Re: <amarc-1> ITU & NGOs

["Jan Haverkamp" <jan.haverkamp@ecn.cz> (by way of Bram Dov Abramson <bram@tao.ca>)]

Ahoj Sean,

Although i had postponed reading amarc-messages for the end of next 
week (a very full agenda), this one needs a direct response....

> Our Focus Group is gathering experiences, from a few paragraphs to majors
> reports, of examples where NGOs have benefited from the innovative use of
> telecommunication (for instance internet, or radio .), of where their
> absence has caused problems and ESPECIALLY where activities related to the
> ITU hinder or enable NGOs to carry out their objectives.  We are also
> interested in examples of where national authorities that are active in the
> telecoms (regulators, Departments of communications) have had similar
> impact (e.g. the allocation of spectrum, or lack of). 

Have a look on http://www.zpok.hu/outburst/

This presentation was prepared for the environmental ministers 
conference in Arhus recently and also contains a few "success 
stories" of NGO use and innovations in that field.

Secondly: in the start of September the Global Internet Liberty
Campaign organises a forum in Budapest on this subject for the
region of Central Europe. Contact: Kevin Keenan <KKeenan@aclu.org>

Thirdly: Do you already have someone from APC within your 
focus-group? If not, i think this is of paramount importance, as 
there are so many things happening in this respect all over the world 
and the Association for Progressive Communication is one of the 
levels, where this comes all together. The best contact is Cilla 
Lindstrom from the APC General Secretariate: cilla@apc.org

Fourth: the APC programme for Promotion of Strategic Use (PSU), 
co-ordinated by Karin Delgadillo, at present prepares a Web-site with 
good practices examples. You can contact here on karin@apc.org

Fifth: [i have no idea of the position of ITU... i'm working 
with my feet in the mud ;-) - but i think these kind of examples 
are the one you asked for?]... Czech Republic: the situation here is 
that the earth-bound telephone network and the leased line market is 
still an spt Telecom monopoly. As illustration... Four weeks ago, 
Telecom decided on Friday afternoon 15.15 to cut the line to Inicia 
(the commercial provider to which we outplaced our connectivity as 
Econnect), because they thought - because of an administrative error 
on their side - that a bill had not been paid. Telecom's 
administrative personnel does not work anymore after Friday 15:00 and 
there was no possibility to change anything, so that the around 1000 
people that are depending on communication over that line (from which 
over half NGOs!!!) could not communicate for a 2,5 day period (until 
the mistake on Monday morning 9:15 was discovered). Because of the 
fact that our technician new to open another leased-line for ourgoing 
mail, we just prevented the loss of a USD 5.000 grant, for which i 
had to send out information *during* that weekend. Needless to say 
that this costed two of our (highly qualified staff) one day to find 
out ways to prevent too much congestion. Incoming mail could not be 
secured during that period. Also needless to say that Telecom did not 
warn anybody on beforehand and that they could also have done this on 
a Monday morning or Wednesdaymorning....

Another recent example: a small NGO here in Prague (Mirove centrum - 
a human rights group) is operating from a home. Because of bad 
installation of the telephone system there was a repeating short-cut 
in the connection. This was repaired by very nice and skilled 
technical people from Telecom, who told what had happened. On the 
question whether this might account for the fact that the person who 
owns the telephone connection received already for 6 months too high 
bills, they answered "yes" and adviced to make a reclamation. The 
organisation and the owner of the telephone had kept track of their 
telephone use by ways of time-writing. The reclamation is - of course 
as a standard - turned down and the owner of the telephone has now to 
go to an independent commission. There is no real support in how to 
deal with this from the side of spt Telecom - the main argument of 
the group (the short-cut in the wires, which was mentioned by the spt 
Telecom technician) wasn't even considered to be a possibility. 
"Telecom has not made any technical mistakes" (as far as i remember 
from the fast view i had of their letter). The total sum of too high 
bills is a few thousand crowns (around USD 100), which is in a 
country with an average salary of around USD 400 per month quite a 
lot... and certainly for a small NGO.

I think our main co-ordinator Vasek Klinkera (vasek@ecn.cz) could 
give you a lot more examples - these are just two small things i was 
involved in over the last month.

Telecom is covering up its complete lack of service and 
client-orientedness steadily with the arrogance of a monopolist. 
Although spt Telecom is the company in the Czech Republic with the 
single highest profit, it increased domestic charges with a 
percentage wide over the inflation correction last year. It will take 
untill the year 2000 before parts of this monopoly are broken.

> I think this is a good opportunity to turn much of our talk about
> influencing the ITU into practical action - just what is it we
> want them to do, and why?  How could their actions enhance
> development and democratising media?  

Keep me informed - i would like to get some more background 
information on ITU and it's position in this.

Cau!

Jan Haverkamp
ECONNECT
APC PSU Programme

|
| Jan Haverkamp
| ECONNECT
| computer network for not-for-profit citizens organizations
| member of the Association for Progressive Communication (APC)
| Ceskomalinska 23
| tel.: +420.2.24311780
| fax:  +420.2.24317892|
|
| WWW: http://www.ecn.cz, http://www.apc.org
| e-mail: jan.haverkamp@ecn.cz
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
AMARC 7 Foro Virtual Forum Virtuel
http://www.amarc.org/amarc7
to unsubscribe / pour se desabonner / para abandonar :
e-mail "unsubscribe amarc-1 " to: majordomo@comunica.org