Why countries in the Pacific need to be part of ICANN

Islands Business Magazine interviews Savenaca Vocea, ICANN's Regional Liaison for the Australasia/Pacific Islands region.

By Dionisia Tabureguci

SINCE the arrival and gradual deployment of the Internet worldwide, Pacific Island countries have been able to partly lessen the economic challenges of their isolation through better connectivity and access to increasingly faster and cheaper methods of communication.
Businesses can now cut communication costs, commercial machineries are able to improve efficiencies, new businesses and employment opportunities are created and a wider section of society are now discovering that the Internet can be a useful empowerment tool,
But how much do Internet stakeholders in the Pacific really know about the Internet, the issues associated with it the organisations that oversee it?
Islands Business Magazine interviews Brisbane-based Savenaca Vocea, who represents the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) in the Australasia/Pacific region as its liaison.
ICANN is responsible for the global coordination of the Internet's system of unique identifiers. These include domain names (like .org, .museum and country codes like .NU, .FJ), as well as the addresses used in a variety of Internet protocols. Computers use these identifiers to reach each other over the Internet. Careful management of these resources is vital to the Internet's operation, so ICANN's global stakeholders meet regularly to develop policies that ensure the Internet's ongoing security and stability.
Vocea is from Fiji and started his career at Telecom Fiji Ltd where he spent 14 years. He moved on to work at the Pacific Islands Telecommunications Association (PITA) and recently performed both Liaison (Pacific) and Policy Development Manager roles for the Asia Pacific Network Information Center (APNIC).
He is also involved in the committees of PacNOG (Pacific Network Operators Group), APRICOT (Asia Pacific Regional Internet Conference on Operational Technologies and SANOG (South Asian Network Operators Group). Vocea joined ICANN in October last year.


ISLANDS BUSINESS MAGAZINE: Who is ICANN and what role do you play as its regional liaison officer in the Australasia/Pacific?

VOCEA: The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is an internationally organized, non-profit corporation that has responsibility for Internet Protocol (IP) address space allocation, protocol identifier assignment, generic (gTLD) and country code (ccTLD) Top-Level Domain name system management, and root server system management functions. These services were originally performed under U.S. Government contract by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) and other entities. ICANN now performs the IANA function.
As a private-public partnership, ICANN is dedicated to preserving the operational stability of the Internet; to promoting competition; to achieving broad representation of global Internet communities; and to developing policy appropriate to its mission through bottom-up, consensus-based processes.

As a ICANN’s liaison in the region I play a facilitating role in engaging with various stakeholder communities like ccTLD registry bodies, Governments, industry players, NGO’s and end-user community organisations to promote how best ICANN’s mission and mandates can be of service to the region in terms of preserving a single interoperable and stable Internet system. Also ICANN as an organisation benefits from hearing first hand what the region are discussing or is a hot issue to be addressed in the region. When it comes to policy decisions and information sharing, then those stakeholder groups that are impacted by these decisions can at least have an input to the decision making process.


ISLANDS BUSINESS MAGAZINE: How can stakeholders in the region use your appointment as an opportunity to benefit from?

VOCEA: With the appointment, Internet stakeholders (civil society, business, governments, end user community) in the region can also engage with ICANN through its Regional Liaison to respond to or receive information in relation to ICANN. To date ICANN has 7 Regional Liaisons working under the Global and Strategic Partnerships to deliver against business plans consistent with ICANN’s operations and strategic plans. My previous work alongside most telco/ISPs through the Pacific Islands Telecommunications Association and APNIC has provided me useful understanding of the industry in the Pacific helping me to progress and transition into ICANN. My new role in ICANN allows me to carry out outreach relating to ICANN’s mandate, support or engagements with industry players and stakeholders in the region, while having a good understanding given my experience of the Internet industry and issues important to the region overall. There is so much happening in the Internet space and ICANN as a global coordinating body of the Internet's system of unique identifiers is well placed to provide current and useful information that should be shared to the Internet community. The Pacific has historically had limited representation in ICANN circles, so this role will also ensure that Internet stakeholders and the community at large have a chance to receive and be able to comment on policy discussions that may impact the region before any final decisions are made.



