we do energy work and telecom work, infrastructure, kind of the range of engineering services around the world. I previously worked for the U.S. Congress. My first proper job in the private sector.
So thank you for having me. And energy is a big part of what I am passionate about and what Tetra Tech is passionate about. Power Africa, which builds the foundation for the Africa Act, that builds the foundation for the Power Africa initiative. Massive power efforts in Africa. They are not just projects themselves but transactions, putting transactions to get deals done. And working on policy reform and in the marketplace so it is not just for those specific transactions but those are leading so that future transactions can follow well. We see energy as linked to the Internet. Without energy the Internet does not work. As we are moving forward we see that roughly 10% of the world's production is moved. We move it down to devices from Internet of Things, data centers and different pieces of networks that are moving things around. The hardware manufacturing, it is already 10%. And it is only going to increase.
Right now we have the world's population is even ‑‑ half the world's population is online. And when the next half gets online it will increase in demand. This is a ‑‑ of technology. We are going to have more data to be stored and kept and safe which will require even more energy. So we need to really think carefully about electricity solutions as many reference kind of where there is a lack of energy already and well over a billion people don't have electricity right now. It is ‑‑ it is often the same area where don't have Internet access. So we will need to think carefully about to save time, to save money and save the environment. It is the build one's approach and we had a bill called the Digital Act. And it would make ‑‑ it would require our funding through the challenge corporation of USA where push the World Bank and the other generators that we use on a multilateral basis to adopt a builder's approach. If you are building a road you work with Internet companies to see if there is an opportunity to do it all at the same time because 90% of putting wired is building a road and digging it back up again. So there is that.
But they also have ‑‑ it is an open‑ended idea. So that's one type of integration we need to think of. The others is gender. We have worked out a lot of principles on gender and energy. And how to make sure that when they are included in the process because they suffer more with lack of energy. And it is more ‑‑ going off and getting on the low energy sources to fire stoves in homes. And a lot of that can be applied to the Internet. We need to push back on, we are in silos right now. We will have the energy folks talking to other energy folks and Internet folks and talking to other Internet folks. And we don't need to reinvent the wheel. Same thing holding back are the same things holding back the Internet. We can do a lot of that at the same time and that negotiation is what is heart warming about this first event in IGF.
IEEE started this discussion last year in April. We had a panel with people from Microsoft, the World Bank, some of the other companies that moderated in Washington D.C. and that ‑‑ a lot ‑‑ that got a lot of positive feedback. And it led to the creation of IEEE working on group and energy and Internet. We had our first meeting in October and continuing to work through. And so certainly welcome people who are interested in the chance to do as well. But we are very excited about the potential to synchronize the issues on that. One thing I wanted to push back a little bit on gender funding is we do spend a lot of time thinking about who is going to pay. A lot of their projects really do look at the source, the financial sustainability of the project. And we actually have a team right now that Tetra Tech pays in Nigeria to really do dangerous work. They are working for the distribution company who is going out and disconnecting payers for not paying. And it is very ‑‑ it is very challenging and important work because it clearly creates an incentive for payment. And that is funded by USAID. I will leave it there for now.
>> MARILYN CADE: Thank you very much. And I ‑‑ I do want to applaud to go back to a comment that you made, Marilyn Cade speaking, pointing out the significant impact on women when there is no energy source. Women and girls who are walking in to the forest to find wood to be able to heat their homes or who are forced to walk great distances in India and other countries to find drinkable water. And that has such a ‑‑ the implications where children actually cannot study, they may be able to go to school but there is no electricity, no power source. So they are unable to study late in to the evening or they are studying with a kerosine lamp. I know I did that. But I was hoping that 70 years later that others wouldn't be doing that as well. I want to go next ‑‑ Bill.
>> BILL ASH: Thank you, Marilyn. It is a pleasure and honor to be here. This, too, is my first IGF, although IEEE has participated in this for many years. My name is Bill Ash. Deals with standards and technology. And, you know, to go to what Marilyn was saying and Kris and such, I am going to highlight a few points and coming from an organization that has multiple societies that will argue over which network is more important the data side, you know, the economy that goes along with sharing data and the businesses and such. Or the power energy society that says well, you can't share that data if you don't have power. So good luck.
So from that perspective, you know, they are both important. They equally provide services in a manner that allows for economies to grow for businesses, and also providing natural services for those that need to have electricity and other things that the electricity actually provides for them for the quality of living and such. And with that I'm going to highlight two projects that we are working on. One of them will address Kris' question and the other is addressing some of the other issues and challenges that are bringing electricity that allows this to reduce the digital divide between our economies. Our smart village projects and initiative provides power, education, and training as well as employment to those that are locally there to make the unconnected connected and helping to reduce the digital divide and allowing the ability to provide digital connectivity through powers, power services and micro grid deployments. I will give an example. Lane Shed Monastery in India. We helped to set up DC micro grids that provides 100 watts to 300 watts of power while providing low power computers and LED displays and lighting and systems that will allow operations for ten hours for about 150 watts giving the local community and their students the ability to have Internet connection as well as power and energy to provide other services for quality of living.
