October 12, 2006

Originally created by the United Nations, the chair of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), Nitin Desai, is warning the Internet community that worries over the Net's long-term future could lead to a potential polarization of this global communications network that has become so vital to our modern world.

"As a whole, there are many observers everywhere that are greatly concerned about whether the Internet we are enjoying today will still be working four or five years from now," Desai said.

Nitin Desai was speaking at an Internet conference in London to discuss these matters that concern all developed countries.

The symposium was hosted by Nominet, the U.K. organization in charge of domain names ending in the .uk extension. This conference was held ahead of the first-ever Internet Governance Forum, a global gathering of stakeholders in Athens later in October of this year.

"If we don't address these concerns with sufficient vigour, we will get a Balkanisation of the whole Internet," said Desai.

He said there were tensions about the future regulation of the Net and over specific issues such as international domain names. "There are concerns over regulation as the Internet, telephony and business merge together," Desai said.

"If I look at the global Internet in five years from now there are going to be a lot more Internet users in Asia than Europe or even America. There will be more Chinese web pages than English pages" he added.

"The types of various uses for the Internet in India and China are very different from western countries. They are not commerce or media. They are essentially public service applications" said Desai.

"The Internet was increasingly being shaped by companies and organisations at the "edges" and not by government, public sector bodies or regulators", he said.

This was actually concerning some countries who wanted more involvement in the development of the Internet. "These are the reasons these entities (the government and the private sector) feel they need to be reassured that the system they are relying on is secure, fast, safe and reliable.

"They want to ensure they cannot be suddenly thrown out of that system by some kind of attack," said Mr Desai. He said the Chinese government was concerned that users still had to type Web page addresses using Latin characters even when the pages were in Chinese.

"A large proportion of Internet users in China do not know the Latin alphabet. Why would the technology we have at the moment be the ubiquitous technology across the world in the future?" asked Howard Williams of The World Bank.

"There are concerns about internationalized domain names in some countries who feel the debate is not moving fast enough."

"There's a point at which time the Chinese will say 'We have to have domain names in Chinese characters' and they will set up an independent system." Other speakers at the conference felt that in some ways a "Balkanised" Internet was actually inevitable.

Professor Howard Williams, who works with the World Bank, said the debate around future regulation of the web rested on the assumption there would be a single web in the future.

Net Neutrality 2.0
"In the United States the issue of Net Neutrality raises the prospect of a different sort of Internet," he said. Earlier this year a US Senate committee approved a bill which lets Internet service providers offer some customers with preferential services such as bandwidth and high-speed. "Net Neutrality" campaigners attacked the plan, saying there should be equal access for all web users.

Chinyelu Onwurah of U.K. Super Regulator Ofcom said the impact of Balkanisation would depend on the effect it had on consumer choices. She said: "If Balkanisation refers to islands of connectivity that have no inter-connectivity at all between them, then clearly that is a bad thing and severly limits the choice and reach for all interested consumers.

"However, if it refers to differentiation and various levels of protection, of functionality and speed, and if it relates to overall choice, then that is a positive thing."

"The IGF has no membership, it's an open door, a town hall, where all views are welcome," said Nitin Desai. "That's been the case since the Net was available commercially. It's a matter of degrees," he said.

Mr Desai added that the IGF would be the opportunity to discuss many of these issues. However, he reminded delegates at the London conference that the IGF was not a "decision-making body". He said: "No-one wants to duplicate a telecoms-type regulator on the Internet. It's a multi-stakeholder exercise.

"For this reason the IGF has been created. We have no members so we have no power to make any decisions."

Source: The BBC