ISLANDS BUSINESS MAGAZINE: In your view, what is the level of awareness of stakeholders in the Pacific region for ICANN processes?

VOCEA: ICANN has been making presentation at, and attended, various industry stakeholder events of PITA, PacINET and Pacific Network Operator Groups (PacNOG) and other stakeholder groups (like ccTLDs) are sent information so I’d say the knowledge of ICANN is known amongst the stakeholder groups in the region. One thing that has taken some time to understand is the ICANN process of decision-making and how one can participate in the various advisory committees and supporting organisation that advises ICANN. My role is to also address this and encourage more participation from the region to get their voices heard. A challenge is to get people to be involved, so ICANN has tried very hard to make participation easy by encouraging those concerned to subscribe to mailing lists to post comments, or listen in real time to when ICANN meetings are held, read real captions of speakers and join a chat room to again post comments. The unfortunate thing here in this region is the different time zones but up to date information can now be accessed via the ICANN website. Active participation ensures that regional and country issues can be raised and addressed based on what policy topics are discussed. Some of the discussions and decisions do impact the way people can run their business and it is useful to always track what is going on in the global arena. Also there is a vast opportunity to network with peers during real time meetings.
ICANN recently appointed a GM for Participation whose role will be to encourage and boost global participation and representation in ICANN.


ISLANDS BUSINESS MAGAZINE: Can governments in the region also get into ICANN processes?

VOCEA: ICANN receives input from governments through the Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC). The GAC’s key role is to provide advice to ICANN on issues of public policy. In particular, the GAC considers ICANN's activities and policies as they relate to the concerns of governments, particularly in matters where there may be an interaction between ICANN's policies and national laws or international agreements. This in itself is a useful benefit for government regulatory departments to participate and contribute to ICANN matters.
Membership of the GAC is open to all national governments, distinct economies as recognised in international fora, and multinational governmental organisations and treaty organisations. For more information about the GAC see www.gac.icann.org



ISLANDS BUSINESS MAGAZINE: As a person involved in the area of telecommunications in the region for awhile before moving on to APNIC and now ICANN, how would you describe the changes in the ICT industry since Internet usage started to pick up in the region? What do you think of connectivity in the Pacific region and how can we improve upon it?

VOCEA: Based on my experience I would observe that ICT has been the buzzword for some time now and in the Pacific many sector make references to ICT as a driver for development. Telcos have been a key stakeholder in this large ICT space providing for infrastructure development and planning and implementing new services for communications. In the Pacific most are the gateway to ensuring its country is interconnected and accessible to the global Internet. With the advent of the WWW (world wide web) and the many new on-line applications and transactions happening at the edges the end-user customer and hosts have a greater expectancy of having reliable, stable and a secure Internet to carry out their activities. As in most sectors, customers that have competitive providers will benefit from pricing, connectivity and speed. However that is not to say that in some Pacific monopolistic markets, they will not provide the best services they have for their customers. Leaving Viti Levu aside because of direct connection via the Southern Cross Cable Network, I'd suspect that even within other parts of Fiji there are still issues with connectivity and getting sufficient speed that customers experience. For those Pacific Island countries dependent on satellite connectivity to the outside world, achieving reliable connectivity and speed is a business decision that ISPs, telecom providers and their satellite upstream providers will make and it really boils down to their own negotiation. But not necessarily so as for example Satellite coverage in the Pacific region is limited to only a couple of major satellite players. Often we hear: why won’t there be more satellite providers or undersea cable operators in the region? Do these existing upstream providers carry enough bandwidth themselves to offer to their customer the telecom companies or can the telecom concerned pay for the extra demand in bandwidth? Now if there is only limited bandwidth capacity that needs to be shared amongst all the countries in the region that peers with existing satellite providers, then there is also a problem. It's a case of user pays and I'm sure that with increased demand and with the right pricing model one can surely have a better position to negotiate. Reports from telcos in the region still suggest that voice/telephony is still king as the highest percentage of their revenue is derived from voice rather than data and Internet. But with the trends currently taking place in the Internet space, I suspect that in time there will be more infrastructure deployment to cater for increased demands in services.