So providing these type equipment and service to them not only do we have a business model to sustain payment with some ‑‑ also some funding, fundraising to help subsidize some of the cost we looked at both models to make sure they are sustainable and providing services and economies to those environments and not only providing equipment we also train the locals on how to maintain the equipment and run the equipment and troubleshoot so that they actually learn new skills to provide them a better quality of living as well as income, but also learn to help produce for the community that the equipment is serving.
And so from there, you know, we are looking at how to provide these DC micro grids to villages that never had the power and that gives the ability to provide a digital infrastructure to give education to their kids. So their next generation of leaders that will help drive that country and local regions as well.
The second part of it I am going to highlight is our DC micro grid standard. It is actually P2030.10. And for rural and unconnected grid support for those that don't have electricity or infrastructure for the needs of actually supplying power and it is exactly to address Kris' concern on instead of having all these different styles of micro grid having standardized requirements of what their ‑‑ how they are connected, how they are deployed to allow these interoperabilities and technologies to be connected to provide these energies and not only reduces the cost to the manufacture. They can reduce the costs of deployment. It based on economy of scale based on standards. And so with that I'm going to close it there and say, you know, the work that everyone is doing here it is all important to make it happen.
>> MARILYN CADE: Thank you very much, Bill. I have a couple of questions for you, but I'll reserve them until later. And I'm going to turn to Omar and he will introduce himself.
>> OMAR ANSARI: Thank you so much. My name is Omar Ansari. I am running a business that is called Tech Nation. And we do technology software development and a lot of work with the community that includes capacity building, trainings and skill building, doing Hack‑A‑Thons. You might be aware Afghanistan is in the middle of Central Asia and South Asia. And it connects ‑‑ interconnects the regions. Not only central regions but also the Middle East and China. And also it is a gateway to Europe as well. Afghanistan when the rest of the world in the past 30 years to 40 years development, we were fighting the Soviets. And so that's why we are a little behind from our neighbors. They have a better infrastructure, but with the infrastructure we had, was destroyed first in the war against the Soviets and then we started fighting against each other and that destroyed the rest of the infrastructure. But in the past 15 years when the international peacekeeping forces came to Afghanistan they have contributed to infrastructure development as well as capacity development and working a lot on the policy issues as well.
So Afghanistan initially being kind of very reserved in letting the power tech do some of the work when related to the infrastructure it has prioritized several sectors and that includes ICT, power, and education. But initially it was the Government who will take care of the electricity in the telecom and others. We still have quite a number of challenges that includes connectivity and that's mainly due to the cost of Internet. It is $150 per mps for speed. And if you have 100 mps Internet that will cost you $15,000 to $16,000 U.S. a month and that's extremely expensive. We have the benefit of being the only country that provides an optic fiber. We don't have connection with China now but they are working on this.
Digital literacy has been content and technology that's technologies, that's one of the issues because people do not see the benefits of common, I am talking about the end users. They don't see the benefit of investing on a bandwidth that's expensive. If we can provide them with local content so they can see the benefits, like have access to some educational material online and benefits that it provides, I'm sure they can start investing on that. Taxation has been an issue. Government officials, their interest in partnering with businesses if you do certain Government officials who also have companies registered under their names. Or they are partnering with some of the existing businesses. And that creates an issue for the startups to grow. And financing has been an issue for the startups. But still there are a number of abilities that are formed in contributing to the development of the new startups.
There are a couple of really big programs that you might have heard about that would really contribute to the power access as well as the Internet access. One of them is called Casa 1,000. When we say Casa it is Central Asia and South Asia. It is a power project of about $1.16 billion. And the purpose is to transfer the hundred electricity in Tajikistan to Pakistan. And it is planned to be ‑‑ to complete by the end of 2018. But still security has been an issue. And areas it is passing through is ‑‑ the remote areas and loosely controlled by the Taliban.
The other project which is the ‑‑ which will really support the Afghan infrastructure in access to technologies is called DeCasa. It is $75 million of project that is supported by the World Bank and it is going to be ‑‑ have certain components which includes private sector development, public sector, management and human development and gender. So we are really looking forward to dispatch, not only this one, but we also look forward to the contribution from other international organizations, corporate who can really help to skill building initiatives, local technologies, as well as local content in Afghanistan. So it can really serve the purpose in achieving a goal of becoming the future for the ICTs in the Casa region. Thank you.
