インターネットの父ヴィントン・サーフのコメント（キリバス）に触発されてコモンズの理論で太平洋衛星ネットワークを議論しようとしたペーパー案
Draft; 12 Feb 2009
Title: Satellite Network for the Pacific Islands – Pacific Commons
Authors:
Rieko Hayakawa, PhD Candidate, University of Otago
(Originally this supposed to be presented at
The 11th Pacific Science Inter-Congress in conjuncton with 2nd symposium on French Research in the Pacific, 2-6 March 2009, Tahiti, French Polynesia)
Abstract:
Satellite communication service is still expensive and provides less opportunity for the Pacific Islands which has small populations covering vast distances. While the rest of the world have been benefiting from the Digital Opportunity, the Pacific Islands has languished behind.
This is despite a number of initiatives that have taken place over the past 30 years such as the introduction of a free satellite in 1971, PEACSAT, which still plays a critical role in the education and health sectors of the northern Pacific. The University of the South Pacific regional higher education institution has developed USPNet using PEACESAT, and has upgraded with an established dedicated network. The Japanese government has also launched a satellite as an experiment, PARTNERS (1992) and WINDS(2008). Furthermore, the Pacific Islands regional organization Pacific Community just launched a new Satellite service for rural and remote islands with AusAID.
This paper will discuss the possibility of satellite networks for the Pacific islands peoples as an idea of universal service, such as Pacific Commons.
Keywords: Pacific Islands, Satellite, Commons, Universal Service
I. Pacific islands and Telecommunication service
1. Pacific islands
The Pacific Islands Region consists of 22 island economies that are scattered across a vast ocean which occupies almost a third of the earth’s surface. The islands are diverse in geography, economic structure, political organization, language, and culture. The 25,000+ Pacific islands are home to an estimated 8.6 million individuals, and are politically organized as nations and territories. Table 1 shows the political affiliations of the Pacific Island countries in the region. The island populations are culturally and ethnically diverse, and country populations range from two thousand to over five and one-half million. Many of these diverse Pacific nations and territories are comprised of only one island. Others, however, are comprised of over 100 islands spread across wide ocean expanses. Geologically, the islands include low island atolls to high islands formed by volcanoes. The differences, diversity, and small and dispersed populations contribute to diseconomies of scale, and presents unique health system and human resource development challenges.
2. Telecommunication:
In 1902 the first submarine cable linking Fanning Islands and Fiji Island (Suva) to the outside world was launched from Hanover to Australia and New Zeeland. The Fanning Islands is now a territory of Kiribati, and is located in the middle of Pacific Ocean, (it was used as a whaling base), and Suva, the capital of Fiji, located in the South Pacific Ocean, were both British colonies. Thus the first communication network was launched for colonizer, not the Pacific Islanders.
Basically the telecommunication service had been developed for colonial administrative and economic purposes, not for any social development of the indigenous populations. As the result the telecommunication networks remained mostly in the capital cities of the Pacific Island nations, and not in the rural areas or remote islands. As a legacy of the Colonial Administration, the new independent nations continue to use these networks and management.
Colonial companies such as Cable and Wireless ran these telecommunication services. As the newly created independent Pacific Island Nations did not have the capacity to establish new telecommunication companies, they needed to ask former colonial telecommunication companies to stay on with special agreements. Most of these agreements secured long-term exclusive rights for public communication without any specific description of social development obligations such as Universal Service ideas and schemes.
Therefore, Pacific Islands Nations have been burdened with the high cost and low quality of telecommunication services for a long time. According to ITU indicators database, a decade(1990 vs 2002) of ICT progress on the total telephone subscribers per 100 inhabitants, the Pacific region grew only 2/100 to 4.7/100, while the Caribbean nations grew from 7.6/100 to 52.4/100. The little growth that was seen in the Pacific occurred in the nation’s capitals. Thus access to telecommunication was still inaccessbale to the remote areas where 85% of the population live, such as Solomon Islands.
Why were telecommunication services not developed in Pacific Island Nations? First, they have small economic scale. For instance, Papua New Guinea, which has the largest Pacific Island population at over 6 million people, is made up of mostly rural areas with many remote islands and isolated centers of population. Fiji has second largest population, about 800,000. Scales of economy does not work in these areas. In a period of time before wireless communications, the “last mile” problem was a great obstacle for telecommunication development.
