View source for Regulation and the Internet economy – how to create the right building blocks for 5G networks – WS 03 2019

19 June 2019 | 14:00-15:30  | YANGTZE 1 | [[image:Icons_live_20px.png | Video recording | link=https://youtu.be/_GTePoW39c4]] | [[image:Icon_transcript_20px.png | Transcription | link=#Transcript]]<br />
[[Consolidated programme 2019|'''Consolidated programme 2019 overview''']]<br /><br />
Proposals assigned to this session: ID 28, 45, 49, 68, 80, 81, 126, 170, 199 – [https://eurodigwiki.org/mw/images/d/de/Proposals_for_2019_2018-12-04_01_final_web_IDs_ver1.pdf list of all proposals as pdf]<br /><br />
== Session teaser ==
This session will explore one of the fundaments to the relation between innovation and regulation – the aspect of the timing of regulatory interventions. The focus of this debate will be on the introduction of 5G networks for communication technologies as key to the development of a European internet economy.

== Session description == 
5G is the new standard for advanced digital communications. It will bring together fixed and mobile networks into one smart network. With 5G, users can expect greater capacity, gigabit-like speeds as well as real-time responsiveness of the network. The potential of such networks have continuously been emphasised: ultra-high-quality content, automated driving, remote-healthcare applications or smart manufacturing. While the list of use-cases is unlimited, several tests of 5G technology has already been made, for example for connected cars and smart industry.  With increasing amounts of data flows made possibly as well as digitisation of industries the development raises important questions – how will 5G impact the Internet landscape?, how can regulators work in partnership with industry to ensure clarity while not stiffen innovation?, What components are needed to achieve the Gigabit Society goals?. This session will try to answer these questions and provide insight into how the Internet economy is shaped by both innovation and regulation.

== Format == 
Lightning talks. As the name suggests, lightning talks give speakers a limited amount of time to make their presentation – no more than 10 minutes. They may or may not include slides, but if they do, the slides usually move forward automatically to keep speakers to time. Because lightning talks are brief, it requires the speaker to make their point clearly and rid the presentation of non-critical information. This format allows many ideas to be heard within a short amount of time.

== Further reading == 

*[https://etno.eu//downloads/reports/thestateofdigitalcommunications2019finalpages.pdf ETNO Annual Economic Report 2019]
*[https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/policies/improving-connectivity-and-access European Commission, Connectivity for a European Gigabit Society]

== People == 
'''Focal Point''' 

*Kristina Olausson, ETNO - European Telecommunications Network Operators' Association

'''Organising Team (Org Team)'''
*Zoey Barthelemy
*Amali De Silva-Mitchell 
*Arvin Kamberi 
*Diona Kusari
*Olga Kyryliuk, The Influencer Platform
*Ucha Seturi

'''Key Participants'''

*Thomas Grob, Senior Expert Regulatory Strategy at Deutsche Telekom. Grob has more than 10 years of experience working with developing regulatory strategy in the Public and Regulatory Affairs (PRA) division of Deutsche Telekom. His areas of expertise are Net Neutrality, Traffic Management, Economics of NGA/NGN, Competition Policy. Before joining Deutsche Telekom, Grob worked for Bundesamt für Kommunikation BAKOM in Switzerland.
*Jan van Alphen is ICT strategy advisor to the CIO of a major Dutch healthcare organization. In this and earlier roles as head of telecommunications and multimedia he has gained significant experience in ICT, telecommunications, management and ICT strategy. He is a board member of INTUG, the International Telecommunications Users Group and he is the former chairman of BTG, the oldest Dutch ICT/telecommunications association for large and middle account business users. This sister organization of INTUG also has a strong focus on communication technology.
*Hanane Boujemi is the executive director of Tech Policy Tank providing market intelligence, policy analysis, strategy design and bespoke advice on tech product deployment and tech services and tech Policy advisor of DiploFoundation. Mrs. Boujemi is Internet policy expert with 15 years’ experience in the economic and legal aspects of Internet Policy and Governance. Her work focuses on the policy and regulatory challenges deploying emerging technologies.
*Ola Bergström is the Director for International Affairs of the Swedish Post and Telecom Authority (PTS) since 2012 and is responsible for coordinating the international work at PTS. He is responsible for the work in ITU and BEREC. During 2014, Mr. Bergström chaired the Contact Network of the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC). He is also active in Internet related issues. PTS is the governmental authority that regulates the electronic communications and postal sectors. The concept 'electronic communications' includes telecommunications, IT and radio. Mr. Bergström has more than 15 years of working experience in the telecom sector. Since 2009 he has been responsible for the international coordination at PTS. Prior to his current position he was a legal adviser at PTS. Before joining PTS, Mr. Bergström worked for the Competition Authority between 2002 and 2005. He also worked for the Ministry for Enterprise and Innovation. Ola Bergström holds an LL.M. from Lund University and a European Master of Law and Economics from Hamburg University and Erasmus University Rotterdam. 

