[Chapter-delegates] Today's Chapters meeting is a great opportunity to bring "multi-stakeholder" to ISOC itself.

[Dave Burstein]

All

In April, a remarkable board discussion made it clear that top down
decisionmaking was not appropriate at ISOC.

Board member Walid Al-Saqaf said the Chapters' Committee "will get whatever
you need."  Several other board members have said similar, publicly and
privately. There was no public disagreement, either at the meeting
or afterward on the mailing list.

The change to a more bottoms-up, chapter and member approach isn't
happening. Of course it's difficult for a staff that's made all the
decisions to share power; some of the problem may just be inertia.

We seem to have rough consensus on two essentially modest proposals.  We
can, and should, resolve any remaining issues and advance them today.  They
have both been extensively discussed in April and since.

Let's make these happen, ASAP:

The first is to allow our chapters to allocate 3% of our $50M budget to
local actions, from paying non-profit accounting fees to local events.
Reporting and financial control would be required. Even if imperfect, that
would be far more effective than the current system, where the budget says,
as Joly has pointed out, one-third of the money goes to administration, not
program services.

The second is to invite our experienced members to bring the Internet
Society to the important standards committees where we currently have no
presence.  It's great we support the IETF, but the other groups that have
an impact on access need a public interest presence even more.

We can send as many people to ITU Study Groups as we like as a sector
member of ITU. The Secretary-General encouraged Kathy Brown to do that;
Hamadoun wanted more involvement so the U.S. would stop beating over the
head about closed meetings. (Almost none are.) ISOC could credential all of
civil society if we chose and send 100 people. One study group wants to set
the rules for IoT - we should be there.

The most important group to attend if we want lower access costs is 3GPP,
which makes the 3G/4G/5G rules, the most common way people are connecting
today. It has no public interest presence and is only corporations. A very
hot issue there is the line code choice for 5G. Royalties could be half the
cost of a low end smartphone, something which should be as cheap as
possible. Qualcomm, Nokia and Huawei, each smelling $B or more in
royalties, and trying to win the standard. They will probably come to an
agreement so that each collects and phone prices go up. Not good for poor
people.

We also should be strong at the Wi-Fi groups, including IEEE 802.11, which
is an open group. I believe that Wi-Fi will be the right access for
village. India, Thailand and others are building backbone fiber to tens of
thousands of towns. Wi-Fi is the natural local connection. The telcos want
to take as much as  half the Wi-Fi spectrum for their LAA service. I care
because I want a public interest presence.

We have a cooperation agreement with CITEL, the policy group of the
Americas. We could arrange similar with the African Union telecom body,
etc. At minimum, the local chapter members should attend and report back to
us.

Decisions in standards effect $billions in access costs. We should be
attending and making a difference.
------------------

There's another reason ISOC has to rely more on the chapters. We haven't
adapted to the reality that 2/3rds and possibly 3/4ths of today's Internet
is not America and Western Europe.

It's wonderful that the founders of ISOC and the Internet itself, including
Bob and Vint, are still active. They've earned extraordinary respect.  But
it's time to incorporate people from the global South/BRICS/Group of 77
into policy and other senior positions at ISOC. Virtually every senior
policy person and senior manager at ISOC comes from the U.S. and Europe,
and that hasn't changed over the last decade.

"We have to build bridges," U.S. Ambassador Verveer told me after the the
Internet split at the WCIT in Dubai. Our chapters are far more diverse than
our management; empowering chapters would be a good way to hear more from
the global south.

 "The Internet is for everyone" is a great slogan. I think bringing access
to everyone should continue as priority, and I think most members would
agree. We should put that line back on our home page.

Dave Burstein

-- 
Editor, Fast Net News, Net Policy News and DSL Prime
Author with Jennie Bourne  DSL (Wiley) and Web Video: Making It Great,
Getting It Noticed (Peachpit)
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