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The Latin American and Caribbean technical community says "present" at the Second Regional Telecommunications Congress

4 September 2014
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This month full of activities in the region took us to Panama for the Second Regional Telecommunications Congress from August 18 to 21. Contrary to what the reader might think, the issues discussed during this event went well beyond the issues that traditionally fall within the telecommunications field. And this is so because the boundaries between the different interests are not so clear-cut now due to the transversality underlying the use of the new information and communication technologies. It is a fact, for instance, that the telecommunication stakeholders' interest in issues like Internet governance is not recent. This Second Regional Congress took note of this reality, and organized for Wednesday the session entitled "Internet Governance: milestones, achievements and perspectives for the region", which was attended by important stakeholders from the technical community as well as regional Governments.

With an audience of approximately 100 participants, the session was led by: Ernesto Majó, LACNIC's Acting CEO, and César Díaz, LACNIC's Liaison Officer for Central America; Sebastián Bellagamba, Regional Director for the Internet Society; Andrés Maz, from CISCO; Osvaldo Novoa, from the Uruguayan telecommunications company ANTEL; Sergio de Cola, National Director of Telecommunications in Uruguay; Allan Ruiz, Costa Rica's Deputy Minister of Science, Technology and Telecommunications; and our colleague Rodrigo de la Parra, ICANN's VP for Latin America and the Caribbean. In the word cloud I made and even in this article, we can see the issues more discussed during this interesting session, which triggered huge participation in the social media under the conference hashtag #CRT14.

The issues related to our work, especially the IANA functions' stewardship transition, were central in this discussion. Rodrigo de la Parra pointed out that "we have a historic opportunity. The global community has to assume the role of supervising the IANA functions, and that community is all of us. The key here is that none of the stakeholders individually can overcome the challenges related to the governance of the Internet. Therefore, we support an open, participatory and multistakeholder Internet governance model."

Internet Governance Booth - Second Regional Telecommunications Congress

In line with this, several of the organizations represented in the Internet Governance session set up a joint booth during the event. There, they shared relevant material from each of the organizations as well as from the Internet House for Latin America and the Caribbean, a house consisting of the main Internet regional organizations, including, among others, the organizer of the event, the Iberoamerican Association of Research Centers and Telecommunications Companies (AHCIET), together with LACNIC, ISOC-LAC, and our regional participation center. As regards our work, we want to highlight the great expectation from several Latin Americans to receive material in Spanish about the IANA functions. This means that this issue that constitutes a priority for our organization is within the radar of stakeholders from different focus communities, and that we must hurry to have this material ready for future regional sharing events.

Finally, we want to congratulate and thank AHCIET for another successful Regional Telecommunications Congress, and to encourage you to read the following articles (in Spanish) written by different regional press media.

RELATED PRESS ARTICLES

Panama – The CRT14 was launched | http://sco.lt/9N2GHp

Challenges in the development of telecommunications | http://sco.lt/6ecuDx

CRT14 – The Regional Telecommunications Congress gets started | http://sco.lt/9CRsXp

Panama, venue of the Regional Telecommunications Congress | http://sco.lt/6sbvQf

CRT14: redoubling efforts to reduce the digital gap by 2020 | http://sco.lt/7nbwn3

Authors

Alex Dans

Alex Dans

Communications Director, the Americas