GIPI

["Eric S Johnson" <johnson@internews.org>]

dear colleagues,

> From: Irfan Khan [mailto:khania@super.net.pk] 
> it was nice meeting you in karachi. if apt, could you please post a
short 
> write-up about your pakistan visit to s-asia-it. 

in asia, the Global Internet Policy Initiative (GIPI,
www.internetpolicy.net) is operative in india (Rishi Chawla,
rishi@internews.org) and indonesia (Mas Wigrantoro R. S.,
maswig@internews.or.id). i'd like to expand it further and have
submitted proposals to funders to launch it in vietnam and the
philippines. i'm hoping soon to submit another proposal for pakistan. to
this end, i just spent a week in karachi and islamabad looking into,
inter alia, the internet policy situation, meeting with as many of the
stakeholders as i could fit in. if i end up writing a formal report,
i'll let you know. in the meantime i'd just like to say that i'm
impressed by some of the good things i "discovered" there:

--the Ministry of Science & Technology has set up an innovative
Technology Resource Mobilization Unit (TReMU) which creates a direct
"in" to the policymaking process from actors outside the government
through 15 or so task forces (including, for instance, one on "IT Law")

--ISPAK, the ISP association (over 60 members), is well-organized and
has been an effective voice in policymaking. the Computer Society of
Pakistan and the Internet Association of Pakistan are currently somewhat
less active. several initiatives to create an ISOC chapter in PK have
not yet yielded fruit

--the field of "cyberlaw" barely exists. the government is promulgating
regulations within some weeks which will address some of the legal
issues surrounding e-commerce

--there's currently no official control over content, but the government
has talked about, and continues discussing, implementation of some sort
of content control, up to and including a proposed "national access
point" which could filter all traffic (akin to the chinese approach).
different bureaucrats are each interested in one or another
aspect--pornography, VoIP, state secrets. currently the regulatory
authority, the PTA, sends out letters occasionally saying "please block
a few more sites", but to the ISPs' credit, these letters seem to be
universally ignored; vigilance needs to be maintained

--the monopoly on international communications services held by the
incumbent PTT (PTCL) lasts until the end of 2002, at which point it is
hoped that competition will drive internet prices down even more.
they're already as low as USD0.15/hr. in theory, too, the VoIP market
will become legal, which has the potential to cause an explosion in
internet demand (reported int'l bandwidth now is over 300mbps). the
danger is that PTCL will seek to extend its monopoly

--not directly related to the internet, on 2mar02 the government
promulgated a regulation creating the PK Electronic Media Regulatory
Authority (PEMRA) to start licensing private terrestrial TV & radio
stations. this, of course, has revolutionary potential; in russia, a
country with roughly the same population as PK, we have seen the
appearance of over 2000 local terrestrial broadcasters since the market
was deregulated in 1991. the danger is that the licensing process will
be so tightly controlled that few (or only certain powerful interests)
will be able to receive licenses. the pitfalls are many, starting with
whether the military will make frequencies available, stretching on
through license fees, content regulation, incumbent state broadcaster
resistance, and much much more. but the potential is huge and the
process has been launched.

--the PTA's creation of an ISP rating system is controversial, with the
government arguing that consumers have a right to know and the ISPs
arguing that the PTA's methodology is more deceptive than useful. the
PTA says such monitoring justifies the whole ISP licensing process; i
tend to believe there's no point in licensing ISPs at all. has anyone
run into any other regulators' attempts to rate ISP quality?

best,
eric