David Williams, CERN

1

Outcomes and follow-up

• David Williams, CERN
• Reporting on SERENATE Final Workshop
• Bad Nauheim, 16 June 2003
• For SCIC, concentrating on Digital Divide inside
  Europe

2
The acronym

• SERENATE Study into European Research and
  Education Networking as Targeted by eEurope
• Funded as an EC project FP5
• Looking at the strategic needs, say up to 5 years
  ahead
• NOT about making detailed plans

3
Who are the partners?

• Academia Europaea
• Centre for Tele-informatics (CTI), Technical
  University of Denmark
• DANTE
• European Science Foundation
• TERENA (coordinating partner)
• with considerable involvement of the NRENs, and
  hopefully of other actors, including end-users
  and industry

4
Steering Committee

• Bonac - ARNES - chairs geographic break-out
  group
• Butterworth - AE chairs research users
• Davies - DANTE chairs technical
• Jaume - RENATER - chairs other users
• Liello - chair NREN Consortium
• Mayer - ESF
• Skouby - CTI chairs economics
• Vietsch - TERENA
• Williams

5
Route to more information?

• http//www.serenate.org
• Public pages
• Also working areas for each work package
• mailtoinfo_at_serenate.org

6
Structure and Timescales
7
The EU project

• Runs from 1 May 2002 for 15 months, so until 31
  July 2003 now being extended to 31 December
  2003
• Comprises 14 areas of work, of which 5 workshops
• Initial workshop (17-18 Sept 2002)
• Operators views on infrastructure status and
  evolution (8 Nov 2002, Amsterdam)
• User needs and priorities (17-19 Jan 2003,
  Montpellier)
• Possible models for the future (4-5 Feb 2003,
  Noordwijkerhout)
• Final workshop (June 16-17 2003, Bad Nauheim)
• plus various studies and report writing

8
Final workshop
9
Some overall impressions

• Interesting but still lots to do
• We have consensus on the general directions,
  but..
• Structural funds
• Accession Countries are in the process of
  defining what they wish to use the Structural
  Funds to invest in.
• We had better help them to insist that some of
  this is spent on RE network connectivity!
• Strong personal opinion will see strong growth
  in data volumes not just grids PCs connected
  via GE will be able to source and sink lots of
  data
• Costs (DD slide ?)

10
(No Transcript)
11
Key first next step

• Write a good SERENATE Report
• Concise
• Clear
• Recommendations that can be acted on
• And especially a good Executive Summary
• Since many people will only read that

12
EUROPESDIGITAL DIVIDE

• We are convinced that Europe does have a rather
  serious internal Digital Divide ?

13
How can we be so sure?

• ON AVERAGE the 10 accession countries have NRENs
  with 4-6 times less backbone capacity than NRENs
  in the EU-15 countries
• If we look at the NRENs in the EU-15 and compare
  their networks with those of the next band of
  countries (beyond the EU-25 plus BG plus RO plus
  TR) then we see that ON AVERAGE the next band
  have 20-30 times less capacity than the EU-15
• In the most extreme case, Bosnia-Herzegovina has
  5,000 times less capacity than each of the four
  most advanced countries (soon to be joined by
  several more).
• And Albania de facto does not yet have a research
  network

14
NREN Core Network Size (Mbps-km)
100M
Logarithmic Scale
Leading
Nl
10M
Fi
Cz
Advanced
Hu
Es
1M
Ch
In Transition
It
Pl
Gr
100k
Ir
Lagging
10k
Ro
1k
Ukr
100
15
Tackling the DD will not be easy

• The best tell-tale indicator for DD problems is
  excessively high pricing for connectivity
• The fundamental cause is lack of competition,
  which in many cases is due either to an
  out-of-date regulatory regime, or to the lack of
  political will to implement the (legislated)
  changes. Especially this latter situation can be
  extremely frustrating for the NREN involved
• However lack of competition can sometimes be due
  to essentially economic factors alone.
  Infrastructure operators wish to make a profit in
  some reasonable period, and look to invest in
  locations where they think that there is a strong
  market. We have seen evidence of reluctance to
  invest in fibre infrastructure both in small(ish)
  peripheral countries without strong high-tech
  industry, but also in remote regions of the most
  prosperous European countries.

16
Actions required

• The Digital Divide inside Europe must be better
  measured and monitored
• Availability price of transmission fibre
  infrastructure (EU tracking)
• What the NRENs are doing with it (TERENA
  compendium)
• Performance as seen by end-users (SLAC/ICTP
  efforts)
• A political discussion is needed concerning what
  we mean by Europe in this context
• This appears to us to be the responsibility of
  the EC
• In the absence of progress towards competitive
  transmission costs, the national, regional or
  local governments concerned (or the EU) should
  take action to stimulate open access (and hence
  competitive) ducting and fibre supply.
• The EC should consider whether the regulatory
  regime should be adapted to ensure wide access to
  fibre infrastructure at cost-based pricing.

17
23 - 24 October 2003, Trieste, Italy http//www.e
jds.org/meeting2003/
18
A mega-conference UN/ITU organised. Like the
Johannesburg meeting on AIDS, Kyoto on climate,
etc. Looking at Digital Divide issues. 10-12
December 2003, Geneva, Switzerland http//www.itu
.int/WSIS
19
An event just prior to WSIS, concentrating on the
Role of Science in the Information Society 8-9
December 2003, Geneva, Switzerland http//www.cer
n.ch/RSIS/