>> MARILYN CADE: Thank you very much. And I have a number of questions for you that I want to follow up on. But before we do that, I want to introduce wisdom. When I opened this workshop I mentioned that this workshop proposal although it was excellent in my view, it was ‑‑ is this threshold that workshops have to reach in rating by the anonymous rating by the MAG members. And this one fell short by probably less than .02%, but there was a magic cutoff of only 75. And my colleague from Ghana who is good friends with a colleague who is known for bringing the Internet to Africa. Wisdom pointed out to me that it is extremely disappointing that other MAG members didn't understand the situation in Africa. And he happened to be sitting in front of a colleague from Fiji who overheard the conversation and the WSIS Forum was going on at this time. And there was an IEEE brochure about smart villages and the importance of power. And Wisdom and Sala went to their booth and brought back these brochures which were evidence of the challenges that existed worldwide in access to power, gave them to other MAG members and did sort of a little four‑minute explanation going ‑‑ Developing Country MAG member by Developing Country MAG member explaining the problem. And somehow gee, magically the facts mattered. And our colleagues in the MAG became supportive of this workshop. So I want to give him complete credit for having made this happen. So we would like to hear from you about your thoughts, about your relationship and your views about where things are in Africa and how you kind of see the importance of how we move forward on this.
>> PANELIST: Thank you, Marilyn. And thank you for bringing this interesting public forum discussion. When it comes to electricity in Africa, it is a different situation all together. And I believe some of you might have traveled to Africa, especially Nigeria and Ghana and other parts of Africa and now how the situation is. I want to conclude the talk, in capacity use Ghana as an example and 100 engineer guide and he might add from the perspective of Nigeria. In the situation of Ghana we have a program that started somewhere in '92, 1992. Sustaining the power grid to almost every part of Ghana. And we had different Governments come in to power and each of these Governments accounts are committed to working to extend this power to other communities. As I am speaking now we have coverage from now 80% of coverage. We still have more to do. In terms of connecting everyone and extending Internet to almost everyone we talk about, I remember in one instance, in one ‑‑ in a remote area there was this lone guy who was doing this mobile Internet telephone business that is another term that we are having this call, state calls coming in. We are doing this mobile business. So what has guided us? He's normally using this car battery and didn't know how he did it to charging and go to a time ‑‑ it was ‑‑ it wasn't sustainable. So he has to be traveling to another village where there is electricity to charge a number of phones and then come back and come and do business.
So this is what I think is going on. And in which the sector that I work in we try to extend fiber optic throughout the whole country of Ghana. So we have connected more cries and an issue that we face power, to power all these base stations to give Internet to our community. And by engineering tests and also sustainable engineer, that is usual. So that energy commission of Ghana with its stakeholders thought it wise that they have to lean back on the renewable energy program.
So what they are doing now is trying to extend communities where have a low population and they try to extend this solar energy system to these community areas but still a lot to be done in this regard. Because we know that transfer of what ‑‑ the transfer of knowledge in regard to this sector. So it is another issue that we have to look at. Apart from that we also need to encourage the African Government and we have good policies in relation to gas and energy. Implementation is another issue.
So if we can maybe channel our energy in to solving the issues of energy within Africa, that will go a long way to have ‑‑ to have ‑‑ to reconnecting everyone for us to comfortably talk about accessing needs of Internet, extending the Internet to every home. And ‑‑ yeah. So I think this is what we need to also do and access, I don't know access and use of renewable energy technologies that we need to look at. We need a lot of expertise in this area in Africa. I think this is ‑‑
>> MARILYN CADE: Thank you. Did you want to ask him ‑‑
>> NII NARKU QUAYNOR: Tell me if you can also add in regards to Nigeria.
>> MARILYN CADE: Be sure to state your name.
>> PARTICIPANT: Okay. My name is Tomi. I'm the senior director of a company (?). Business is local and international crowdsource. We experience these problems, too, which is the reason why we use a platform to crowdsource data in very remote areas. The reason we do the platform to be offline first so that people can capture that data offline and resynchronize online when they find an Internet connection. A problem is they have to go to extra batteries. In some cases we are trying to look for some ways to get them devices that can solar charge. Or it is kind of things that we are facing. Extra devices and in some cases, so I had a situation where I had an agent who decided to go ‑‑ he was offline for about three days, two to three days, trying to get ‑‑ and we couldn't contact him. And the reason why he did it was he was trying to see a power battery. He refused to contact any phone calls and captured all the data. He was helping out facilities. I think they captured about 70 odd facilities. Ours was critical. We get on the next flight and figure it out. All ‑‑ so it was a major issue we have. And it is amazing that we have whole lot of some ‑‑ I am not opposing this but I think we need to figure out ways to use resources we have to generate power. And I think the answer for us might be the sun. More solar panels, more solar energy and I'd like to see more phones that are solar powered and they are sustainable. I think they will go a long way in helping us to achieve these goals. Thank you.
>> MARILYN CADE: Thank you. And I had the opportunity to learn more about what you are doing. I found it very fascinating and I will urge others after the session is over to perhaps take the opportunity to learn more about the capturing of data and the purpose of that.
