Broadband as a Local Issue: Guidelines - Assessment of Policy and Instruments and Recommendations

Cuerpo:
Estimado investigador:
El Programa Sociedad de la Información, de la División de Desarrollo Productivo y Empresarial de la CEPAL (Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe, Naciones Unidas) le invita a presentarse para realizar el siguiente estudio:
Broadband as a Local Issue: Guidelines - Assessment of Policy and Instruments and Recommendations
Sírvanse encontrar los Términos de Referencia adjuntos.
En caso que sea de su interés, por favor enviar:
1) Curriculum Vitae a: socinfo@cepal.org hasta el 24 de marzo de 2006. Agradeceremos asegurarse que su CV incluya datos de su producción intelectual sobre el tema, suficiente para la evaluación.
2) Agregar 1 o 2 trabajos realizados anteriormente por usted, de su autoría, directa o indirectamente relacionados al tema.
Sírvase poner como Asunto (Subject), al enviar el correo, el nombre del estudio al cual está postulando. De otra forma, lamentablemente no podremos considerar su postulación:
"Postulación No. ISP001- - Broadband as a Local Issue"
Agradecemos circular esta llamada entre sus redes de contactos y otras personas que consideren podrían desarrollar este estudio.
Atentamente,
Programa Sociedad de la Información, CEPAL, Naciones Unidas
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Broadband as a Local Issue: Guidelines - Assessment of Policy and Instruments and Recommendations
Objectives: To prepare a two-part document, which investigates Broadband as a local issue. Incorporate an assessment of policy and instruments as well as recommendations.
Part 1: Research on local Broadband experiences outside Latin America (developed countries like USA and European countries and maybe some Asian references)
Part 2: Research on local Broadband experiences in Latin America by selected countries/ municipalities
General Justification
The Broadband revolution and the convergence among telecom and multimedia services are renewing the space of public policies particularly the local ones. The term local polices refers to all policies arising from the sub-national powers (regions and states included).
The window of opportunity for interventions by municipalities is a recent phenomenon. Until the end of the nineties, the dial up prevailed as a mean of access to the Internet (narrow band access). In fact, this kind of access was a mere follow-up of the telephony service. As a consequence, national authorities established related policies and regulations. During the nineties, examples of those national policies in Latin America were the privatization of the state operators, the establishment of the New Regulatory Authority and the opening up to the competition of the telecom market. In that context, in fact, a space for local governments actions was practically absent. When actions were taken whatsoever, they appeared to be supplements of usual local urban policies, like the setting up of rights of ways (ROW) and the appropriate location for the cellular antennas.
With the Broadband revolution and its growing impact on economic growth and productivity, an important local dimension (opportunity window) for the promotion of Broadband services was opened. However in many local communities, there are a lot of market failures and Broadband technology is not offered by telecom or cable operators. This is due to the low rate of return of the investment and non-profitable markets. Where Broadband is offered in low-income or small communities a lot of times there is a low quality of the service or little diversity of it.
In brief local governments, mainly in the developed countries, have become increasingly involved in broadband, because there is the perception that access to advanced communication services, including broadband services, constitutes essential infrastructure. The deployment of this infrastructure, involves more the local context than narrowband (dialup). As the issue of broadband Internet access to local economic development and quality of life becomes increasingly evident to communities we expect their involvement in the development of broadband infrastructure to continue growing. In spite of some regulatory reactions, some Municipalities are very pro-active in Broadband deployment, particularly in the US, like the Salt Lake Experience and Philadelphia Initiative.
In Latin America, however, the vast majority of municipalities have neither capabilities nor financial resources to develop all necessary steps to deploy a local broadband infrastructure. Some degree of technical assistance can become necessary.
However, in the developed countries – like USA – where the local authorities have much more power on the one hand, and the basics needs of the population regarding others infrastructure like water, sewage and housing are satisfied on the other hand, one can see a lot of local BB initiatives.