ISLANDS BUSINESS MAGAZINE: Does ICANN work closely with telecom operators in the region? If so,what sort of help, etc does it provide for the better access of Internet in the region, which is said to have unique challenges in terms of economics of scale, isolation of many islands, etc?

VOCEA: ICANN is appreciative of the fact that industry associations like PITA exists for telcos/ISPs in the region and to this effect are preparing to sign an MOU with PITA for closer collaboration and working relation in the Internet space. Although ICANN may not assist directly in any technical implementation at the country level, people networking has been a key success when engaging with people from the region. There is always information to be shared and leads given on particular issues about the Internet. It is not in ICANNs mandate to advice governments of directions and models they should approach but to provide information that can help facilitate discussions on certain Internet issues like DNS (Domain Name System), ccTLD and root-server. This facilitation role has been evident and well received in the WSIS (World Summit on the Information Society) and IGF (Internet Governance Forum) where governments have been represented.



ISLANDS BUSINESS MAGAZINE: What role do ccTLD registry operators play and how important is ccTLD to a country? As ccTLDs may be considered national assets, can countries in the region assume more control over theirs?

VOCEA: ICANN, through the IANA, delegates responsibility of a country code top-level domain registry to a party once it is agreed that the delegated party will carry out all responsibilities of the ccTLD registry for that country. The ccTLD registry holds the database of all the domain names under its two-letter country code, and operates the computers that make domain names of that country visible on the global Internet.
IANA will delegate this responsibility to an entity that is the result of a decision making process involving the local Internet community and local Government. It is up for the parties within the country to decide how they wish to operate their domain, and under what rules. IANA's requirement is primarily to make sure the technical aspects work correctly, and certain minimum standards are met.


ISLANDS BUSINESS MAGAZINE: There have been many developments in the international arena with regards to the Internet. You cite a few examples: Internationalized Domain Names, the IPV6 address space, handing over of centrally coordinated identifiers to ICANN, new top level domain names, etc. What implications do these developments have on Pacific island countries, the Internet and the Internet and telecommunication businesses/regulations in the Pacific?

VOCEA: Within the RIR (Regional Internet Registry) space, a hot topic for some time now has been the scarcity of IPv4 address space especially receiving new allocations from RIR’s when the global pool of public IPv4 address space will be harder to get. It is for this reason that IPv6 was developed and has been marketed to ISPs and network operators as a solution to extend numbering in their networks. My understanding of the issue in the Pacific is that operators and service providers are aware of the IPv4 run-out issues and will take the necessary steps when the need arises.
Another top issue on ICANN agenda is the Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs). These are domain names represented by local language characters. Such domain names could contain letters or characters from non-ASCII scripts (for example, Arabic or Chinese). Many efforts are ongoing in the Internet community to make domain names available in character sets other than ASCII.
These "internationalized domain name" (IDN) efforts were the subject of a 25 September 2000 resolution by the ICANN Board of Directors, which recognized "that it is important that the Internet evolve to be more accessible to those who do not use the ASCII character set," and also stressed that "the internationalization of the Internet's domain name system must be accomplished through standards that are open, non-proprietary, and fully compatible with the Internet's existing end-to-end model and that preserve globally unique naming in a universally resolvable public name space."
In my discussions around the region with some ccTLD registry and service providers, it appears that IDN is not on their radar at the moment for reasons being that in the region most are using the ASCII code in everyday written communication.
It is however still important for the regional operators to monitor and track what is happening globally in the Internet space.