I want to go back to Manu for two or three minutes and then we are going to go to Vint Cerf who I have asked to offer his thoughts and make some responsive comments to what he has heard. I am going to turn to Manu for two or three minutes and Vint is going to come up and replace me on the podium. And then after Vint speaks we will take questions from the audience and we will start with the remote hub. So that's our plan for the rest of the time. Manu, the floor is yours.
>> MANU BHARDWAJ: Thanks. The genesis for this intervention was the observation that Marilyn might be the first participant from the financial service company at IGF. And it was an interesting observation. This is my seventh IGF. Marilyn and Vint have probably been to every IGF since it was founded. There is a story to tell here because finance companies have had an integral role to play in development at large. And the story is one of JP Morgan. JP Morgan who many people probably recognize the name and if you watch the history channel they think he was a venture capitalist and he had an important relationship with Thomas Edison. Thomas was turned away by many investors until JP Morgan saw the potential of technology, invested in it until he lit his home up in New York with the technology and New York became the first city that benefitted from Edison's invention. But I think generally it just shows you that there is the inventor and investors and investors need to be part of the conversation.
We heard that today from Omar and many others who talk about the need for financing entrepreneurs. And I just want ‑‑ I actually don't ‑‑ I am not sure about this number. I will be more diplomatic but it is a number that is being used by ITU. To connect the next 1.5 billion it would require $450 billion. I don't think that number is an accurate depiction of what technology can produce and how this evolves, but it shows you that there is a significant amount of investment that has to come from private companies and finance ministers and the finance community. And it is incumbent upon us to more strategically engage one another. And now we are off to Vint.
>> VINT CERF: Okay. Well, first of all, thank you, Marilyn, for allowing me to parachute in this way and maybe try to share a few thoughts. First thing I would observe is that instead of two networks there is three. There is the electrical power grid and Internet. And there is the financial network. And so we should change the two to the three and be honest about the fact that we have to combine all three of those to produce the kind of benefit that I think we are all looking for.
The second thing I wanted to observe is a technical point. The traditional telecommunication networks, telephone networks in particular were circuit switched and they have a certain property that for transport of data in the circuit switch network, the data rate at the input side has to be the same as the data rate at the output side. Because there is no storage in circuit switch net. Interestingly enough in the case of the Internet we put storage in the system. The consequence of that you can push data in at one rate and take it out at a different one. Why is that relevant to the power grid? Well, if you start looking at renewable resources that are episodic like the solar system doesn't work when the sun goes down and the windmills don't work when the wind stops blowing, it is very important to be able to store power when you don't generate it. And you use that stored power until the generators come back.
And so we have to use storage in both cases. So the two have an interesting parallel. The biggest problem we have with episodic and renewable energy resources is the cost and longevity of storage of electricity. There are a variety of different ways of achieving that storage. In many of the hydroelectric systems you pump water up the hill in order to have it run down again when you need to generate more power. But not everyone has a power source that has water and hills in order to generate power. So we look for other possibilities as well. There is power that you can store away by spinning wheels, for example.
And to ‑‑ when the power generation stops the wheel keeps spinning and then you use to generate power until you have a new source. So storage is going to be a big issue. I want to draw attention to a technical type of storage. It is called a redox flow battery. They turn out to be resilient and scaleable and recently affordable. In the past they were expensive propositions, but because I am convinced that the power systems that we will need must work in an episodic environment then better battery technology is also going to be needed in addition to various kinds of power generation. So that's something to think about.
Another thing which occurred to me as I listen to some narratives that most of the discussion seems to be country by country. It tends to be country by country. And so one of the questions I have for the people on the panel is whether in the African setting there are cross country power exchange arrangements. And I don't know if there are. But if there were not, perhaps there should be. The Internet doesn't work without Internet Exchange Points linking the networks of the countries together. And it is often the case that regional Internet exchanges are organized so that we have a continuously connected network. There is however a side effect of connecting power grids to each other. When failures happen, cascade failures occur they propagate.
One of the things that you are persuaded to do is to build a power grid that has cutoffs and cutouts so you can isolate yourself from what might be a failing power grid. This is not too different in the Internet where a failure requires the system to route around the failure if connectivity is still available, but I would like to stop for a moment and ask well, you know, Marilyn, how do you want to do this? I would like to see if there is an answer to this question of regional power in the African scene. So if we can do that, and then I'll come back to some closing remarks. And then we will have some more general Q and A. You look like you are levitating out of your Chair.
>> PARTICIPANT: In the case of Africa, Ghana, we, Independence, Ghana had a hydropower system. And then over the years we have tried to extend power to Burkina Faso, Cote D'Ivoire, Togo and part of Benin. Arranging some sort of regional power, cross country power sharing, that is not enough. It is not enough. And we still ‑‑ it is not enough in terms of the hydrogenration capacity doesn't allow to expound to. So we need to look at other sources of energy to compliment what we already have.
