By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 26 2004 (IPS)

A story making the rounds at the United Nations forum on Internet governance is about a young U.S. student of philosophy who decides to seek spiritual guidance from an ascetic monk living in the foothills of the Himalayas.

When the youth finally meets the monk face to face, he tells him he had made the arduous globetrotting journey all the way from the back streets of New York solely to determine whether there really was life after death.

And the wise sage replies: ”Why didn’t you send me an e-mail message?”

The story may be apocryphal but it is certainly not far fetched. The U.S.-based Wireless Internet Institute says that among the major challenges of the Himalayas – high altitudes, extremely harsh weather, no roads – is the lack of functional telecommunications infrastructure.

But all that may have changed with a project called Linking Everest: a partnership between Worldlink Communications of Nepal and the Sagarmatha Pollution Control Committee.

With the goal of operating wireless Internet access for one tourist season in Nepal, a six-person team wirelessly linked the base camp to an Internet server via satellite.

The Institute points out that because of cost, rugged terrain and deployment logistics, wireless connectivity is often the only telecommunications option in remote regions of the world.

Addressing a three-day ‘Global Forum on Internet Governance’, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Thursday that the new communications medium must be made accessible and responsive to the needs of all the world’s peoples, including those living in the Himalayas.

”The swift emergence of a global information society is changing the way people live, learn, work and relate,” he added.

Of the world’s six billion people, only 700 million to one billion are regular Internet users. With few exceptions, the developing world still remains marginalized.

In Brazil, 90 to 95 percent of all tax returns are now done online, which in comparison, is much higher than in the United States, says Mohsen Khali, director of the Global Information and Communication Technologies Division of the World Bank.

In Bangladesh, mobile telephones now outnumber fixed land lines by two to one, says Iqbal Quadir, lecturer at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.

”There are already more mobiles than fixed phones in Africa and, in the next five years, mobiles are expected to outnumber fixed phones by four to one,” says Quadir, founder of GrameenPhone in Bangladesh.

This rapid expansion of connectivity in Africa is attributed to the new uses and economics of digital technologies. ”Whether you are in a modern office or in an underdeveloped village, connectivity is productivity,” Quadir said.

But despite these advances, Internet reach is still ”highly uneven and the vast majority of people have yet to benefit from it, or even to be touched by it at all,” Annan told some of the key leaders of the Internet community, government officials, and representatives of the private sector and civil society attending the Global Forum that concludes Saturday.

Annan said that a ”digital divide” threatens to exacerbate already wide gaps between rich and poor, within and amongst countries. ”The stakes are high indeed. Timely access to news and information can promote trade, education, employment, health and wealth.”

”Wireless technologies have a key role to play everywhere, but especially in developing countries and countries with economies in transition,” he added.

The U.N. chief also raised the issue of Internet governance, which, he said, was one of the most controversial issues at the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Geneva last December.

One of the hallmarks of the information society – openness – is a crucial ingredient of democracy and good governance, and the differences were such, he said, that the WSIS asked him to establish a working group to study these issues and funding.

But some of the transnational telecommunications companies that dominate the world’s information superhighway have already expressed reservations when it comes to governance.

Vinton Cerf, senior vice president of MCI Communications, told delegates that there was an old expression that was once used to describe the behaviour of a governmental regulatory body: ”If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”

Cerf said it is fair to ask whether the Internet needs governing. ”Perhaps if we need to govern, our need should focus more on the use or abuse of the network, and less on its operations, except where the technical rules of the road dictate adherence to standards to assure the stability and integrity of the system.”

He said that governance is sometimes thought of as a means of restricting what may be done. Rules for the use of the Internet are less well developed and deserve more consideration. ”I would caution, however, that one should strive not to stifle the motivation and freedom to create that the Internet offers,” he said.

There is no need to have global democracy for the Internet to work, Cerf insisted. ”Every one of the nearly 700 million to one billion Internet users today could certainly not be consulted about Internet governance – and probably wouldn’t want to be anyway,” he added.

But non-governmental organisations and civil society groups are complaining that they are in danger of being marginalized in the final decision-making process.

Anriette Esterhuysen, executive director of South Africa’s Association for Progressive Communications, told reporters that participants in the Forum were challenged to address not only developing countries’ concerns about inequitable access to new technologies, but also the feeling that the poor were excluded from decision-making on how the Internet phenomenon would be managed in the future.

A valuable outcome of the WSIS process in Geneva, she said, was that Internet policies are not merely technical, but also have a social and developmental perspective.

”There is enormous inequity in access to infrastructure and decision making” she said.

Esterhuysen, who is also a member of the U.N. Information and Communication Technologies Task Force (ICTF), admitted that current Internet governance is unique and ”it works.”

”But there is lack of legitimacy as to how that process takes place,” she added.

José María Figueres-Olsen, chairman of ICTF, said: ”I look forward to the impact these initiatives will undoubtedly have in raising private and public stakeholders’ awareness of the wireless-fidelity (Wi-Fi) and related technologies present as an economic development tool for under-served populations in developing nations and local communities around the world.”

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