ISLANDS BUSINESS MAGAZINE: What implications does the competition in the registrar market have for the Pacific region?

VOCEA: This model of having registrars in the pacific context is not widespread at the moment. But for the few countries in the region that have one registrar handling all registrations of their domain names, it can be viewed to provide useful service to the registry in terms of marketing the domain name to increase registrations. Any revenue derived or sharing between the registry and registrar is outside ICANN mandate. But certainly adopting a model of opening up to competitive registrars may greatly impact on the load of the local ccTLD registry as they have to take on more registrations. It can be both a good and bad thing but different models and policies exist so that the registries and registrars can negotiate amongst themselves for the best way forward in running their operations.

ISLANDS BUSINESS MAGAZINE: In reference to your work as “to update and share ICANN information on particular policy decisions or matters that are currently being discussed that will impact the region.” What have been some of these decisions in the last two years or so and what have been their implications to the Pacific region?

VOCEA: ICANN puts out a call for comments on issues and policy proposals that are contentious and seeks advice from the supporting oganisations and advisory committees. Before the Board makes a decision on these – it is important to get a wider representative view from the stakeholder groups that will be impacted as well. For the telcos/ ISPs and ccTLDs in the region they should at least contribute or share their comments with the rest of the Internet community contributing to ICANN decision making. In the past two years at least it would have been useful to get feedback on issues like:
-discussions surrounding new sponsored Top Level Domains (sTLDs);
-their position on the ICANN strategic plan;
- input to discussions surrounding Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs),
- input on regions for the ccNames Supporting Organisations, and participation in the ccNSO supporting organization;
-input on discussions surrounding Whois
- input on other issues under ICANN’s mandate that may be relevant to stakeholders in the region;


ISLANDS BUSINESS: Finally, the ICANN global network (and you mention this too) does cater for ‘individuals that want to be involved in issues that affect individual’s use of the Internet’s domain name system and the future of the Internet’ via APRALO (Asia Pacific Regional At-Large Organisation). If the use of APRALO is encouraged as such, how do issues taken to it finally filter into the main ICANN decision making processes? And why should Pacific islanders, organizations, businesses, groups, etc align themselves to a mechanism like APRALO?


VOCEA: (from www.apralo.org)
"At-Large" is ICANN's name for individual Internet users who want to be involved in issues that affect individuals' use of the Internet's domain name system. ICANN At-Large consists of an international "At-Large Advisory Committee" (ALAC) and user groups throughout the world working together to form five "Regional At-Large Organizations" (1 in each geographic region; "APRALO" in Asia Pacific) that inform and involve the world's Internet end-users in issues that affect the future of the Internet. ICANN At-Large provides crucial contributions to ICANN's work on such matters as:

* guidance on how internationalised domain names ("local language" domain names) are implemented;
* how new top-level domains (i.e. .info, .name, .museum, etc.) are introduced;-
* How to manage the implementation of a new IP addressing system to make sure there are enough unique addresses so the Internet can grow without constraints or instability

These are just a few of the issues that affect individual users worldwide currently being worked on at ICANN. At-Large is also a leading voice for ICANN stakeholders on Internet Governance and issues related to WSIS follow-up, and helps raise awareness of key Internet resource issues that affect ICT development.
If a group you are involved with wants to influence the decisions that shape the Internet, apply to be certified as an "At-Large Structure" and participate in ICANN decisions critical to the Internet's end users. “At-Large Structure” certification is free, easy, and done via email. Groups interested participating in ICANN At-Large are encouraged to complete an application available online and email it to .


NOTE: This is the original transcript of a Savenaca Vocea interview, published in the Islands Business Magazine (www.islandsbusiness.com) as Interview: Savenaca Vocea, ICANN's REGIONAL LIAISON FOR THE AUSTRALASIA/PACIFIC ISLANDS REGION, pp 46,47, May 2007 edition.