Secondly, the respective former colonial telecommunication company and the government generally owned the management of the telecommunication companies: 50 and 50. The new Pacific Island governments did not have any expertise in telecommunication, including a lack of expertise in technical and policy issues and budgeting. They could only rely on the management of previous telecommunication companies, such as policies, direction and objectives, which basically underlined a philosophy of economic fundamentalism, not social development.
To meet the lack of services, the idea of a public telecommunication network (which is separate from what is mentioned above), such as “PEACESAT”, was developed for Pacific Islands. I would like to next examine how and why those networks were developed and discuss the possibility of “Pacific Commons”
II. PEACESAT
The Pan-Pacific Education and Communication Experiment Satellite (PEACESAT) program was started by the University of Hawaii in 1971 using ATS-1 which was launched in 1966. In 1969 NASA had invited proposals to use ATS-1 noting that after its experiments were finished, the satellite was available to the public.
The background to this invitation lies in the JF Kennedy's administration policy to use the satellite for world peace. This is seen in a speech of JF Kennedy's made in September 1961:
"communications by means of satellite should be available to the nations of the world as soon as practical, on a global and non-discriminatory basis."
(U.N. General Assembly, 16th Session, Resolution 1721, Section P.)
The proposal for ATS-1 was developed by Professor John Bystrom who was working for the US Department of Education. He had been in charge of rural area education in the East-Coast of the US. Thus his background could have been an influence in his proposal for ATS-1. Also his position in the US Federal Government have have helped network him to making contact with NASA. He also had work experience as a Peace Corp Volunteer in the Pacific islands. This latter experience may have helped his extending PEACESAT to all Pacific islands region.
At the beginning, Professor Bystrom established a network between only the Manoa, Hiro and Maui Campuses of the University of Hawaii. The system was developed using a simple Yagi antenna which had cost only 600 to 2000 USD per site. Afterwards, both the Wellington Polytechnic of New Zealand and the University of the South Pacific proposed to join this experiment respectively.
The University of the South Pacific connected 10 extension centers in their member countries with support from NASA, USAID and the Carnegie Foundation.
PEACESAT had been developed as the first free satellite experiment network for education and welfare for international users. From 1971 to 1985 about 140 sites were launched for the PEACESAT network in the Pacific region. However in 1985, PAECESAT satellite went out from the track. Numbers were drastically decreased when PEACESAT re-stat in 1988. There are two reasons. First, users had questions on stability and sustanibality of PAECSAT. Secondly, discussion of deregulation for the international sattelite business had been started. It means that there were possibilities to obtain affordable, stable and sustainable satellite network for PEACESAT pre-users.
However, PEACESAT is still active as an experiment based in the University of Hawaii. They maintain the network with an improved quality of technology for use mostly in US territories such as Guam, Marianas and American Samoa, and Free Associates states such as the Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia and Palau.
Because PEACESAT is an experiment, there are no guarantees for sustainability and reliability. However, ironically almost after forty years of use, this experiment tells us that the program has sustainability. This is the result of telecommunication services for education, health and other welfare in Pacific islands were not sufficient yet.
To meet these strong needs, PEACESAT is now starting to discuss the possibility of switching from their free second hand satellite to a to commercial satellite which has sustainability and reliability. All users will share the cost of commercial satellite.
III. USPNet
The University of the South Pacific (USP) was established in March 1970 with a British Royal Charter. At that time only Samoa and Nauru had obtained independence. The original membership was eleven: the Cook Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, Tuvalu, Nauru, Niue, Solomon Islands, Tokelau, Tonga, Vanuatu, Samoa (Western Samoa). In 1991, the Marshall Islands joined and the current membership is twelve.
USP is only one of two universities in the world which consists of multi-nations. The other university is the West Indies University in the Caribbean islands.
“Education” is the great challenge for theses countries which only recently became independent. The establishment of higher educational institutions was critical, yet with the exception of Papua New Guinea, which has a population of over six million, the other Pacific countries did not have enough teachers and students to establish their own university. This is why USP was established.
USP’s member countries have extension centers. Communication among centers was a great challenge, especially for administration purpose. Thus the opportunity of using PEACSAT was a great chance for them to establish USPNet. Although USPNet was established as a part of the PEACESAT program, UPS had a number of concerns:
1. They needed an independent management,
2. They needed a sustainable and reliable service.
When PEACESAT obtained their satellite again, USP did not have any intention of re-joining thePEACESAT Network. In 1998 USP upgraded their network using a commercial satellite launching their own earth station at every USP site. This was made possible with a grant from the Japanese, New Zealand and Australian governments multi-cooperation scheme.