>> VINT CERF: So here is another tactic which has been used to build ‑‑ underwrite the cost of and build telecommunication networks. In the case of the Internet, I will give you one example, in both in Ghana and also in Uganda, Google has been building an optical fiber network which is made available on wholesale, on a wholesale basis. So it is not a giveaway. It is not free, but it is intended to offer a wholesale rate to allow a retail, competitive retail Internet services to be built up by local companies, local investors.
So the question I have is whether there is any conceivable similar tactic that makes sense. Can there be wholesale electricity and retail electricity? I am asking this as an engineer who doesn't know anything about economics. Does it make any sense? And Manu might be able to say whether they would consider investing in such a scheme.
>> MANU BHARDWAJ: I would be hesitant to invest in anything called a scheme. But I think ‑‑
>> VINT CERF: Thanks.
>> MANU BHARDWAJ: I do think that there is a lot of ‑‑ there is a lot of ‑‑ there is a lot of high‑end capital out there that is excited about investing in these types of experiments. Because they understand a philanthropic but also the profitability if it goes to scale.
>> VINT CERF: Usually scale is attractive because costs per unit are driven out. If you believe in subsidies in order to encourage investment you can see the possibilities of even a government investment let alone a private sector investment in this wholesale framework. In order to ‑‑ effectively provide any income to grow the rest of the infrastructure. I have one funny story to tell you about my personal situation in the Washington D.C. area. I live in Mclean, Virginia and where you would expect the electrical power would be reliable. There was one year where two weather related events lost power for five days each. Now I have a wine cellar which has about 2,000 bottles of wine in it. And after the first five‑day outage I started to get very nervous. After the second five‑day outage in the same year I purchased a 50 kilowatt gas generator and put it in the backyard after overcoming the complaints of the local homeowners association of this ugly thing. I felt compelled to provide myself with backup power because it wasn't reliable enough ‑‑ the power available for me. Power companies. So I just hope that makes you feel a little bit better that even well‑developed countries have problems with reliability. I don't necessarily recommend that everyone go and put a 50 kilowatt generator in your backyard.
I would point out that micro grids are becoming a very attractive alternative to centralized power generation and distribution. Partly because the equipment that's needed to do that ‑‑ to build the micro grid it can be standardized, whereas the very large scale centralized power generation systems are often specific to the site where they are designed and installed.
And so once we get to standardization generation and distribution we can reduce the cost of some of those devices. So there is no reason why countries that are still trying to find a way to generate power need to follow the same path, historical path that other countries have if there are these alternatives available. So Marilyn, I think I should stop there and see whether we have a discussion that people would like to pursue.
>> MARILYN CADE: Thank you very much, Vint. And we are checking, Garland is checking with our remote hub. They have posted a couple of comments privately. We are asking them if they want them read out, but we are going to start with questions. And I have a couple of questions. And I don't mean to put you on the spot but I'm going to mention an activity of IEEE. Otherwise I wouldn't give you a heads up on and not fall in to your area of expertise. I have been privileged to learn about your smart villages activities. And I have been very excited about that because the countries that the initiative to Omar has launched called Tech Women Asia actually has a lot of countries that have villages in need of power and in some cases those countries have thousands of islands.
So I recently became very familiar with one of the smart villages in Nigeria. If you can speak a little bit about the concept because that's a very modularized, standardized project and while you are addressing that, I want you to also explain how you are managing to do that at IEEE at such low cost. I know the answer but I think it would be inspirational for people to hear.
>> PARTICIPANT: So thanks, Marilyn. So yes, so I mentioned the India project, but that's also a pilot project that's been deployed in many different countries and areas as Marilyn mentioned, Nigeria being one. We have done Cameroon. And we are doing Haiti's and a few other areas as well. It is a modular project where it is a self‑sustained micro grid where it has a solar as a generation of the energy. It has got its own storage facility to keep for the intermittence of the solar power and the ability to communicate back in to a central environment through that distribution network.
And so there is a couple of ways that, you know, I don't know if this is going to hit the answer that you are looking for but we have done fundraising, seed money but we have looked at standardizing these deployments to reduce the costs and make them reasonably accessible to the local environment where we are talking about $6 or $2 a month for replacing Kerosine generation and providing an infrastructure where it doesn't exist. And to go to Vint's question or answer some of the concerns that Vint raised, one of the criterias around these modular micro grids, when governments get around to funding infrastructure that can make these remote villages connected, 2030.10 talks about how to standardize the deployment requirements and then another IEEE standard, 1547 gives you the requirements to connect to the grid.
So when they are ready to make these modular connections happen and build out the economies so we can build these villages that don't have a grid connected environment and at some point in time when they will there is technology that's available and standards to help make it happen. And so the answer to your question is we are trying to reduce the cost of standardization. We are trying to reduce the cost to remodularization and then make it capacity building by training the local environment to also provide employment to help do the maintenance and everything to reduce costs as well.
