These are unedited transcripts and may contain errors.
Cooperation Working GroupThursday, 17th of October, 2013, at 4 p.m.:
MARIA HALL: I think we will have the agenda on the screen any moment.
Anyway, thank you very much everybody for coming to yet another Cooperation Working Group. I am Maria Hall from Swedish Network, Chair of this Cooperation Working Group. And it's nice to be here again. It was half a year ago, we had a lot of good discussions by then and I think this session is going to be equally interesting.
I am very happy to see that very interesting topics we have today, and I would like to say a lot of thanks to Chris Buckridge and to Athina Gragkouli for helping me, contributing to the agenda and topics, and very good persons we have that is going to be on stage and participate with the discussions and I also hope it is going to be a lot of questions from the audience, so we have a nice discussion and we can wrap it up in the end.
So, actually, I would like to go back for just a minute or two to say the purpose of this Cooperation Working Group. I think it's good to remind ourselves why we have these discussions and why we try meet and have these kind of topics on the agenda every time we meet and I think it's very important to have these kind of mutual topics that is of interest for the governments and the public sector but is equally of interest maybe for other purposes or other reasons for the business or Internet community. And having these kind of discussions I think will help the discussions that comes on the agenda and on the local arena and other spaces than the RIPE so people will be prepared what is happening and I think it was interesting last meeting when we, for instance, talked about the eID directive, I think it lightened up many of you persons being in the audience to see what is happening in the European Commission, for instance, but these kind of topics are of interest for awful us and that is why we have the Cooperation Working Group and I really appreciate this possibility for dialogue between the sectors that we have.
Anyway, we are going to start with a very interesting panel debate about IXPs, the Internet traffic and public policy and this is a very interesting topic for sure, I know we talked about it at the Wicket meeting in December when governments are getting more and more interested in the IXPs for more reasons and in many different ways. And I know it's happening a lot of thing around IXP development around the world and that is, I think, something that Patrik is going to bring up in this panel debate. We are going to get some update what is happening in the EU Commission space, hopefully we will get some of the ideas or what is actually since we had Cooperation Working Group in May, what happened with this directive that we have talked about, the eID directive but also the security, the NIS directive, what is happening, good discussion and good questions. Unfortunately, we don't have anybody here from the European Commission but hopefully we can send further on the questions and things and ideas we have in this Working Group.
Then, we are going to listen to ICANN, Nigel Hickson is going to make a presentation of the European strategy development. That will be very interesting. I haven't been in the ICANN space since I started working for the Swedish government so that will be very interesting to hear that update. I don't really miss the ICANN meetings but I miss persons. So I am happy to see you here, Nigel.
Then have a RIPE NCC update, unfortunately Paul is not here today so Chris will do that. I am going to miss you Paul, I know that you are watching us. Paul not being here is very sad, as I said I miss him, but on the other hand I think we will manage time?wise to keep the agenda.
That was me, sorry, Paul.
I will give you an update what is happening with the selection of another co?chair because right now, I am on my own and Patrik Falstrom accepted off this role a few months ago, we will/ give you an update on that one. And then we have any other business.
Do we have anything else for the agenda today? Let's start. Patrik, welcome. I also welcome /PA*PBD, and we have also Jane /KO*FPB from ISOC, actually /PA*PBD is working for the ministry of industry, infrastructure and transport for the Greek government, Malcolm Hutty, very active in the IETF space, I am going to finish this. And then. Malcolm, welcome on page. Jane here somewhere also. All of these persons have been very active in the IETF arena and doing a lot of work so I hope it's going to be good discussion and questions from the floor. You can start introducing your panel, Patrik.
PATRIK FALSTROM: Wait and see where Jane is. In the other room, OK. So she walked to the wrong room. What is in the other room? Measurement, is that more fun? Thank you very much, Maria I can't, for the introduction. We will talk about Internet exchange points, traffic exchange and various other related items. To be /TAOEUBL focus, because we have got 30 minutes or maybe a little bit more to talk about the issues, we were thinking about not so much talking about the situation here in Europe, but (able to) instead, trying to talk about the situation in Europe compared to the situation in the rest of the world, and trying to explain to all of you why you hear from people in Europe, from Internet society and from others, why Internet exchange points are so important, why it is one of the more important issues for a well functioning Internet. Welcome, Jane.
So, for this panel, what I will do, I will ask people, the people ?? three people on the panel to give a small introduction on the topic. After that, I will see whether I have any questions myself and also if they want to comment or reflect on what the other people said, try to get ?? move into dialogue and then most importantly, ask all of you to also participate in this dialogue with the people on the panel. So, while these people make a short few minute introduction, I want you to think about a little bit what they are saying and start to prepare on participating yourself.
So with that, with no further ado, /PA*PBD, please. Panned panned thank you and thank you for the introduction, for inviting me here in this Working Group. My name is Panagiotis Papaspiliopoulos, and I work as a telecom communication expert in the Hellenic Ministry of Infrastructure, Transport & Networks. And I am going to present you the situation in Greece.
Apart from the regulation for the licensing of the ISPs, there is no regulatory framework. Having said that, it seems that the market is self?regulated smoothly and the especially the IP in the connection market has developed very well so far without any significant regulatory intervention. There is still room for more investment and development.
Greece, as a member of the European Union, is in cooperation, coordination with the other Member States and with the European Commission and participates actively in all the relevant regional and international fora and organisations.
When I said some days ago that I am going to participate in RIPE meeting, there were many people in the ministry didn't know what RIPE is, that shows clearly there is still room and still room for getting to know each other better. We believe that it would be for the benefit of the Internet community, for the relevant stakeholders know each other, work together, interact and identify the problematic issues and try to find ways to solve and have best practices in order to deal with them.
So, I have to say, I have to stress that the ministry is open and well comes the opinions of the players of the market, all the time. Thank you.
PATRIK FALSTROM: Thank you very much. Jane.
JANE COFFIN: Good afternoon, apologies for being so late. My voice is running away so I hope you can hear me. I work for the Internet Society. I am a Director of Development Strategy, what that means is I am working with emerging markets and developing countries on issue?related to interconnection, traffic exchange and specifically, with respect to Internet exchange point development, and what we call levelling up, working with IXPs to move to another layer of technical advancement, human governance infrastructure development.
We work through colleagues in the regions that want our help. We don't try and impose ourselves. We work across different teams in Africa, Asia, we are working with RIPE in Eastern Europe, Latin America, the Caribbean and I think that covers it.
