Dear all,

EuroDIG has been extremely productive in terms of visibility for community connectivity (and DC3), in terms of policy recommendations and in terms of new possible cooperation. Below a brief report. Those who were at EuroDIG can feel free to complement.

Visibility. There was high interest in CNs not only from session participants but also from remote participants. A lot of people were debating the issue and come to ask more info and to have a copy of the DC3 report (I brought 50 and they are all gone). Particularly, it was the first time in which governmental officials were actively approaching to know more about CNs e.g. officials from the Georgian Ministry of Sustainable Development, the Finnish ministry of Infrastructure and the newly created European office for Broadband Access. This latter was particularly interested. I invited the director to give a keynote at the DC3 annual meeting at the IGF. I also recommended he gets in touch with NetCommons friends. Very happy to liaise, so that EU based DC3 members can start a dialogue with him.

Policy recommendations. As you may know, EuroDIG sessions are aimed at producing some tangible outcomes, called “EuroDIG messages to the IGF”. They are basically policy recommendations that will be conveyed to the IGF, in plenary session, at the December meeting. As result of the session, the rapporteur put forward some remarkably well-done and useful recommendations. The “messages” will be published on the EuroDIG website and, to my recollection, they include:

a. the fact that governments actively promoting CNs as a credible and viable strategy to expand connectivity

b. the reduction of regulatory burden for CNs or, possibly, exemption from regulation and licenses

c. grant of free use of unlicensed spectrum for CNs

d. promotion of partnerships between local institutions and CNs

e. preservation of the right of CN-members to self-regulate/self-organise their network

Ideas for cooperation. First, there was great synergy between several participants of the community connectivity session and of the session on sustainability organised by Michael Oghia. There were many common elements on which emerged convergence during the two sessions and I invited Michael to draft a contribution for the next 2017 DC3 Report to highlight the link between CN and the broader agenda on sustainability. He accepted. Thanks Michael!

Second, MeasurementLab Europe was interested in helping providing measurements of CN in Europe as well as other measurement regarding available bandwidth, etc. This may be very useful to complement research with concrete evidence. I am very happy to liaise, should anyone be interested. MeasurementLab also expressed interest in submitting a contribution for the 2017 report.

Third, I spoke with Utcha about the possibility of producing a short paper (max 5 or 6 pages) to explain – with easy language – what are CN, their benefits and how can be established and offer this to the Georgian Ministry of Sustainable Development. The Georgian deputy-minister was a panellist with us and he seemed to be very interested and very open to proactively promote CNs in Georgia. FYI, the next EuroDIG will be in Tbilisi, Georgia, in June 2018. It may be worth preparing such a document by next year (we have a lot of time) and Utcha may take the lead in conveying it to Georgian authorities.

Lastly, as you have already seen in another message Glenn MacKnight of LACRALO was so kind to produce an ebook version of the DC3 Report, that you find here <http://fliphtml5.com/gnel/yonr>. Thank you very much Glenn for your help! The ebook is pretty cool!

Hope this is useful. Feel free to share your thoughts.

All the best

Luca