>> VINT CERF: There is one other interesting thing that's happening in the power generation world. We have been generating power of one kind or another over a hundred years. And I can remember Edison trying to show how dangerous AC was by essentially demonstrating the you could kill a hot dog with AC. And killer app, right? So that fight was lost by the D.C. people for a variety of reasons. The battle has resumed and a new ‑‑ renewed interest in D.C. generation and distribution is coming forward. Partly for transport.
To give you an example in the Northeast in the United States there is a plan to put in a large number of windmills that are about 50 miles offshore. So they aren't visible to spoil the view of people who have shore front property. But in order to take the energy back a significant bus structure needs to be built to take the DC from windmills. And the reason that is better to take DC than AC is combining the energy from the windmill is a lot easier if it is just direct current as opposed to worrying phase and frequency and all the other things that AC demands of you.
So that may, too, introduce a different set of economics and certainly different technology. And when you look around and see how many devices right now are stepping AC to DC in order to power them, we get rid of a lot of wasteful conversion if we could stick with DC and convert only to AC when that seems to make sense.
>> MARILYN CADE: Thanks. I'm going to ask a question that I'm going to direct towards Omar and Nulmini and if I can Kris. I worked for a number of years in the communications sector for a very large communications company. And I was married for a number of years. And so I knew all about the egos or behaviors or expectations of CEOs and companies and the communications sector. And I was married for a number of years to the Chairman of FERC. Were kind of mind boggling. So I'm looking at the importance of cross communication, cross ministry cooperation, openness to competition, moving from in some cases Government supported or Government partly owned businesses that's been made reference to.
And I'm asking the three of you because you are all working in countries where the ability to communicate with multiple ministries and to communicate openly, thoroughly and transparently is a real challenge. And I wonder if you have thoughts for us about ideas for how to improve the access for the private sector. To engage in interaction with the relevant ministries and I think I'm going to start with Omar.
>> OMAR ANSARI: Thank you, Marilyn. This was a good question. There are certain issues when it comes to especially in Afghanistan to collaboration. We have some policy regulatory challenges. For example, for public/private partnership there is more clear cash back system. The cash back system is very complicated in Afghanistan so far. And there was no policy on public/private partnerships. But the cash back system being complicated is that, for example, if you would like to partner with the ‑‑ with the equities managed by the Government and to the Ministry of Communications, it is a department within the Ministry of Communications.
By setting the area of the domain it can have a lot of revenue. It is 30 million of population and that area feels very attractive domain name. You can sell it outside of Afghanistan as well. The Government is not open to partnering with the private sector. They cannot manage it and a number of users is very ‑‑ Domain Names, it is very small. But it can become like a huge revenue source for the Government as well as the entity that would partner with the Government. But the problem is if the entity has a partner sharing model, then the money would go to the Central Bank, Minister of finances account and it would not come back to DF. As good as Ministry of Communications '90s budget. That makes it complicated when it comes to partnering at that level.
But the ‑‑ the multi‑stakeholder approach would be great. I'm glad to have Manu and Kris who have experience in Afghanistan. Tetra Tech has been working in contributing to ‑‑ in the development projects. We are working with USAID and others and Afghan Wireless being the first telecom operator in Afghanistan. They have so much experience in the country and that experience could be shared with others, smaller companies in Civil Society Organizations on how they have handled the issues like this in the past. There are quite a few issues we are facing as business that's affecting our growth and development. One of them is the payment system. We do not have a payment system. And that's making it really hard for us to develop.
So if the Foundation, Google, for example, and IEEE and others may have solutions, you know, we are the only country who has the e‑payment problem. If we can share that sort of experiences in the span, really provide people with great experience and knowledge in these areas. So my question back would be to all the panel, especially Google, IEEE, and then my friends from Tetra Tech and AWCC how we can collaborate on these issues.
>> MARILYN CADE: So apparently the workshop proposal for next year is of the three networks.
(Laughter).
>> MARILYN CADE: I'm going to come to you in a minute. But I want to hear from Nilmini and Kris and then I will come to you to make a response.
>> NILMINI RUBIN: Thanks for the response. So ‑‑ and it is a great one. And I think to increase private sector access it is ‑‑ it takes leadership from the business community and leadership from the Government community to gather and figuring out where there are points of intersection or interesting collaboration. Part of that is coming together on issues with a question of how do we solve this issue rather than let's talk about the issue. So how do you solve bringing people to the table with potential solutions that they can bring. Just discussing the challenges of Internet access, people sit in their positions and then the idea from where they are and concern as you move forward and that working at the White House when I bring agencies together. It didn't work to have a topic as the thing to bring them together. We just saw this week the Trump Administration released its national security strategy. And of interest to this group, it included attaining universal and energy access as one of the priority issues under development.
We talk about how the U.S. will seek to ensure universal access to affordable, reliable energy and including higher efficiency fossil fuels, help reduce poverty and foster economic growth and permit prosperity. It is that model of phrasing is ripe for including Internet access potentially in the future, national security strategy.