What we do is that some of our regional teams are actively involved in the IXP development, everything from BGP training, promoting IPv6 with different Internet registries or working with officials to understand why the technical community understands best from a bottom up community building process to, build these IXPs and to help run them. We are seeing challenges around the world where some governments believe that the Internet exchange points are sort of the shiny object, and the thing that should be regulated. We are trying very hard wherever we are across those countries to encourage them to understand and understand different Internet community experts, whether it's the Regional Internet Registries, I some, IETF and others, about the importance of the community that has been built up over the years.
For many of you in Europe and Asia with sophisticated or more advanced markets, take yourself back ten years and think about what it was like to develop your infrastructure. This is the thing that we are seeing happen around the world, in certain countries right now, for example, in Bolivia, there are five cities that don't have IXPs that are the main markets. It's landlocked country, difficult bross?border connectivity issues. We are working with them now to identify how we can help them with an equipment donation. We work with Cisco and Google through donations from them, to run a best?practices project for IXP development, and a tool kit which will soon be out at the end of this year, there will be a portal. We don't see ourselves as the one and only, and I want to be very clear about that. We do everything in partnership and that portal will be a door to other doors. Many of you in this room who may be involved in the technology or building infrastructure, we are pointing to you and other organisations where you can help build up that technical community.
One thing I will say, and I will turn it over to Patrik, is that we have seen the importance of the work that you all have done over the years in building what I consider to be those human networks of trust. You have seen each other, you have worked with each other, you know that the technology works. Take yourself back again 10 to 15 years and think about what that was like. For some of you that participated in ISOC's Developing Country Workshops back in, I think it was from 1993 to 2002, you were some of the pioneers that worked with emerging markets. We are seeing that again, it's happening over, so it's almost like it's a reiteration of all the good work that was being done, it's sort of being layered on other countries right now. Thank you.
PATRIK FALSTROM: Thank you very much, Jan. Malcolm.
MALCOLM HUTTY: Thank you, Patrik. I am the head of public affairs for LINX, the London Internet Exchange with which this audience is all familiar. In that role, I engage in both the promotion of LINX, of the notion of Internet Exchanges and also engaging in broader questions of public policy, and in this context particularly international public policies that relates to Internet governance, and the discussion about Internet exchange points and the government promotion of Internet Exchange points has become part of that discussion.
There was earlier this year, an international conference, that is an inter?governmental conference, called the world telecommunications policy forum, WTPF, and unlike the much more famous WCIT, it wasn't treaty making conference, it wasn't one that could create hard and fast rules, but it nonetheless could create statements of public policy that the government's presence signed up to as being policy principles, and that then can be referred to later as they develop their own rules and policies internally on a regional basis and in future and potentially binding negotiations.
So WTPF was in a sense a lower sort of ranked thing because it's non?binding than WCIT, but it's by no means an empty talking shop that doesn't have any output. And naturally, a lot of the controversial topics were on the table there, but one of the things that was on the table was the promotion of Internet exchange points and I personally had quite a role in that because I helped draft for the United Kingdom its contribution, its formal input to that conference, an opinion, as in an output document, on the role of Internet Exchange points, before WTPF there was an experts' group which consisted of technical and policy experts, not the formal representatives governments, to draft the various draft opinions and I led the UK in that on negotiating this through the experts' group so that it could go to WTPF as something that was ready to be adopted by the conference, which it was. And what we had in there is an output document that has been agreed by those governments on, and I read "promoting Internet Exchange points as a long?term solution to advanced connectivity." And this includes statements which are now statements of policy that can be used when relating to governments in the cooperation process with governments, to say this is what, this is what we think, why exchange points are useful, frankly that exchange points are a good thing. And ?? obviously depending on who you are dealing with, that may already be taken as a given. In some countries, certainly throughout most of Europe there is exchange are not a con interest version thing but around the world it can be different and it can be different for various reasons. One is because of the sort of competition environment in some countries there is /SO* essentially one licence monopoly, in others there was much more deregulated domestic market but maybe a licensed monopoly or duopoly for all international traffic, which can result in very high marketups for getting international ?. There is language in this opinion that will help to address those kinds of situations and I am quite pleased, really, that we managed to get something that helps to liberalise or provide a case for liberalising those things, in that the most operative clause of this calls on Member States and private company to work together in a collaborative manner to promote public policies, aimed at permitting local, regional and international Internet network operators to interconnect through IXPs, which may sound like a fairly apple pie statement in favour of IXPs, but in a regulatory context it's quite profound, because if you have a market where there are many local operators but that in any international operator is only permitted to interconnect with the one domestic licensed international carrier, then the international operators, whoever they may be, at T and T, whatever, are not allowed to join an Internet Exchange in country and freely peer with domestic operators. And this says here that they should be allowed to do so.
And thereby avoid the need for those domestic operators to go exclusively through the licence monopoly or duopoly incumbent for transit, charging what can be eye watering mark?ups in markets where this apply.
PATRIK FALSTROM: So these kind of statements and also in the work that you do, Jane, isn't there a contradiction between allowing States to be sovereign and come up with their own sort of policies and then coming from the outside, specifically interest the western world and sort of telling them what to do?
Jane: It's a delicate balance when you are working with a community. I would use Brazil as an interesting example where government is on a committee and many of you not CGI .br, largest allocation of addresses andical /KAEUTS them down to LIRs and others. It's a great example of the technical community working with government but government doesn't deck at a time. Government doesn't regulate how the IXPs are set up, they are highly informed through CGI .br on what to do and how. The same goes for Bolivia where we have been working for the government, there has been some interesting activity there where they put the IXP into the law, we tried very hard to work with them to encourage them that maybe it didn't need to be in the law, you run the risk of a different minister coming in and deciding that the law means something different. If that is in the law. I used to be a regulator and a policy maker so I know how hard it can be to take things out of a law that are already in it, but to Malcolm's point, bringing in international perspective has been critical. We recently last week, believe it or not, I think that is where the voice went away, we were in /AR mean I can't and I used to work there years ago but Jan Zorz who is in the /RAO*L room, Martin Levy, max even from AMS?IX was there as well and a colleague who is a security expert from Poland, we came in to help the arm even I can't regulator reboot on best practices, building up the community of interest because we are seeing that it's very important to come in on the ground and build that community prior to the equipment going in. We could set up an IX here if we had the equipment this afternoon, many of you could wire it up. Well it doesn't walk by itself, there are people involved. As you were saying, Malcolm, the competitors here in Greece you have got a good environment where you allow competition. In some place that is wasn't the case and IXP became part of a package that allowed the countries to open up investment. When the fourth cable came into Kenya the IXP was part of that, systemic change and it blew open the market the. The incumbent tried to kill it but the ministry came back a year later and said listen, the tax minute tree was peering at the IX, they needed that local traffic to be consistent, good quality and cheaper and it was through that local traffic being kept local. The long haul traffic costs where you go out and back to another country as Malcolm was say, hugely expensive, and think about the GDP in the countries, you can't sustain certain things in the long?term if you are trying to build that infrastructure up.