'''Moderator'''

*Kristina Olausson is Public Policy Manager and joined ETNO in March 2017. She works with Public Policy, focusing on content and media services as well as leading ETNOs collaboration with the automotive industry. She previously worked as Project Assistant for the Dutch 2016 Presidency of the EU Council and as Information Officer with the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions in Brussels.

'''Remote Moderator'''

Trained remote moderators will be assigned on the spot by the EuroDIG secretariat to each session.

'''Reporter'''
*Marco Lotti, Geneva Internet Platform

Reporters will be assigned by the EuroDIG secretariat in cooperation with the [https://www.giplatform.org/ Geneva Internet Platform]. The Reporter takes notes during the session and formulates 3 (max. 5) bullet points at the end of each session that: 
*are summarised on a slide and  presented to the audience at the end of each session 
*relate to the particular session and to European Internet governance policy
*are forward looking and propose goals and activities that can be initiated after EuroDIG (recommendations)
*are in (rough) consensus with the audience

== Current discussion, conference calls, schedules and minutes ==
See the [[{{TALKPAGENAME}} | discussion]] tab on the upper left side of this page. Please use this page to publish:
*dates for virtual meetings or coordination calls
*short summary of calls or email exchange
Please be as open and transparent as possible in order to allow others to get involved and contact you. Use the wiki not only as the place to publish results but also to summarize the discussion process.

== Messages ==  
*5G is the new standard for advanced digital communications and it promises to bring together fixed and mobile networks into one smart network. However, there are still some challenges when it comes to finding the right balance between innovation and regulation.
*The conflicting interests of the telecom and policy worlds still represent a big challenge. On the one hand, the industry is promoting innovation and a specific business model, and on the other, policy is trying to address the impact of a given technology in society. A fully comprehensive understanding of a technology’s impact is difficult to reach. It is important to have more inclusive discussions among the different stakeholders (telecoms, manufacturers, regulators). Moreover, we also need more inclusive approaches in addressing the potential uses of 5G, its possible linkages with other technologies such as artificial intelligence, and its limitations in terms of security, the protection of data, and health concerns.
*There are regulatory challenges concerning the inclusion of the different stakeholders in the discussions (e.g not only vendors but also the tech industry) as well as paying close attention to balancing the different issues that are on the regulators’ table (e.g. competition, cybersecurity, data and consumer protection).
*It will be easier for the private sector to grasp and appreciate the potential of 5G technology as in the case of campus networks’, for example. However, implementation challenges regarding infrastructure (such as the coexistence of private and public networks), capacity, auctions and spectrum allocations, as well as net neutrality concerns, remain to be fully addressed by the regulators. 


Find an independent report of the session from the Geneva Internet Platform Digital Watch Observatory at https://dig.watch/sessions/regulation-and-internet-economy-how-create-right-building-blocks-5g-networks.

== Video record ==
https://youtu.be/_GTePoW39c4

== Transcript ==
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>> KRISTINA OLAUSSON: So hello, everyone. Being mindful of time I'm going to start the session now.

I'm Kristina Olausson, with ETNO, Telecommunications Network Operators. I'm happy to be here today, and thanks for coming to the session on innovation and regulation, and how to create the right building blocks for 5G networks.