Using the framework proposed by Gillett et alli (2003), it is possible to provide a good taxonomy of local government broadband initiatives, highlighting al least four roles of government vis a vis broadband:
1. As user (as buyer or other stimulator of demand)
2. Rule-maker
3. Source of funds
4. Developer of infrastructure (or part of it).
1. Government as broadband user. Government indirectly attracts commercial broadband deployment through demand-side policies. In particular, government uses its local leadership role and/or its role as a major telecommunications customer to assess, stimulate or aggregate demand. Using government power purchase, the government can buy better and cheaper services or even network pieces from telecom operators.
2. Government as neutral rule-maker. Government adopts or reforms local ordinances that affect the ease of commercial deployment, such as rights-of-way, utility pole attachments, road and building construction codes, zoning policies affecting wireless antenna placement, and cable franchise agreements.
3. Government as financier. Government provides subsidies for broadband users or providers, which may be direct or indirect in the form of planning or equipment grants, tax credits, or other incentives.
4. Government as infrastructure developer. Government adopts supply-side policies in which a division of local or regional government is ultimately responsible for the provision of one or more component of network infrastructure.
These roles need not be mutually exclusive; an open avenue for further research is to identify the complementarities among strategies and the systemic mixes of factors that are associated with effective initiatives.
Nor do these roles have to be unique to local government. Partnerships with the private sector, with higher levels of government, and with other local governments are common across all four roles. In fact, actions of the first four types appear to be more commonly initiated at higher layers of government, with locals exercising the option to join in. Public infrastructure provision, on the other hand, appears to be much more commonly initiated and executed by local governments, perhaps because key components of the infrastructure – such as wires connecting to homes and businesses – are purely a local issue. In spite of the increasing importance of local governments in the evolution of “last-mile” infrastructure, little systematic research is available with which to quantify or evaluate the extent of such activity and its impact.
Part 1 – Research on local Broadband experiences outside Latin America (developed countries like USA and European countries and maybe some Asian references).
Taking the international context as a reference the set of questions to be addressed are the following:
Ø Overview of the main experiences. Literature review.
Ø What are the success factors of the local Governments and communities involving in Broadband deployment?
Ø Which international cases of good practice could be presented to Latin America? For example, could the Wireless Philadelphia model (Philadelphia, 2005) be applied?
Ø What municipal rules were created or applied to achieve proposed goals in Broadband deployment?
Ø What kind of relationship one could observe between national regulation and municipality interventions? Are there complementaries, substitutes or alternatives?
Ø Are the main experiences associated with e-gov policy? In which way?
Ø What are the adequate combinations of public and private efforts to foster local Broadband technology?
Part 2 - Research on local Broadband experiences in Latin America selected countries/ municipalities
This part in someway is similar to the first one, but it relates just to Latin American municipalities. We want to understand the opportunities for the same phenomenon, but in Latin America. The main objective is to make some sort of a SOWT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) analysis regarding a sample of municipalities. All the relevant economic, social, legal and political dimensions should be integrated in the analysis.
Just to make a quick mention; is important to stress that some relevant experiences can be selected for the main countries and cities representative for Latin America. For example, São Paulo City is developing a large-scaleprogram in the periphery of the city (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3250876.stm and http://www2.prefeitura.sp.gov.br/cidadania/coordenadoria_governo_eletronico/pid/0001); Piraí, a small-sized stand-alone community developed an awarded project with a positive impact on the development of the city (http://www.piraidigital.com.br/)
Do to the strong differences between Latina America and other regions in the world; at first it is necessary to prepare a questionnaire to be applied to the sample of municipalities. Taking into account the questionnaire’s results, the phenomenon should than be described and policies should also be prescribed. The questionnaire should take into account the main findings of the Part 1.
The sample should incorporate the municipalities that have applied for AHCIET (Asociación Hispanoamericana de Centros de Investigación y Empresas de Telecomunicaciones) Digital Cities award. CEPAL will provide an easy access to that data base.
The sample can be segregated in certain kinds of typical groups of cities or communities that will be mentioned later.
The set of issues to be analyzed in this Part 2 (through a questionnaire and its assessment) are very similar to the first part and they address the following questions:
Ø What are the emerging trends in Latin American municipalities in the telecom and Internet area?
