David Williams, CERN Reporting on SERENATE Final Workshop Bad Nauheim, 16 June 2003 For SCIC, concentrating on Digital Divide inside Europe Outcomes and follow-up

David Williams, Final Workshop The acronym SERENATE = Study into European Research and Education Networking as Targeted by eEurope Funded as an EC project – FP5 Looking at the strategic needs, say up to 5 years ahead NOT about making detailed plans

David Williams, Final Workshop Who are the partners? Academia Europaea Centre for Tele-informatics (CTI), Technical University of Denmark DANTE European Science Foundation TERENA (coordinating partner) with considerable involvement of the NRENs, and hopefully of other actors, including end-users and industry

David Williams, Final Workshop Steering Committee Bonac - ARNES - chairs “geographic” break-out group Butterworth - AE – chairs “research users” Davies - DANTE – chairs “technical” Jaume - RENATER - chairs “other users” [Liello - chair NREN Consortium] Mayer - ESF Skouby - CTI – chairs “economics” Vietsch - TERENA Williams

David Williams, Final Workshop Route to more information? –Public pages –Also working areas for each work package

David Williams, Final Workshop Structure and Timescales

David Williams, Final Workshop The EU project Runs from 1 May 2002 for 15 months, so until 31 July 2003 – now being extended to 31 December 2003 Comprises 14 areas of work, of which 5 workshops –Initial workshop (17-18 Sept 2002) –Operators’ views on infrastructure status and evolution (8 Nov 2002, Amsterdam) –User needs and priorities (17-19 Jan 2003, Montpellier) –Possible models for the future (4-5 Feb 2003, Noordwijkerhout) –Final workshop (June , Bad Nauheim) plus various studies and report writing

David Williams, Final Workshop “Final” workshop

David Williams, Final Workshop Some overall impressions Interesting but still lots to do We have consensus on the general directions, but….. Structural funds –Accession Countries are in the process of defining what they wish to use the Structural Funds to invest in. –We had better help them to insist that some of this is spent on R&E network connectivity! Strong personal opinion – will see strong growth in data volumes – not just grids – PCs connected via GE will be able to source and sink lots of data Costs (DD slide  )

David Williams, Final Workshop Key first next step Write a good SERENATE Report –Concise –Clear –Recommendations that can be acted on And especially a good Executive Summary –Since many people will only read that

David Williams, Final Workshop EUROPE’S DIGITAL DIVIDE We are convinced that Europe does have a rather serious internal Digital Divide 

David Williams, Final Workshop How can we be so sure? ON AVERAGE the 10 accession countries have NRENs with 4-6 times less backbone capacity than NRENs in the EU-15 countries If we look at the NRENs in the EU-15 and compare their networks with those of the “next band” of countries (beyond the EU-25 plus BG plus RO plus TR) then we see that ON AVERAGE the “next band” have times less capacity than the EU-15 In the most extreme case, Bosnia-Herzegovina has 5,000 times less capacity than each of the four most advanced countries (soon to be joined by several more). And Albania de facto does not yet have a research network

David Williams, Final Workshop NREN Core Network Size (Mbps-km) Logarithmic Scale 1k 100k M 10M 1M 10k Ro It Pl Gr Ir Ukr Hu Cz Es Nl Fi Ch Lagging In Transition Leading Advanced

David Williams, Final Workshop Tackling the DD will not be easy The best tell-tale indicator for DD problems is excessively high pricing for connectivity The fundamental cause is lack of competition, which in many cases is due either to an out-of-date regulatory regime, or to the lack of political will to implement the (legislated) changes. Especially this latter situation can be extremely frustrating for the NREN involved However lack of competition can sometimes be due to essentially economic factors alone. Infrastructure operators wish to make a profit in some reasonable period, and look to invest in locations where they think that there is a strong market. We have seen evidence of reluctance to invest in fibre infrastructure both in small(ish) peripheral countries without strong high-tech industry, but also in remote regions of the most prosperous European countries.

David Williams, Final Workshop Actions required The Digital Divide inside Europe must be better measured and monitored –Availability + price of transmission & fibre infrastructure (~EU tracking) –What the NRENs are doing with it (~TERENA compendium) –Performance as seen by end-users (~SLAC/ICTP efforts) –A political discussion is needed concerning what we mean by “Europe” in this context This appears to us to be the responsibility of the EC In the absence of progress towards competitive transmission costs, the national, regional or local governments concerned (or the EU) should take action to stimulate open access (and hence competitive) ducting and fibre supply. The EC should consider whether the regulatory regime should be adapted to ensure wide access to fibre infrastructure at cost-based pricing.

David Williams, Final Workshop October 2003, Trieste, Italy

David Williams, Final Workshop A mega-conference – UN/ITU organised. Like the Johannesburg meeting on AIDS, Kyoto on climate, etc. Looking at Digital Divide issues December 2003, Geneva, Switzerland

David Williams, Final Workshop An event just prior to WSIS, concentrating on the Role of Science in the Information Society 8-9 December 2003, Geneva, Switzerland