PATRIK FALLSTROM: So what you are saying, so Malcolm, you point at the need for deregulation or the kind of environment to be able to enable or an IXP; and you, Jane, talk about, if I understand correctly, how much easier it is to work, for example in, Brazil where you have CGI.br that you can work with, where you have an existing multi?stakeholder process compared to countries where you need to work directly with the government where you might have to create the multi?stakeholder first, do I understand correctly?
JANE COFFIN: It just depends on the country, every one is different. The environment there worked with that collaboration. There is a report we recently released about removing barriers to connectivity in subsuhara Africa, that report was a follow?on report to what we did in Nigeria and Kenya, volume of traffic up with the IX, move investment coming in, but there are still things that need to be dealt with. Backhall from the submarine cable landing station, if it's not liberalised very hard to get your traffic in country. Transit from the submarine cabling landing station. It's cheaper in South Africa to send your traffic via a submarine cable from Johannesburg to Cape Town because the terrestrial fibre is so expensive. That is where government can help push on that ecosystem and help encourage pricing to come down, because that would help build more capacity in country, quite frankly.
PATRIK FALSTROM: I would like to open up and give the ability for people in the room to ask questions or participate as well, but while doing that, Panagiotis, do you see the same kind of difference when you are out as Greece to talk to other countries, that you explain that you have a very well?functioning market, as you say, that you don't have to regulate, do you see some kind of stress or hard to communicate with other countries why your environment is so much different from what it is in our countries?
PANAGIOTIS PAPASPILIOPOULOS: When we talk with our colleagues and fellows in the European Union, more or less the environment is the same and that is why Europe is such a developed region, I think. Now, when I talk about the colleagues from other places of the world, with not this philosophy and this mentality, it is somehow difficult to, at the end, to find the common ground because I hear all the time that the government should regulate everything. I believe that the development that we have in Europe is due to this reason, that we left the market free to compete and that is why we enjoy higher speeds, better prices and better services altogether.
MALCOLM HUTTY: If I may, I will offer a calculation comment on that last point because I suspect some people in the room, if they are familiar with different markets in Europe and not familiar with markets outside Europe, may be a little surprised at the comment that actually in Europe it's all pretty much the same. But if nonetheless, in Europe we do have broadly speaking, one legal system for our industry, the telecoms framework package and some common rules, anyone can start an IXP, it is legal and that is true across the European Union. If you compare that with other markets outside Europe, where you just simply can't. You have to get permission, and that permission in some places, will not be forthcoming. If you consider a market where somebody would say to you, well, I want to ?? you say I want to set up an ISP and I want to be able to get international transit, and the answer is, but that is the job of Ebonia Telecom, why would you be allowed to do that? That is the calibration you need to make in order to appreciate how we have commonality across the European Union on these basic points. That is not necessarily shared universally around the world.
PATRIK FALSTROM: Thank you. Anyone in the room that would like to say something, some experience? Questions?
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: My name is Ralf. I am speaking personal capacity. To give another sort of example, I have just been for the Internet Society twice, once to Africa and once to South America to present on spam legislation, and actually so the first question I got after presenting how we did that in the Netherlands why is the ITU doing that for us? And I know this is a different discussion, but I think we will come down to the same sort of points, is that when I talked to these people afterwards, at least I tried to speak to some of them, why do you think the ITU could help you with this topic and they basically said but we don't know anybody else. Because all the major events that go around the world usually skip Africa and, not all but several do, like the Anti?Abuse Working Group is not coming into South America, always Europe and US and these are the sort of people that could actually help and reach out and help local governments. The other one is that I did not always know in Africa who I was talking to and what sort of, the influence on governments or on society or on industry exactly you were talking to, so that make it also difficult for me to understand when I am explaining this legislation to, but in short the capacity building has to go through over sorts of international institutions than the ITU and this would help these people a lot understanding how it all works and who does what and is responsible for what.
NIGEL HICKSON: Thank you very much, ICANN. Just an observation, really, and I commend the work that ISOC and others have done to promote Internet Exchange points and actually demonstrate how one can facilitate this and certainly, the result, as hall come saved the WTPF was very encouraging, hopefully people will read what came out of that. But the question really is, is we shouldn't be in this situation, should we? I mean, if countries practiced good regulation in their markets, then we shouldn't be in a situation where we have ?? I mean obviously there is going to be education and advice needed, but it seems to me that there is a fundamental problem in that we are addressing the development of Internet exchange points but the wider issue is the promotion of good economic telecommunication regulation in these markets and there I would have thought we need to at least have something that at the ITU level or something somewhere that is saying that this has to be the way forward. Fall /STPAOL Malcolm, Nigel here says we need ITU. Do you agree?
MALCOLM HUTTY: Well the comment we shouldn't be needing to do this if we had better regulatory policy we wouldn't have these problems in the first place, rather reminds me of the question how do I get to Tipperary, if I wanted to get to Tipperary I wouldn't be starting from here. We are where we are and we have to make progress with what we have got and we make the case for the kind of reforms that we believe are needed and part that have is about showing how not ?? how governments sometimes do need to take action, if only to remove impediments that they have placed in the way themselves and also we need to demonstrate that the community, the people, individuals and businesses, can create things themselves if you just let them, and that is a case that sometimes needs to be made, that people need to be allowed to do that. In the case of ISPs it's not just the regulatory requirement, sometimes it is the business environment as well and the business culture, building up trust among the participants is essential to getting an IXP running so there is lots of elements to it.
But Nigel, your point about the economic structure and so forth, yeah, I mean, it is ripe, you know, we could do ?? we do need sometimes, some, to persuade governments to adopt new approaches and that is part of the discussion. I am sorry.
JANE COFFIN: I think, I mean, obviously countries are at differing layers of change, whether it's political, which can impact the economic hugely, if you have eight Ministers of Telecom in two years, like happened to me in one country, how do you maintain consistency in investment in you are a company looking at it from the outside at that situation which may not be stable?