Education is the first priority for the all Pacific Islands yet the opportunity for studying abroad is both limited and expensive. Furthermore, most of the students that go to metropolitan countries for study rarely came back to their home islands. With these factors in mind, the USPNet upgrade proposal obtained the full support of all member countries.
The greatest obstacle to this proposal was telecommunication regulation. As I mentioned above, all countries guaranteed exclusive licenses for national telecom. Thus each USP member country had to negotiate with their Telecom Companies and make an MOU. These MOU’s by and large prohibited an open USPNet for outside networks.
As a result of the activities involved in upgrading the USPNet, the users, especially the national leaders, educators and policy makers, had strong doubts on the capacity of their national telecommunication companies to provide services to the “public”. Although public institutions such Education, Health and other welfare sectors should have been a high priority for maintaining national interests, most of the national telecommunication companies were not supportive of USPNet, and indeed were disturbed at USP’s attempts to get their own network.
Current networks are still challenged to expand their service, especially the bandwidth for each centers where thousands students have to share 64kbps. On the other hand, compression technologies and the decrease in satellite costs in the competition market will give USP a positive future. USP is continuing to emphasize its Distance Education capacity that will lead to a drastic increase in student’s numbers and request for online materials.
IV. PARTNERS, WINDS
In 1992 the Japanese government launched the satellite ETS-V for their project “Pan-Pacific Regional Telecommiucantion Network Experiments and Research by Satellite” - PARTNERS. This was one event for the United Nations International Space Year (ISY).
The aim of PARTNERS was to use satellite technologies to promote international cooperation on subjects including education, health and academic research in the Asia Pacific Region. Japan had earth stations located at:
＊ Communications Research Laboratory (affiliate organization of the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications of Japan),
＊ University of Electro-Communications, Tohoku University,
＊ Tokai University,
＊ National Institute of Multimedia Education,
＊ National Space Development Agency of Japan.
＊ Overseas: Universities within Thailand, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, and Fiji. Hospitals within Thailand, Cambodia, Papua New Guinea, Fiji etc.
This idea was very much influenced by PEACESAT. Yet, although these experiments examined the possibility for satellite communications in building international co-operation between Japan and the Asia-Pacific, the experiment was heavily focused on technological studies, and mostly one shot connections. Apart from receiving an earth station and its facilities, the Asia-Pacific countries did not receive any tangible benefits, as they without a network.
In 1996, the Post-PARTNERS project was started using the commercial satellite JCSAT.
An evaluation of the two PARTNERS projects has not yet been completed, however, I have observed a lack of the commitment and passion that PEACESAT had. From a technical perspective, the Japanese side obtained a lot of results, yet it is difficult to say whether the recipient sides such as Fiji and Papua New Guinea obtained any benefit from these projects.
Although PARTNERS did not produce huge results, the Japanese Government were not deterred. As a result of the IT revolution the Japanese Government developed the Okinawa IT charter, where it was put forward and declared at the G8 summit in 2000. The Japanese Government had decided to launch another new experimental satellite for the Asia-Pacific region which it called WINDS: Wideband InterNetworking engineering test and Demonstration Satellite. This is a high speed internet satellite. The foot print of WINDS covers Asia and the Pacific region. However, coverage in the Pacific Islands is weak, necessitating the need for a large earth station. Worse yet, the participants for this project have to prepare the earth station by themselves. Since this is an experiment satellite, the specification for the earth stations are not opened so it is difficult to obtain any quotes. However, each station is expected to cost a few hundred thousands of US dollars, plus the cost of a transfer fee from Japan to recipient countries.
There have been a few project proposal received from the Pacific Islands and all of them have been accepted. However, they are having difficulties in obtaining an earth station. Further, sustainability and affordability are important questions.
Japan is the only country to have launched a satellite for international cooperation with the Pacific islands, however, this endeavour had no impact on outcomes for Pacific Island countries. There are definite reasons why Japan has not made any tangible outputs in this region. Only one percentage of ODA went to the Pacific island countries bilateral base – that is 96.97million US dollars in 2005. It means that Japanese interests to this region is only one percentage. The US, Australia, New Zealand and France, on the other hand, provided educational skills, health aids, basic services, and also man power to help. The Pacific Islands are part of their economical and political systems. As can be seen there is a reason why PEACESAT has been continuing almost forty years as an “experiment”, compared to PARTNERS and perhaps WINDS.