Specifically to the question, it did include language on development finance institution reform. And the development finance institutions like the overseas private investment corporation in trade and development agency and resist crowd in private sector and it is a tool that we use to encourage people to invest in open countries. And the national security strategy talks about how the U.S. is going to modernize our development finance tools, investment incentives and it talks about why that's a benefit to the U.S. and it says with these changes was not left behind. Other states invest and project finance to extend their influence. The U.S. Government must not be an obstacle to U.S. companies that want to conduct business in the developing world.
>> MARILYN CADE: Thank you very much. And I'm going to be a little more pointed in my question. So Kris, we were in a session yesterday where someone mentioned to the head of a regulatory authority that they had seen ‑‑ they were from that country. That they had seen that the head of the regulatory authority more often at the IGF than they had been able to get in to see them in their offices. So maybe I could just ask you to comment as a ‑‑ someone who works in these countries about the access to the regulatory authorities and the access to the various ministries and how you see that emerging.
>> KRISTOPHER HAAG: In regards to access to the regulatory authorities it depends on which authority you are talking about, but what I have seen on this ‑‑ specifically in a place like Afghanistan is we ‑‑ the donor community has actually exported the bureaucracies to these countries. And then there is frameworks that they are following, but you have people focusing just inside those boxes. So we have really taken things that we have moved in the U.S. and worked in other countries and ‑‑ but when you are looking at things that go across multiple regulatory bodies it gets very, very complex. So I guess I will take sort of two examples. One ‑‑ one how some things work and one how we are going through some issues right now. So when Afghan communications start in Afghan and there was no regulatory authority. So we actually work with the Ministry of Communications and the donor community to design the regulatory authority around that and then lay the other foundation for the other operators to come in to the country. Also involved in IPP program right now. And the challenge on that front you are dealing with the regulator in the Afghan Government to regulate solid gas. And you are dealing with a regulator who regulates procurement of electricity and dealing with folks in Ministry of Finance. And when you bring all these guys together they are stuck by rules that were given by some other agency. What has to happen in that situation and it is very similar to when you are working in a big company, you have to take this out of each one of these organizations and you need to bring it up all the way to the top. And you have to find a champion that's going to sort of shape it up and say let's think about this a little bit differently, because if we get going with all of these, the lawyers are going to be negotiating everything on both sides. It takes a change agent that has almost the Presidency or the President's champions to make things happen and to use those transactions to readjust the frameworks that they currently have.
>> MARILYN CADE: I am going to give Vint two minutes to respond, but I am going to mention that actually Manu was with Global Connect, was an excellent example of go all the way to the top.
>> VINT CERF: I am going to start out by offering a fantasy from an engineer looking at the problems we have been talking about. So I'm going to ignore the obvious political complexities of dealing with multiple regulatory agencies. If I am a systems engineer and I am trying to get something to happen, I want to design it from a systems point of view. I certainly want to get power and communications infrastructure built. How will we do that. Well, when you are building road you might consider putting in conduit so you can pull fiber. When you are building a power generation and distribution system you might consider designing it so that it can also carry communication signals partly to control the grid and partly to offer communication services. But this requires cooperation and collaboration across the various ministries who may be managing the infrastructure projects. And so that's not so simple. But if, in fact, we want to make this process effective we are going to have to try to persuade the multiple ministries with their multiple incentives and motivations to step back for a moment and ask how can I make optimal use of my development capacity in order to dig once, pull fiber or pull conduit to make this a much more efficient arrangement. Whether that's possible I don't know. As I say that's the engineer's fantasy doing systems design to make things come out better.
>> MARILYN CADE: Thanks. Let me turn to our audience here. And we also do have a comment that we are going to read out in just a minute from the Syracuse hub. Comments or questions? Question, please.
>> PARTICIPANT: Thank you. Alan Greenberg. I guess I have a little bit of despair. I wrote a paper, ICT for Development of Poverty Innovation in 2005. I included the anecdote of somebody using a car battery and traveling to another city to charge cell phones and included the sage device, of when you build roads, communication and when you put it in communication allow for the multiple use and cooperation between ministries. It is really disturbing to hear the same thing 13 years later.
>> MARILYN CADE: I actually have a response to that and an idea. Before I do that let's hear ‑‑
>> VINT CERF: You surely don't think it is a dumb idea but nobody took you up on it I guess.
>> PARTICIPANT: The battery is a good idea. It can still sit around today. Sharing resources and cooperating, everyone thinks it is a good idea but really difficult and I don't think that people really try.
>> MARILYN CADE: I will ask the panelists if they have a question for each other. Because then I'm going to be ‑‑ we are going to read the Syracuse University comment.
>> PARTICIPANT: It is not the question but just ‑‑ my name is Kenhita from the Internet Association of Japan. It is an observation or a comment on what I have listened to in the last few minutes or so. Since many folks have shared and talked about, I would say there is a commonality with the situation what people used to do on this disaster relief. When the disaster happened the people who were affected they really had both power and Internet for their communications. There might be some best practices could be extended to address the need of the next 5 million based upon the practice developed. Thank you.
