first I'd like to briefly introduce myself. My name is Anya, I am part of the Fonias Jurua research project at the State University of Sao Paulo (UNESP), Brazil. Our project is part of Dynamic Coalition on Community Connectivity (DC3) and we also wrote a report "“Beyond the last mile: Fonias Juruá Project – an HF digital radio network experiment in Amazon (Acre/Brazil)," presenting Amazon Digital Radio Network using High Frequency radio band in the Brazilian Amazon forest. 

I would like to make two point about the DC3 twitter account. First, is about the description of the account that says "DC3 is the twitter account for Dynamic Coalition on Community Connectivity. We are building a community driven internet." I cannot totally agree with the second sentence of the description, as I think it doesn't boil down to Internet only. Our project is working on providing communication infrastructure and connectivity to the communities that are living in the under served areas without any means of communication. Therefore our first goal is to provide connectivity over the HF radio band that is the only feasible solution in the given geographical location, and based on this solution we are planing to then connect these communities to the Internet. I am aware of other community networks that are focused on providing local mobile telephony(e.g. GSM) connectivity, like the Rhizomatica and the Zenzeleni projects. So I think this twitter account should not be limited to just Internet. To me it's about ICT - including other information and communication technologies that can complement and/or go beyond Internet (where Internet connectivity is just not feasible yet or does not meet the community's needs). Moreover, I think we should stay inclusive and not exclude anyone working on community connectivity solutions. My suggestion would be to change the second sentence to something like: "We are building a community driven networks."

My second comment is about languages. Many community networks that were presented at DC3/IGF sessions are from the Global South and are local. Moreover, one message that i took back from IGF was that local culture and local context are vital to address the needs of local communities. I guess that the question we should ask here, is which purpose this twitter account is to serve and who do we address with all that knowledge we want to share about community connectivity. Therefore I think that even if we decide to keep this account English only, we need to think how can we include all those other languages and not only provide information about community connectivity but make it accessible to the people from all over the world in their languages. Again, for me this means being inclusive. 

I am looking forward to your comments and suggestions. 

Thank you, 

Anya Orlova 

Researcher

Amazon Digital Radio Network using HF/Fonias Jurua Project (UNESP)

@RadioAmazon