I will say when it comes to the ITU, we are trying to work closely with them where we can. It hasn't been easy. They focus on a top?down approach that isn't the bottom?up community?based technical approach that has worked. We know there is a formula for development we have seen, which is focusing on the technical, human and governance infrastructures. They are intertwined. It's those human communities of interest that build that technology, maintain it, sustain it. We recently had, about a year of work that we did in Cote d'ivoire with the Africa Union, Samuel Triolet, who left yesterday. About a month ago the ITU came in and put an IX in the regulator, the switch is servicing two ISPs. Generally I think you need three to have an IX, but we are hopeful that Cote d'ivoire might change their minds in the future. We hope they will consider multi?level peering. I think the Internet technical community brings a lot of experience on the best practices which we hope to capture soon. We are multi?level peering, neutral facility, things like that are key.
And I would give you that they have had lots of experience, and the reason the fellow who spoke who did work with us on the spam project ?? thank you ?? but the reason that so many countries know the ITU is that their government ministries and the regulators go to the ITU meetings. So I think the message for the technical community, you have to get engaged. We have to do a better job of telling people what we have done in partnership with each other and with government as well, so that we can spread that word and hopefully keep the development of the technical infrastructure with the technical community, but in in partnership as appropriate, with other entities. We just have seen a lot of good infrastructure not get developed over time just because of certain complications, I just put it that way.
JIM REID: Some guy wandering in off the street. There is another concern at an ITU level which is maybe something that ISOC and RIRs could perhaps address since they can have representation at the meetings, I realise of course that requires me to go to gene Eva perhaps more often than they would like. There is a perception in certain ITU and government /S*EUFRBG circles that people in developed countries get Internet for free or they get Internet Exchanges for free, and that these big Telco carriers and big companies like Google and all the rest of it get Internet for free and it's these poor countries that have to pay lots of money are the ones that are subsidising the Internet in the rest of the world and that kind of argument has to be countered and that is a difficult one to overcome and it's obviously not based on reality. How you overcome that is going to be something by repeatedly stating the message and showing this is the costs are for transit and for peering and this is what it takes to set up an Internet Exchange and here is an example of best practice that could work even in countries not well off with rich telecoms communications.
PATRIK FALSTROM: This is what I think from your report from Jane goes through exactly this and the depend sees between various factors, including regulation and the price /EUS for access and peering etc., so I think personally that you are absolutely right, Jim, on what you are saying.
MALCOLM HUTTY: The communications message there depends who you are speak to go and on what level you are having a conversation. On one level you can produce big economic report, on another, build an IXP and you will be sending less traffic internationally unnecessarily so paying less for it and you can have that conversation in an elevator.
JIM REID: Yes you can but also part of the problem some of these countries are relying on revenue from incumbent telco.
PATRIK FALSTROM: Absolutely. It sounded like all three of you and also the people that stand out the mike row phone talk about engaging, and specifically you Jane, you said you better engage. The question is for the people in the room that already ?? already were convinced or may be convinced they might do something, one sentence, what do you suggest might should do? Should they call you Jane, send you e?mail, there must be a better way of handling this, other /TWAOEUZ would not scale. Jane, what should people do
JANE COFFIN: I would say talk to the Internet technical community experts, you know, IETF, ICANN, ISOC or other, we try to work /TOBGT because it's a collaborative effort and partnership. Nothing can get done alone in from my experience.
PATRIK FALSTROM: Do you mean one should talk to Yari arc co? ?? talk about something really concrete. What should people do?
JANE COFFIN: I would say, again, if it's ?? maybe it is Yari because he is actually very interested in ?? I wouldn't use the term international /AOEUGZ IETF but he has had some good ideas about bringing it to other countries and that is part of the challenge as well, we are not weird people, some people think the Internet community are strange and they don't understand us so we need for them to understand us better. /STPHAOEUF /STPHAOEUF a question to what you have just said and that reflects a little bit on what was said earlier, so what would do you or what should you do if the only entity you would know of is the ITU and you wouldn't know of the IETF nor of ICANN, the RIRs, ISOC and so /O*RT, so how would you boot strap getting knowledge and/or doing some kind of capacity building in terms of /KPEUPTs when the only source of information might be really the ITU. What would you do then? Goes to all the panelists.
PATRIK FALSTROM: Unfortunately we are running out of time so we have to sort of pause that question a little bit and continue with Malcolm, so what should people do?
MALCOLM HUTTY: If I were one of those governments of course that would be where I would be going which is why its incumbent /PO provide with more options than that. As for members ?? this audience, this room, that see something in this area that they would like to help make a difference on, I do think it is good called the Internet society and, the discussion about IXPs is only part of a much broader thing about whether we have a bottom /OUP or top down Internet, designed by governments and controlled by governments or done by the community and organisations like ISOC and particularly ISOC makes the case for why it will result in a better world, whether that is economically, socially or technically, but they need ammunition, they need data, they need concrete cases of specifics to support the arguments. And you guys in the room have that, political types like Jane and me, that engage with the governments, are in entirely reliant on your case studies so give us the support.
PATRIK FALSTROM: So the people in the room here which actually are employed by or work really, really a lot with the Internet society, can you stretch your arm into the air? Look around, and see the people in ISOC, those are the ones you should talk to. I would like to give the word to the chat room.
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: This is Rumy. I have a comment here from Paul Rendek from the RIPE NCC. He is mentioning that this is a very good question, and I think that members of the technical community need to be part of the debate in ITU and IGF circles. This can be done by coordination with ISOC or the RIPE NCC.
PATRIK FALSTROM: Thank you. Last comment please, also being the host country for this wonderful meeting.
PANAGIOTIS PAPASPILIOPOULOS: I will very, very briefly say to you my experience, when I first entered the ministry, all the age of my directors knew only ITU, so it was a matter of information for them and for me and I ?? in order to say and explain that it's not only ITU it's also the European Commission, it's the RIPE, it's ICANN, the ?? after all this, the ?? many, many organisations, from and it's very, very vital to go there and communicate and to take feedback and I am also very happy if I have to participate in a conference and I get some feedback and some suggestion from the private sector, I appreciate very much they give me great help to my work because I have discussed with my directors and formulate a common opinion, a common Greek opinion that I contrast for this to Europe ?? this is how things are going, if you don't communicate, if you don't cooperate, if you don't discuss with people any kind of people, private, public, whatever, then you don't promote yourself.
PATRIK FALSTROM: Thank you very much, and thank you to the panel and thank you for giving us all the time, Maria, thank you very much.
