[[-- Translated text (es -> en) --]] FYI The hero of the Salvadoran Internet is called Lito Ibarra https://noticias.ebiz.pe/el-heroe-del-internet-salvadoreno-se-llama-lito-iba... via @ebizlatin The hero of the Salvadoran Internet is called Lito Ibarra December 21, 2021 This year's Internet Hall of Fame has chosen Rafael (Lito) Ibarra as an Internet visionary who contributed to its growth in El Salvador. In this interview, he gives us his perspective on what the policy should be to apply today in the region to reduce the digital divide. Every year a group of people who have been key to the conceptualization, construction and development of the Internet on a global scale are elected to the Internet Society Hall of Fame. This year, 21 new heroes have been chosen, among whom is Rafael (Lito) Ibarra from El Salvador, who worked to improve the first network access systems in his country. This Internet pioneer established the first Internet cafes in El Salvador and administered the .sv domain. According to the Internet Society, his influence is felt throughout Latin America, the Caribbean, and worldwide, as the founder and leader of various Internet institutions. In the early 1990s, it was not seen as something feasible to connect the rural population of a poor country like El Salvador. Ibarra, who was director of information at the José Simeón Cañas Central American University in El Salvador, set out to achieve this and began with the task of convincing the authorities to facilitate connectivity. The next challenge, once the links were achieved, was to work on a sustainable business model for managing .sv domains. He also worked to democratize Internet access by establishing "infocenters" throughout the country. These community-oriented cybercafes served to promote Internet use. Then would come teaching the population to take advantage of this connectivity. Is the internet and connectivity today at the expected levels in Latin America? I do not think so. With the time that has elapsed since we made the first connections in the region (over 25 years), the development and accessibility of the technologies used, and the widely recognized role of the Internet in the development of countries, for some years we should have 100% coverage in each of our countries. Universal access, as well as the training of populations to know how to use connectivity profitably, should be a priority in public policies, with mechanisms of sustainability and continuity. The pandemic put in grave and clear evidence that much remains to be done, and we should not forget that experience and the shortcomings that have become evident in our cities and rural areas. How did you imagine, when you first started using the internet, what connectivity would be like in 2022? Like most of the people who work to make connectivity possible in our countries, and those who contributed to the technological design of this tool, it was not possible to anticipate or visualize what the Internet would come to mean in the lives of those of us who have the privilege of being connected. Today it is practically an indispensable tool for almost all human activities, with a great diversity of services, applications and functions for working, learning, studying and having fun. “Innovation without permission” is a phenomenon that has been possible all over the world, largely thanks to the use of the Internet, and that explosion was not foreseen by anyone. What have been the successful regional and local initiatives (in El Salvador) in terms of reducing the gap that could be replicated in Peru or the region? In the origins of the deployment of the Internet in our country, with the initiative called Infocentros, we managed to bring connectivity to numerous cities in the interior of our country, and for us it was an important reference and concrete support to have the experience of the Peruvian Scientific Network and its Public Cabins project. Other regional initiatives that have served us as a reference are all those that have implemented improvements to the critical Internet infrastructure, such as the creation and development of Traffic Exchange Points (IXP), Center for Response to Emergency Incidents in Cybersecurity ( CSIRT or CERT). We can share many of these experiences directly thanks to the communities that we have created in the region through organizations such as LACTLD, RedCLARA, LACNIC, LAC-IX, and others. The formal creation of these organizations is not a minor achievement, as they have allowed for greater collaborative work in the region. The cherry on the cake is the existence of the Internet House of Latin America and the Caribbean, at LACNIC's headquarters in Montevideo. In relation to public policies, what are we currently lacking in the region? Mainly, a policy that facilitates and guarantees connectivity for the entire population of each country. Additionally, policies that encourage, promote and facilitate the incursion of entrepreneurs of all ages in the digital economy, training programs for the population in the use and exploitation of Information and Communication Technologies, with an emphasis on the use of the Internet. Policies that protect the privacy of data, the cybersecurity of the nation and the critical infrastructure used in telecommunications networks in all sectors. We also need other pieces of legislation such as net neutrality, the citizen's right to the Internet as a critical infrastructure, even free of charge, the signing of international agreements and treaties on cybersecurity, and others. What should be the regional agenda for 2022? Should propping up 5G be a priority? Technologies such as 5G, which increase the speed of access, are useful and desirable, but there are other pending and overdue issues in the region, and these should be a priority. We have mentioned some of these before, and the issues, objectives and quantitative and qualitative goals that have been reiterated for many years in the plans and agendas of eLAC, of ECLAC, for example, should be taken up again. Each country should review which of these proposals are feasible in their nations, and put them to work. The profitable connection to the Internet has proven time and again to be a leveling element for the quality of life and democratization of access to services, benefits and facilities in the areas of education, finance, business, public services and others, so this tool enabling other activities should figure at the top of the priorities of the 2022 agenda of our countries and multiple sectors. What should be the way forward for a government to achieve digital inclusion and the closing of gaps in our territory? In most cases, access to the most remote places and with more rugged topography is not profitable for the connectivity providers. In these cases, States have a responsibility to seek creative and perhaps initially subsidized ways to make the majority or all of their citizens feel comfortable accessing the Internet and the services provided by the network. Governments must bring closer and facilitate the processes that the state normally provides to its citizens, such as digital identity, education, health, in some cases some type of support or subsidy, so that a digital government also supports the digital transformation of companies. and organizations, public and private, for the good and growth of the local and national economy. What standards are missing to achieve true digital inclusion? Those that favor the training of children and young people in the areas of concepts and digital culture, enabling them to work and live in a society in which most services and interactions are carried out through technologies and electronic communication, since this situation does not It is the future, but our present. We must continue to try to qualify more people in the installation, configuration, maintenance and support of the equipment, networks, infrastructures, applications, platforms and systems that are necessary to have a secure, stable and resilient connectivity, as well as open, inclusive and easy to be used by our populations. What have been those mistakes that cannot be repeated? Those examples that left us a clear moral ... The engineers who designed the technology used on the Internet coincide in pointing out that the main errors of origin are, for example, not having provided sufficient security mechanisms to the main design, since incorrect or harmful uses and abuses were not considered that today are given by different actors in the world. Much work is being done to correct these problems of insecurity in the network and therefore there is a lot of investment of human and financial resources in this matter. Also the termination of the addresses so that more devices can connect to the network is another deficiency of origin, and although there is already a technical approach on this issue (migration to the IPv6 version), it has not yet spread in the world in way enough. Finally, people's trust in the Internet has eroded in recent years, due to the many cases of fraud, deception, and misuse of the Internet. These are some of the tasks that we still have pending, if we want our region and our countries to be able to turn the Internet into a truly differentiating and empowering tool for our social and economic development. eBIZ Latin America _______________________________________________ lac-discuss-es mailing list lac-discuss-es@atlarge-lists.icann.org https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/lac-discuss-es http://www.lacralo.org _______________________________________________ By submitting your personal data, you consent to the processing of your personal data for purposes of subscribing to this mailing list in accordance with the ICANN Privacy Policy (https://www.icann.org/privacy/policy) and the website Terms of Service (https://www.icann.org/privacy/tos). You can visit the Mailman link above to change your membership status or configuration, including unsubscribing, setting digest-style delivery or disabling delivery altogether (eg, for a vacation), and so on.