Ø For the selected countries and municipalities, what would be the success factors of the local Government and communities involvedin Broadband deployment?
Ø What are the push-and-pull factors for successful cases of Latin American local Government involvement in Broadband deployment like Pirai City Hall (in the State of Rio de Janeiro) and Sud Menucci City Hall (in the State of São Paulo) and others cities?
Ø What kinds of roles, like the four dimensions approach early quoted, are better suited to Latin American local Municipalities?
Ø Are the main experiences associated with e-gov policy? In which way?
Ø What are the access technologies best suited for the typical cases (like Wi-fi, WiMax, cable, wireline etc)?
Ø In which ways is it possible to go beyond just building some Infocenters (PIAC – Public Internet Access Point)?
Ø What are the main difficulties? Not enough budget combined with others local priorities? Low scale, no staff training, legal issues, problems how to coordinate with federal authorities, technological difficulties and so on?
Ø In some reference countries or regions of Latin America, what kind of relationship one could observe between national regulation and municipality interventions? Are they complementary, substitutes or alternatives? From a normative point of view, what kind of relationship is necessary?
Ø In some reference countries or regions of Latin America, what are the adequate combinations of public and private efforts to foster local Broadband technology?
Ø Taking into account the low level of the economies of scale of the majority of municipalities, what kind of alliances should be build? With others municipalities (consortium)? With others kinds of administrative branches (like Education, Health and Finance Ministries)? What are the best scenarios to build these alliances?
Ø In witch way should the municipality’s BB policy be associated with local development policies?
Ø Based on the existing experiences and local characteristics, which are the main general guidelines that can be given to Latin America municipalities in order to deploy and manage a local infrastructure?
Ø Which areas should receive priority in investments:local administration, health care, education? Which services (e-gov or others) can be offered in each one? What are the advantages for the citizens?
Ø Guidelines, policy and instruments assessment and recommendations. Cost and benefits.
With the questionnaires fulfilled and correctly answered, the researcher can make his assessment and analysis in two possible ways:
1st) Making direct and personal interviews (case studies) with a sub sample with 6 to 10 municipalities (with a balanced representation of the region’s countries).
2nd) Making a deep analysis of at least 20% of the municipality’s sample, complementing with the phone calls interviews and others forms of getting more profund information (with a balanced representation of the region’s countries).
The researcher should inform CEPAL which way was chosen.
Due to the great diversity of cities, areas and regions it should be interesting to categorize the cities or communities at least into four typical groups, like:
(i) Periphery of Metropolitan Areas, where a large concentration of poor people does not have enough income to access communication services even though there is network near them;
(ii) Urban Industrial or Services Areas of Medium Size, where the cities are mostly close to a Long Distance (LD) backbone, requiring a short distance backhaul (wireline or wireless). This group can also be divided in cities with different productive specializations (clusters of shoes or textiles, winery, tourism and so one)
(iii) Stand-alone Communities, where the cities along with rural communities are mostly far from a LD backbone, requiring a terrestrial transmission link (wireline or wireless) and;
(iv) Rural Isolated Communities, like in Amazon forest and Andes Mountains, where transmission is accomplished with satellite systems.
All the reports must be written in Spanish.
Time schedule:
17 March – 24 March: Public announcement
24 March – 28 March: Selection of consultant
Day 0 CEPAL inform to the consultant to start the research
Day 30 Last day to CEPAL to facilitate the access to AHCIET Digital Cities Data Base.
Day 45 Researcher sends to CEPAL the 1st version of Part 1 and the 1st version of the questionnaire
Day 50 CEPAL sends to the researcher its comments on 1st version of Part 1 and on the questionnaire
Day 60 Researcher sends to CEPAL the final version of Part 1 (ready to be published). All the questionnaires should be already sent
Day 90 The evaluation of the questionnaires and/or or the writing of the case studies should be running
Day 125 Researcher sends to CEPAL the 1st version of Part 2
Day 135 CEPAL sends to the researcher its comments on 1st version of Part 2
Day 150 Researcher sends to CEPAL the final version of Part 2 (ready to be published)

Organización:
CEPAL - SOCINFO