(Applause)
MARIA HALL: Thank you very much for this very, very interesting discussion. And actually to make another layer of complexity in this discussion, also we have the NRENs, the National Education and Research ?? Research and Education Network, which I belong to now and they have also had reach out to developing countries. Terena has a programme for that, so I think that is another organisation that should be participate in this because many of these questions I run into ?? when is an IXP coming to a country, I hear this new IXP has also dialogue with the universities and they want to contribute to that network as well and that development, so that is something we need to work on.
But anyway, I will not keep busy here, I have to hand over to Athina that is going to do some update what is happening in the European Commission space and hopefully we get a little bit of update what Andreas of the European Commission said last time in May, very interesting, bit surprising, it raised a lot of question around the eID director and hopefully we can hear a bit about the network information security directive as well. Thank you.
ATHINA FRAGKOULI: Thank you, Maria. Good afternoon. I am the legal counsel of RIPE NCC. And I am here to talk to you about recent EU legislative developments. Before we go into details about these developments, I think we should answer a basic question: Why do we care what the EU does? This is important that we clarify it. Because RIPE NCC is serving many countries, not just EU countries. Having said that, the vast majority of these countries come from the EU territory.
So, any legislation coming from the EU will be applicable to them.
Members that are not in EU territory have business with members in the EU territory, and so indirectly the legislation from EU has an impact to them as well. Also we should keep in mind that EU is a very strong public policy making body and it inspires non?EU countries. So we really have to have a close look into the work that is done there.
Of course, well, the EU was always interested in the Internet. This is nothing new. However, up to ?? up to recently, there were they were more interested in regulator the market behaviour, like ?? through the ePrivacy directive, e?commerce directive and telecommunications, ISP and so on. Now, we see a new trend, we see the EU having an interest in the Internet infrastructure, and the security of the network and this is something of high interest to the technical community.
So, in it, the RIPE NCC is the one that have to promote the interest of the technical community may influence this process, the legislative process, can provide ?? can inform and consult the RIPE community at large.
Now, let me tell you about those new legislative initiatives that have to do with network and the infrastructure. We are talking about two proposals. The one is about electronic ID, intra services regulation. It's a regulation, it's not a directive and this means that it will have a direct impact to the national law. The second piece of legislation, it's a proposal about the network information security, NIS, and it's a directive, which means that the national ?? the national law should develop like legislation to, in line with this directive.
So, let's start with the first proposal. This proposal is meant to provide a clear legal framework so as to eliminate fragmentation and lack of interoperability and has digital citizenship and prevent cybercrime. And when we first saw that, we had the impression that it has to do with public administration, so we didn't see it would be relevant to what we do. However, in Dublin, in the last RIPE meeting, we had a presentation from Andreas from the European Commission that presented on this regulation and I have to say here that is very important that we see the Commission is making efforts to engage with the technical community, so I think this is a positive thing. So in his presentation, and the discussion after that, we realised that this proposal is not just about electronic IDs as we thought; it's also about authentication of websites. So the scope is a little bit extended, not just about public administration any more, it's also about the network security, it's a global matter. It's something that we have an interest in.
So we had to look into this proposal a little bit closer, yeah. So, we had some further concerns when we did that. One of them was that this proposal requires the establishment of least of qualified providers, so if only use a provider for a service, I have to check with the least that are made by national authorities or international authorities and if the provider is mentioned in the lease then I can use them, no problem, he is trustworthy and if he is not and we can see that this mechanism is not in line or it can be contradicting, it may be contradicting to the already?established train of trust mechanism, and a further concern we had was this: The regulation empowered the Commission to come up with detailed requirements and standards for the trust services and, again, we thought that this might contradict the standards that are made through the open bottom up procedures of bodies such as IETF and so on. So, what we did, we communicated with the community, we shared the information with them, we gathered their feedback and we came up with a draft where we explained these concerns and our position, we proposed also certain amendments to the regulation and we sent them in the form of a letter to members of the European parliament. Right now, this regulation will go very shortly to the counsel council of the European Union, so the aim is to share also these concerns with the ministries of the European Union countries.
The second piece of legislation: It's the network information security directive. Its purpose is to ensure a high common level of network and information security across the EU. And I also think this is, this is very much appreciated, the efforts of the European Union to secure the internal market. However, the way they want to ensure the high level of network and information security is by having the providers of certain services to share information with the national authorities and to report on certain incidents with significant effect.
We do not see, though, a clear definition of what are these information security service providers that have to notify and share information, and that we don't really understand what is the significant impact, it's very unclear, it's very broad. On the top of that, we see that the Commission is empowered to draw up lists of standards and define what are these incidents that should be reported on. And again, we can see some contradictions with the current ways standards are made and such details are agreed upon.
So, again, it's good to communicate this with the community and reach out with relevant policy making participants, we drafted a statement about this. It's available on?line. We sent it to the Cooperation Working Group mailing list. We would appreciate your feedback or we need your feedback, as I say, here, very dramatically. We have to make sure that we reach the deadlines, we reach the members before they come up with a decision ?? sorry, the members of the European parliament. And as you can see, this is something we cannot do by ourselves; we need your help in that. We do not have someone in Brussels all the time to see what is going on and to feedback the community. We really want your help and we want you to share information with us, to share the documents, the positions we have with your national governments because we do not have contacts with every single national government in the EU. If you do not agree with certain points of our statement, that is fine, you use the elements you like, you don't use those that you don't like. That is fine. I think it's important that your concerns are dressed and if you have any information, if you have any comments, please let us know. And yeah, that was my part and if there are any questions, let's have a discussion.
(Applause)
MARIA HALL: Questions for Athina.
CARSTEN SCHIEFNER: Is this about to go through before the up coming elections of European parliament next year or is that most likely going to be postponed to the new European parliament?
ATHINA FRAGKOULI: At the first level, I don't know. At a second level ??
CARSTEN SCHIEFNER: Take a wild guess.
ATHINA FRAGKOULI: I have heard that the first proposal is pushed to be approved like by the end of this year so before the elections. About the second one: I have heard that the elections may postpone the process, but if someone else have more details about it, please let us know.
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: I work for the Greek government and maybe as you may know, we will be having the approximated receive the council next semester, I can inform you about those initiatives from the Commission, the first one it has already been discussed since September 2012, so we can consider that it has progressed a lot. Let me clarify that the discussions so far have been on a principle basis, so actually now the opinion ?? is discussing article by article so it's a good timing to put in your concerns. To the council as well, not only the parliament. The Lithuanian approximated see sun likely to be able to conclude this so it's the Greek and it should be considered like 90 pest sure that it will close.