V. RICS
The most recent system is called RICS (The Pacific Rural Internet Connectivity System). RICS was born out of the failure of the Boeing companies AMERICOM-23 (AMC-23) which was launched for the Pacific region on December 29, 2005.
The main users of AMC-23 were:
1) US Armed Forces. AMC-23 intended to expand the ability to serve various branches of U.S. Armed Forces in the Pacific region through AMERICOM Government Services;
2) Business. AMC-23 intended to address the business network demands for data, voice and video services within the Alaska to Australia footprint;
3) Regional Broadcasters. AMC-23 was to offer regional broadcasters a singular path between the Pacific Rim and the Americas; and
4) Aircraft and maritime services. Through Connexion by Boeing, AMC-23 intended to support aircraft and maritime services. They planed to provide high speed Internet service for their guests.
Problems existed. The cost of electricity for the Internet is high, plus increases in the price of fuel provided a double burden. Furthermore flights between Asia and America are mostly evening flights, so guests use of the Internet is low (as most would be enjoying sleep). In the end, Boeing decided to withdraw from using AMC-23.
The next step in the development of RICS involved the Australian IT venture company called “Pacific Teleport”. They got the idea to use the transponder from AMC-23 (which Boeing was to have used) towards a cheap satellite communication service to the Pacific Islands. This project was taken on and developed by the regional government organization, The Secretariat of Pacific Community (SPC), at the initiative its Director General, Dr Jimmy Rogers, with cooperation from the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF). PIF has been promoting its “Pacific Plan” as a regional initiative as one of its priority areas was its “Digital Strategy”. PIF’s commitment was critical in order to persuade the national telecommunication companies that they have exclusive licence.
SPC also succeeded in obtaining 2 million Australian dollars from AusAID(Australian AID) for this project. This made it possible to provide 100 free earth stations and free connections until the end of 2009. SPC subsequently named this project RICS (The Pacific Rural Internet Connectivity System).
RICS was officially launched in 2007 at the Forum Conference in Tonga.
RICS identified three categories for its users: 1) Pilot Sites, 2) Public Good Sites and 3) Commercial Sites.
a. Pilot Sites
The pilot sites are fully funded by the Australian Government (AUSAID) through SPC which runs the project. They provide:
• VSAT equipment (including transport, installation and maintenance as well as its running costs)
• CIC(Community Information Center) equipment (power surge board, WiFi access point, Switch/Hub and LaserPrinter)
As at January 2009 there are 16 RICS pilots sites found in: Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Kiribati (2), Marshall Islands, Nauru, Niue, Papua New Guinea (2), Samoa, Solomon Islands (2), Tonga, Tokelau, Vanuatu and French Polynesia.
Some pilots sites are located at either the CIC (Community Information Center) and/or at School-based telecenters.
b. Public Good sites
A Public Good site should conform to at least one of the following requirements, noting the overall principles of PACRICS that it must be in a rural or remote location and should not compete with an existing Internet service.
• Provide an Internet connection for a school, medical centre or other public service office
• Provide access to a Community Information Centre or Telecenter, run by a Not for Profit or community based organisation.
• If operated by a commercial service provider (e.g. an existing Telecommunication Service provider) the rates charged for use of the Internet must be demonstrated to be significantly less than similar commercial services
• Provide Internet connection for an OLPC project.
As of December 2008, there are eight public centres operating:
Papua New Guinea: 2 sites run by Pangtel (ITU), one in Monoitu, North Solomon Province, the other one in Wewak, East Sepik province.
Kiribati: 4 sites located in 4 different schools :
• Chevalier College, Abemama
• Immaculate Heart College , Taborio, North tarawa
• Kauma Adventist High School , Abemama
• St Francis School, Kiritimati Island
Marshall Island: 1 site run by the Ministry of Transportation and Communication (ITU) located on Atino Atoll
Tuvalu: 1 site in Fetuvalu Secondary School in Funafuti
c. Commercial sites
RICS commercial sites are independent sites with their own bandwidth but using the SPC Hub in Hawaii. The customer negotiates directly with the Pacific Teleports (Pactel) and signs a commercial agreement.
When the site is active Pactel reimburses the SPC/RICS account 10% of the monthly service fees.
As of September 2008 the following had active sites:
• 6 Commercial sites in the Cook islands, 5 financed by Cook Island Telekom and 1 by a private customer.