>> VINT CERF: You have plenty of experience with disasters I know. We hope it doesn't take a disaster in order to get people to cooperate.
>> MARILYN CADE: I am going to make a comment about Haiti. Where I was at very directly involved with colleagues who ‑‑ when it was taking far too long for others to take action, they loaded equipment and luggage and got on planes and landed in Haiti and started setting up networks. And they didn't ask permission. They just went and did it. And I think sometimes one of the things that we are seeing is that for access and for power, electricity to come to some of the very remote villages the work that's going on in community networks is essential. But those initiatives do not include the third network, the financial network.
I wanted to just kind of do a summing because then we are actually through with this session. But I really want to appreciate all of you coming. And I also wanted to note that we had expected Dr. Mohammad Azizi who is the head of regulatory authority from Afghanistan to be with us. Due to travel challenges he had to leave early. He did extract a commitment and that is we will do a workshop related to these issues next year and he will be invited again. I want to pass that on to everyone about his very strong interest in making sure that the Government is participating and the Government is engaging. Three networks. Would you like to read the Syracuse statement?
>> REMOTE MODERATOR: So this is a reply to Marilyn's point from Mr. McNade from Syracuse. Syracuse University is a stakeholder facilitating establishment of interagency tasks on advisory groups which include private sector actors in cooperation with the Liberian President and five ministries. In participation of the first Liberian Internet Forum. See lighttag.org. Allowed five ‑‑ before the first BRC Internet Forum. All participants are welcome to join in the Internet Society and facilitating or participating in many policy processes for other countries as well. And the Liberian President leaves real fun at home, voyaging as connected with ‑‑ in rural Liberia is not an example of cooperating and all ministries to cooperate to make progress. The need for interagency as it forces advisory groups. As UAC to get the Internet going faster, in the U.S. and in the 1990s.
>> MARILYN CADE: So I said I had an idea. I had an idea of how to help with this breaking down the communications between ministries. And actually I know ‑‑ I know that ministry very well and have worked with her before at U.S. TTI. I ‑‑ one of the problems with the regulatory authorities is we may meet as a group. They meet as a silo. So the ‑‑ there is a regular ‑‑ a regulators forum at ITU. There is a financial regulators forum. There is an energy ministers forum. They actually are almost never in the same place at the same time.
I have an idea. We could think about a Day Zero event for IGF 2018 and identify four or five countries and by multiple ministries and build a session around the three networks. It will take a lot of work for us to do that ahead of time, but I know a few Governments like Ghana and maybe Nigeria and maybe Namibia where maybe we have some contacts, and we might have contacts in Afghanistan, but we could think about doing something and try to bring, you know, sort of ‑‑ and Vint, to your point if we only work in silos, we spend all of our time trying to reach the person who we need to get agreement with and to Nilmini's point if we comment and make our position all the time we make no progress. Last point.
>> PARTICIPANT: Thank you. It is Mike. I have got a couple of comments. One, electricity interconnection in Sub‑Saharan Africa. It does not produce all electricity. So that's one. But imagine we pull ‑‑ we generate and pull electricity transmission, et cetera, in today's areas where it doesn't exist today. And we want to have the Internet connectivity report alone which is perfectly logical. I think we should also think about water at the same time. Because if you give people a choice of what they may want first, I think I would go for clean water. So I think we need to take that systems point, the systems engineering and systems planning points that are linked convincingly and also wait to the water energy access and piggyback the communications on top.
>> MARILYN CADE: I am giving Vint a comment and then I am going to wrap up.
>> VINT CERF: Just a technical observation. We are trying to understand how photosynthesis works. We may be able to make it even more efficient than it already is. Your idea triggers some thoughts in my own mind about desolemnization and conversion of atmospheric water in ‑‑ atmospheric properties in to water using the electrical power. There is some interesting and intriguing ideas hiding in your suggestion.
>> MARILYN CADE: I want to thank all of you for coming and I want to ‑‑ I'm going to end this with the comment from a President of the United States that I worked very closely with when I was in the governor of an adjoining state, President Bill Clinton. Something that I have found that's an extremely helpful comment to keep in mind and that is particularly to you, Alan, and that we talked a lot about the needs and the opportunities. We've identified some of the challenges but also identified some of the maybe iceberg ideas that we should be looking at more deeply. As President Clinton always said, always be sure you stumble in the right direction. So I'm going to invite all of you to say thank you to our panel.
(Applause.)
>> MARILYN CADE: Thank you to our remote hub.
(Applause.)
>> MARILYN CADE: And I have given Wisdom and Garland an assignment to consider and perhaps they will reach out to Manu to consider the idea of how might we develop a workshop for next year or if we are worried about not getting approved, focus on a Day Zero event. Thank you again, everyone. And I will look forward to seeing you for the next day.
(Applause.)