The other one, what will happen with the other one depends on the STM proposal, if you heard of this very famous single telecom market initiative coming from the European Commission, we are waiting from the council of the Prime Minister's to say if they like the idea or not. If they do, that means the STM proposal has to go through, the Nice directive stays behind and probably will go to the next particle ament if not it will go ahead thank you.
ATHINA FRAGKOULI: Thank you for this information.
CARSTEN SCHIEFNER: And the other question is more like a pledge: Would you be in a position as the RIPE NCC to say, identify members of the European parliament that are, how should I put it, better to be talked to, because possibly I could just randomly pick one or two or three of the German MEPs ?? their subject of interest might be fishing or agriculture so it's not worth to talk to them about this particular stuff, would it be possible to give a certain likelihood which would be worthwhile to talk to amongst the MEP.
MALCOLM HUTTY: Yes, you would be looking for the committee that is considering the directive, and then you would be looking ?? you want to establish who is on the committee, if you have got any national MEP on the committee they would be the first ones to go for. If you don't, and I expect you would, but if you don't, then you'd be looking for people from the same party and working it that sort of way. I also had a question, and Chris can help further with ?? who is on the committee, great, so speak to Chris and he can help. But I did ??
MARIA HALL: Sorry to interrupt, I think we have Jane, before the question.
JANE COFFIN: Just a quick question question, or an observation. In the old package the standards that some of the European Community countries were encouraged to adopt were ITU when it came to the communications infrastructure. Is the new package recognising open standards as options, so that countries are not obligated to implement certain standards? I am thinking IETF, IEEE, whichever, but is there ?? do we know if there is a consideration of broader standards recognition?
ATHINA FRAGKOULI: From the way we read the proposals, it's not that clear, but it can be read that the Commission will come up with new standards, it can be read that the Commission will choose standards. We don't know. So one of our amendments, the proposed amendments was that there should be a reference to the bodies that make standards already. That was one of the points we brought up.
MARIA HALL: Anyway, sorry for interrupting you Malcolm, I was more referring to the ?? question. Please be brief because we are short of time.
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: A question about engagement and how we do the cooperation in practice, it was a similar question to Carsten's, I think that engagement with the members of the parliament is relatively easy, you suggested that we should be engaging with the Council. That is not so easy and I think we would love to hear any advice you have, apart from just go to our own ministry, which is obvious, but if you have got any other advice on engagement of council I am all ears because that is a tricky one.
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: Thank you for this very nice applause that you gave me. If you are to engage with the council you first have to go to your own ministry but then as my colleague said before, we appreciate very much every kind of input from the technical community because it makes our life so much easier. So, yes, please be free to send in your comments and Athina will send me all that you drafted because it is a very good input for us as well. We are the council. The Commission is another thing and the parliament is another thing. So thank you for that.
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: That is prime example where the RIPE community can help the RIPE NCC and the technical community in general, in the survey it was mentioned that RIPE NCC and RIPE community members wanted to help by engaining with their national governments. I think it would be great if the RIPE NCC can generate some bullets and support text, this can be used locally from an EU perspective I know that Athina and others will be working on this, and the approximated see being in Greece and it's great that we have Athina on our team, or at least it will be soon.
MARIA HALL: Two more questions we have.
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: Speaking in personal capacity. As the first comment you said you don't have anybody in Brussels and you are seen to be running pretty much behind on this proposal so as RIPE ?? in the RIPE NCC think it has to have an influence in these sort of discussions maybe it's time you opened up an office in Brussels just as a suggestion because otherwise you will always be running at the very end because now it's the parliament should be influencing the Commission who is drafting these sort of proposals for years on end, in other words, that is just the way things work. So if you do that, it will be harder because that is what influences things, that is what I am coming back on on this proposal. What I understand is all the back ICT companies have been lobbying with millions and millions of euros and dollars to influence this proposal, so actually, apparently all the software vendors and sort of parties are not in this proposal and from my point of view that would be one of the that should be addressable also if you talk about security. So that is something maybe you could put into the suggestion also, and as a last one, what I think would be very important for this community is some sort of a level playing field would be actually guaranteed because I can already see coming that two countries or three in the EU are going to implement it very seriously and the other 25 don't and you have for competition wise, these big differences in money you have to spend on and the other ones get away with it. That is something we want to put across there also, perhaps.
CHRIS BUCKRIDGE: From RIPE NCC. You set this up for me when you said lobbying harder. I think our strange here is lobbying smarter and that is trying to ?? we are sort of learning as we go, this is early days for this process. But the work that we have done on the NIS directive has been conference calls with a number of community members who have expressed to us their concerns here and we are trying to take the knowledge that they have and sort of use that, we are coming in on. NIS directive earlier than we came in on the eID directive, when it comes to the STN proposal as well, we are coming hopefully a little bit earlier. We are playing catch?up to some extent but hopefully going in the right path.
PANAGIOTIS PAPASPILIOPOULOS: It's not actually a comment, just a couple of things for clarification. As Athina said, the regulation means it will affect immediately the framework in other Member States and due to this thing European Commission give a mandate to the European telecommunications institute, in order to produce common European standards for the implementation of ?? this is one thing, the second thing is that the NIS is a directive so that gives the opportunity and the ability for every Member State to adapt, let's say, its legislation to this directive.
Now, regarding Jane's observation about the standards, there was one or something ?? sometime maybe one year ago, let's say a common meeting between /*ETS, ITF and ITU maybe actually you are right, there is standards competing one to the other and with very, very small differences, so the outcome of this meeting was that all the bodies, European and international, should cooperate in order to produce standards that apply to every case, with this sense IETF standards will stand but we have to wait to see how all this will implement.
MARIA HALL: Thank you so much for the information and thank you Athina, so much.
(Applause)
Apparently, there are a need for much more discussions and dialogue between the sectors and I also appreciate the papers that have been during the years been written from the RIPE NCC, for example, and ISOC, that have been very helpful for the governments to pick up and use in their own process. I would like to say welcome to Nigel, we will have a short presentation from the European strategy in the ICANN space. Welcome here. I am very curious to hear how you are progressing, I have to say.
NIGEL HICKSON: Thank you very much, it's lovely to see you Maria. Good afternoon for those at the back, anyone asleep? Too much lunch. Thank you very much for inviting me, it's a pleasure to be at a RIPE conference, it's a pleasure to be in Athens, it's a pleasure to be in Greece, and we are very much looking forward to the Greek approximated see and the negotiation on all these important directives and I am sure you will succeed in your ambitions.