• 3 in Tonga financed by the Tonga Communications Corp
• 1 in Vanuatu (private customer)
• 1 in Fiji - Kidanet (internet provider)
• 1 in Kiribati (private customer)
The major difference between RICS and PEACESAT, PARTNERS and WINDS, is that RICS is a commercial satellite, not experimental, and it is run by the regional government bodies of SPC and PIF. This means that RICS has sustainability and legitimacy, expect Pilot sites and Public good sites who funded by AusAID by only the end 2009. They need bisuness plan for after the fund will be terminated.
VI. Conclusion – Public Network as Pacific Commons
The concept of a “Commons” was first discussed with the article titled "The Tragedy of the Commons" written by Garrett Hardin, an ecologist and microbiologist. This article was first published in 1968 and had an impact on discussions in a variety of disciplines such as Environment management, Market Economy, Population issues, Energy, Water, Marine resource management, Knowledge management, and Development for instance. This theory has made a fundamental contribution to ecology, population theory, economics and political science.
The article outlines a scenario where individuals working in their own respective self interests can lead to the destruction of a resource in which all share and depend on. The destruction is not intended and not desired. Hardin gives the example of National Parks of America, and the values they have that attract people to them. Access is unlimited meaning that too many people visit parks. This is turn has a negative environmental impact thus destroying little by little the sights and sounds that brought people to the park in the first place. Hardin (1968) argues that the park should stop being seen as a “commons” or else it will have no value. Hardin later he admitted that he should have titled his work “The tragedy of the unregulated Commons”.
In the ICT area, Lessig (2002) discussed the “Commons” in a “Free Culture” context.
He argued that in respect to "copyright" - the "property rights of knowledge" - although the interests of a company should be protected, such knowledge that is generated should be available for the public. Lessig is also known as the founder of the “Creative Commons”, a new scheme for copyright issues. His main input is related to the “Knowledge of Commons”, especially as it applies to the Internet age.
There is currently major discussion by Telecommunication industries Major in issues such as Internet management, “Intellectual Commons” and Internet neutrality. In a nutshell, this is basically an argument between telecommunication industries that provide the physical networks and the content providers, such as Google. The Telecommunication industries argue that content providers using their networks use it for free and receive a huge benefit. As they do not pay for the network, they should be obliged to pay fee for the network. The Telecommunication companies in turn need to invest this money into increasing the network to meet increase usage of bandwidth. Contrary to this, the contents providers (and users) argue that the Internet should be open and neutral.
Thus the concept of a “Commons” is a key issue for the telecommunication networks, especially in this Internet age. The Internet has more potential for huge markets yet it also makes it easy for the users to “copy, paste and re-create”. This is what Lessig describes as “Rip, mix and burn”. Such oppositions can be related to arguments between capitalism and democracy. While capitalists protect the property of knowledge and the physical network for their interests, democracy on the other hand protects (regulates) open access and neutrality, as a “Commons” for public.
In relation to the Pacific, because of their small scale of economies the market economy does not work. The Concept of a “Commons” is more realistic for them rather than concept of Capitalism. This especially applies to products that need large scales of markets, such as the communication network backbone. Pacific Islands Nations need to create a common resource. They need a “Pacific Commons”
PEACESAT, USPNet, and RICS made possible the access of information to people whose own telecommunication companies did not provide. How was this possible? Firstly, because of a sharing or resources between multi-regional stakeholders that included developed countries and Pacific Islands countries. Secondly, while Telecommunication Companies are not obligated to providing a Universal Service to the Public, there are robust users who are eager to access information and communication networks in order to share and provide cooperation. We may call these efforts as a “Pacific Commons”
The common purpose of systems such as PEACESAT, USPNet, PARTNERS, WINDS, and RICS, is to share the satellite capacity for the public purpose of all Pacific islands. In this sense these networks will became the “Commons” of Pacific. As each Pacific Island Nation cannot provide an affordable communication service to fields such as Education and/or the Health sectors, then networks as a “Pacific Commons” could be a one of solution out of this problem.
In 2007, Dr Vinton Cerf made a visionary comment when he was visiting Kiribati:
“Whilst technological solutions can always be found, it is having the correct vision and strategic leadership that more often than not holds the key to sustainable solutions”.
Cerf emphasized that a genuine partnership between Pacific Islands and sharing of their resources might offer them collectively the best option to secure affordable high-speed access to Internet connectivity.
Network and Information cannot stand-alone; they need to be connected. It means that the Pacific Islands could have a common network, as “Pacific Commons”.
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