I work for ICANN. I don't think I need to explain what ICANN is, well, you know, well I need to explain to myself sometimes what ICANN is, but I have only been with ICANN just over 18 months so many of you probably know about it than I do. What I am going to talk about is European regional engagement strategy.
So, ICANN and regional strategies, why do we need regional strategies in ICANN? And it's quite interesting, because we discussed IXPs earlier and the difficulty ?? or the difference in, if you like, developing IXPs or growing the IXP market, if you could call it that, between Europe and the developing world, Latin America and Africa. And I suppose that, to an extent that is also played out in terms of the ICANN space, in terms of regional approaches. It became clear in the Prague meeting, as you know ICANN have these three meetings a year, at the Prague meeting last summer in the Czech Republic, it became clear in discussions with the African community that there were some special circumstances that ICANN needed to address, and therefore, the need for an Africa strategy in terms of growing the domain name service market, in Africa in addressing some of the difficulties in terms of IPv6, in terms of DNSSEC and other types of infrastructure development. The same was true or the same was thought to be true in Latin America and the Middle East and therefore, regional strategies were started there as well and all of these three regional strategies are now on underway. And of course discussions are also taking place, if you develop strategies for some regions others say what about a strategy for us, we want a strategy. And therefore, discussions are ongoing, if you like, in terms of strategies in Asia and the Pacific area.
In terms of a European regional strategy, the question has to be asked: Why do you need a European regional engagement strategy or why do you need a European strategy? And we in Europe, to an extent, sometimes fall into a trap or certainly I used to in government, of thinking that we are pretty sophisticated, you know, we are pretty OK, we understand things, we are getting along with regulation, we are pretty good at domain names and IP addresses and when it comes to security, we understand DNSSEC, you know, therefore, perhaps all this, we don't really need to be told what to do, we don't really need to have a specialised focus. And I think that, to a large extent, is true in terms of infrastructure development, in terms of capacity building, there probably isn't a case for any particular regional initiative. But there are things in Europe, of course, that we need to engage in and we have just been discussing, we have just been discussing this, we have just been discussing these directives which sometimes come upon us and we think, wow, wish I had known about that earlier and wish I had been able to influence the Commission before it came out, because as many people will tell you here, you know, trying to lobby the European Parliament and the Council once a directive has been adopted by the Commission, you are 70% behind the curve. It's going to happen, it might not happen in the way the Commission want it, but it's going to happen in some way or other.
And therefore, perhaps we do need to be better engaged and to understand better what is going on. And the same to an extent is true with gTLDs, the new gTLD programme. You could say the European figures aren't too bad in terms of the names applied for, I mean obviously behind North America but not too bad really, but when you go and talk to conferences about gTLDs, and I try not to because I don't understand them, but when you talk to people about new gTLDs you appreciate how many people, how many companies, how many businesses, how many organisations didn't really know this was going on. You talk to some of the big banks, they say they never heard of gTLDs, what is all this about protecting their brand?
So in terms of awareness and understands, there is a lot to be done. Would ICANN have ever really gone through with the new registry accreditation agreement, the RAA 13? I mean, that shouldn't have been adopted in the way it was. If we had have been earlier on the scene and tried to influence, why adopt something that is contrary to the European legislation that has to be adopted by about 32 countries, you know does this really make sense? And therefore, to an extent, having engagement and understanding is something that could be quite useful.
So in terms of progress in developing the strategy, we have talked about it in various events recently, we talked about it with the ccTLDs at the centre general assembly and talked about it at the euroDIG and we are going to have a Brussels briefing session on 5th or 6th of November and there will be a public session on the European strategy at the next meeting.
In terms of the issues and elements for discussion, the overall focus then, and this is just, this is just initial ideas and information exchange, trying to understand what is going on in various areas, and there is a rapid development of policy and regulation and technical standards, as, you know, all over the place. Policy coordination and engagement, the ability to do what Chris is doing to an extent with the NIS directive in being able to pull together a coalition, being able to engage and lobby in terms of directives offer regulations which affect our patch. And capacity building in certain targeted areas because not all Europe, of course, is uniform.
Geographical scope, Europe, what is Europe? How far does Europe go? Reading the FT this morning and we see the Ukraine are going to sign up to the association agreement with the European Union. I mean, who would have thought that a few years ago? Ukraine, Moldavia, countries on the edge of the old Soviet Union or in the old Soviet Union, coming into the European folds so the European scope is certainly wider than the EU 28.
Potential issues to address, EU policy issues I have spoken about, wider policy issues, the ITU, engagement issues across ICANN, in terms of what is going on in certain areas, strategy plan, ICANN labs, coordination ahead of certain fora. Should we be better coordinated in the technical community ahead of certain negotiations whether it be ITU or ?? information exchange on events, opportunities, etc.
How would we have a European strategy? It would be perhaps different from the sort of strategy that we have for Africa and Latin America where we have tended to form small Working Groups and have specific projects. This would perhaps be more open?ended, more open in terms of use of social media, in terms of webinars and in terms of on?line dialogue. But this is all to be decided, these are just initial ideas. I have got two minutes left.
So the challenges ahead, the challenges ahead in developing a strategy, the European Commission role, of course the European Commission have an absolute role.
Internet governance issues beyond the scope of ICANN, I am sure that RIPE also gets into this debate, this argument, the technical community, we are good at our own patch but when we get into other areas sometimes we become abit afraid, certainly issues in Europe affecting us, whether they are intellectual property, data privacy affect our role. The whole Snowdon surveillance, how that has influenced the global structure and we could go on about that for ages and we won't.
That is some of the initial thinking, having some form of European engagement strategy, it's at an early stage, there will be a briefing in Brussels at in a few weeks' time and we will have this open session at the Buenos Aires meeting, we want everyone to have an input to this process. Any questions on ICANN I am going to be here, she is going to shut me newspaper a minute, I am going to be here tonight and tomorrow morning, very happy to answer anything on ICANN at all. Thank you.
(Applause)
MARIA HALL: Thank you very much, Nigel. I am sorry for stressing you a bit, it's going to be ?? he is going to be around so he can ask any questions. I still want to give everybody at least one chance too far question for Nigel when he is with us on stage. Anyway. Thank you very much, he is around.
(Applause)
Actually, I have many questions myself but we can take that off stage. Chris, will give us a short update what is happening in your outreach work, RIPE NCC.
CHRIS BUCKRIDGE: I understand I have to be very quick. I have two slides. What I wanted to go very quickly through is looking ahead to 2014. And the best place to start doing that is looking at 2013. This year, I think has set the stage in terms of Internet governance, discussions, in very large and very significant ways that we couldn't have predicted from the beginning of the year. There have been a few events this year, there has been the WTPF which was mentioned in various discussions earlier, which looked to be the ITU opening its doors a little bit and taking a bit of a multi?stakeholder approach but then I think didn't necessarily result in that, we saw then discussions about having, opening the council Working Group on the Internet and then the decision that no, that wasn't going to happen, this is going to remain closed. Those relevations, the Snowdon affair, the Snowdon revelation vs. Obviously changed the atmosphere, charged the atmosphere. They are not issues that necessarily touch directly on what RIPE NCC does, on what a lot of the RIPE community does, but I think the fact that we have somebody here from the IETF presenting this week on it shows even the RIPE community can't stay out of this discussion. There is a role here for the technical community and it needs to be something that we step up and engage with.
So, a little more recently then there was an I?STAR statement a few weeks ago, coming from month video, ICANN, I so, RIRs, W 3 C, IAB. That included the section, a section advocating, accelerating globalisation of ICANN and IANA. Now, anyone paying attention to what the RIPE NCC has been saying what certainly not have been surprised by that but it's in this new atmosphere of change and maybe lack of trust in the US has been taken as a bit of a rallying cry.
What we also then saw was a discussion between ICANN and the Brazilian President about having a forum next year, and the changes that that might make substantively to how the Internet is governed globally.
So then finally for 2013 next week we have the IGF. We are not sure what will come out of this. We are obviously participating now in our eighth on the run, and I think there is a bit of a pattern that has developed there. But as I say, in this new atmosphere it's unclear what this meeting will produce. There has been a new focus on producing outcomes and there is an Opening Plenary on the role of governments in multi?stakeholder cooperation which comes from that WPTF, the ITU, so we are seeing more interplay between those bodies.
This sets the stage for 2014, another key moment in Internet governance. We have had years before where we have said this is a big event, looking at WCIT and other events, but 2014 does promise the potential for significant developments. There are several ITU events, I have listed them here, there is a development conference in April followed by WSISSy plus ten event. The main one though is the planepetentiary which happens at the end of the year, that is where the ITU membership ?? well the ITU member states can actually change the Constitution and convention, can actually say to the ITU, OK, we want you to do new work in this area. As we are looking at the ITU exploring what its role in Internet governance is, that is a significant moment. I also mentioned the summit that may or may not take place in Brazil next April, and we don't know anything about that yet, but this is something that we need to obviously follow as the RIPE NCC for ourselves and the RIPE community so we can feed this information back to you.
The last two bullet?points, this is our general strategy. We are not talking specific strategies here, but what we are saying is our role going into these events is defending the multi?stakeholder model and there are ways in which defending that has become harder based on the Snowdon revelations and the lack of trust that has emerged for perhaps the status quo. We need to be able to say or argue that multi?stakeholder model bringing in the input of all stakeholders, including the technical community is still the best way to achieve an Internet which we can all use and trust and our role there is to ensure the technical community has a voice at the table when those discussions are being had.
So I will leave it there. It's a bit of a patchwork summary because obviously there is also plenty of stuff happening in the EU which I didn't need, see the need to rehash. But if anyone has any questions you can ask them now or I will be around today and my colleagues are around tomorrow as well.
MARIA HALL: Thank you very much, Chris.
(Applause)
We do have a question.
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: I will repeat my question from general meeting. The board approved general extension toss Russia and Middle East, I am very worried about your extension and external relations of RIPE NCC in Russia, nobody this week could tell me exact plans. Maybe you as external communications or Paul could answer it, but from previous slide you see why I am so worried about external communications to Russia, because in Russia tell nickal community voice at the table, not present or faked by some domain name profit tiers so present as technical community but actual network operators are present as good as present in RIPE NCC. So I hope on help of RIPE NCC representing Russian technical community the best way.
CHRIS BUCKRIDGE: I think ?? I think you have to a certain extent answered the question the way that I would, the community in Russia, the way that the community operates, including government and representatives there, is different to how it is here in Western Europe and the Arab world, the Arab world is different again. Our plans in terms of expansion in Russia is to get some inside knowledge there, to have a Russian member of our team who actually knows who the players are, what is going on there, can work with the ?? Paul, myself, Marco and the rest of our team, to say, OK what is our strategy here, how can we best engage here and ensure that the technical community is represented here. That is a work in progress. But that is our goal.
AUDIENCE SPEAKER: Let's work together.
CHRIS BUCKRIDGE: Absolutely. Hall that you will thank you very much for a very good question and comment and thank you for the answer, Chris, thank you. I have two minutes to wrap it up, I am not going to make it in two minutes, if could you could be patient because the next item is about Cooperation Working Group co?chair because Patrik stepped down a few months ago we need to collect another one. I sent nomination to mailing list and I after that I got some other expressions of interest which makes me very happy that there are interest of cooperating with me and do work with this Working Group and increase the dialogue even more. So, the thing ?? the process from now on is, I would like you to express interest to get yourself nominated or I can do it, so put ?? I want to have the names on the mailing list so we have a transparent process and then we need to use some kind of process to come to conclusion or consensus on the mailing list. I will have help from the RIPE NCC to see how we move forward but let's do that on the mailing list so I am not going to go to any decision right now of course, I hope, though, until the next RIPE meeting in Warsaw in spring, we will have another co?chair. So that is the process from now.
So to wrap this Working Group up, I would like to thank you very much for the RIPE NCC to actually hosting or providing this kind of discussions, between the sectors and between all of us working in different environments and being responsible for different issues, but still, have a lot of common interest together. So thank you RIPE NCC for making that possible. And of course, I hope this discussion won't end here in this arena, on this platform in the RIPE NCC environment. I really do hope that all of us actually continue this discussion with the governments, between governments and business sector or the organisation you present yourself. So this is ?? this is a discussion that needs to go on all the time. And apparently when listening to all the speakers and the panel debate, there are so many things we need to come together around and have a dialogue around even though we might have different perspective and different ideas and opinions, we still need to have some kind of base of platform to move forward and everything is of course to make the decisions or actually to help the decision?makers whomever they are actual to make better and more sane decisions.
I would also say thank you very much to Jane to Nigel and Panagiotis, and to Patrik who vanished, but thank you very much for contributing to this Working Group. Very much appreciated.
And thank you again, and maybe I said it for you, for writing the minutes and the scribes, thank you very much. And see you in the spring. Thank you very much.
(Applause)