We picked this as an example for the case of balancing innovation and regulation, because there is currently a lot of talk about innovation in this area, and the roll out of 5G networks which have the promise of bringing high capacity, new speeds, lower latencies, and perhaps many interesting use cases to come. Today with me I have a panel with Thomas Grob, senior expert on strategy at Deutsche Telekom. Thank you for being here. I have Ola Bergstrom representing the public sector, director for international affairs at the Swedish Post and Telecom Authority, PTS, and Hanane Boujemi, Executive Director of Tech Policy Tech. We might also have a fourth speaker coming today. But we are still waiting on this. Jan van Alphen arrived in the room. Okay, thanks. Good. Jan, do you want to jump over here or sit over there? We will kick off the discussion with Thomas with use case from Deutsche Telekom.

>> THOMAS GROB: Is this working? Thanks, Kristina.

I have some slides on 5G. Excellent. Wonderful. Thank you.

So, I don't think I'll use the whole 15 minutes that have been allotted to me. This slide is basically just a recap of what to expect. We have already heard everything is becoming faster, more performant, lower latencies and also a lot more connections. That is the promise. What does this actually mean for the users? What can we expect? Usually you have three broad categories of use cases, the one is of course the bandwidth centric, and probably the closest to the consumer, the critical communication down in the right corner is more the one that is dependent on low latency, high reliability, and there the use cases are more in the industrial domain, and then the third one and that is probably the one that is already most noticeable today is the massive machine communication that has started with narrow band IoT and the current generation of networks. There we expect a whole lot of more devices to be connecting in parallel, which of course puts a heavy load on the networks, and everybody is expecting that with 5Gs this can also be optimized.

Now for today, I think this slide here is the most important one, as you know, 5G is not yet fully deployed. So talking about a concrete 5G use case is a bit of a challenge today. That is why I chose the compass network example, because this is actually being trialed right now. It can be realized on the current generation of networks. Also for the time being, you can imagine this as a parallel network, which is either logically or physically separated from the public network.

So what does this mean? Well, I'm not an engineer, I'm a economist. So I'll try to explain in the terms that I understand myself. You can either use the same spectrum and reserve capacity on that spectrum for the private network, and keep them logically separated, or you can use dedicated frequencies, and as you have probably seen in the German 5G option, there has been quite a large chunk of 100 megahertz reserved, exactly for this purpose. Those 100 megahertz will not be attributed to the Telecom operators, but can be attributed to industry directly.

One use case would be that industrial partners come to us with the frequency rights they have, and we implement them for them. Or of course, they can also do it all on their own as they choose to do so. This will eventually phase into the full 5G deployment scenario, where everything can be realized, in our case, on the 5G networks. So what currently is completely separated will be in a network slicing architecture, just another slice on the network.

Now, how does this actually look, also in a very stylized form, we would of course assume that we already have coverage wherever we go to build these compass networks. We will then build additional capacity which both benefits the existing public network, but will also provide the capacity that is necessary for the industrial partner and user, and what are they going to do on this private network. Well, the current most demanded use cases that we see is actual the steering of industrial production. It has also the possibility to do predictive maintenance, to do the monitoring, to even do maintenance supported by augmented reality.

What is most important is that the idea of the compass network is that since it's separated, it will not be traditional telecommunication services, but really what currently may be what would be realized on a wi-fi in-house infrastructure can now be done on a mobile network spectrum. And what is expected is that this will perform more reliable and faster also than the current wi-fi technology allows, which is in demand by the industry.

So in this first phase, I would say 5G is not really going to be a consumer technology, but we will see the first applications, for example, in this compass deployment, with industrial partners. As I've said, this is now being tested. We have it live at three sites currently, and the big question from a regulatory point of view of course is, is this going to interfere with the public service that we are providing, and that is a burden of proof on us. We have been working with the regulator in Germany in testing the concept, but also in assuring that we do the measurements first ourselves, but we also let them of course measure the actual performance, with the idea being that we can demonstrate that the coverage, the public coverage will actually improve by the existence of compass networks.

So far, the first results are positive, and also in the discussion with my specific peers, and I have to say I'm a Net Neutrality expert and that is how I'm involved in this topic, because internally, the project leads come to me and ask me are we allowed to do this, are we allowed to do that, or is there maybe a problem with Net Neutrality.

Well, as long as the two premises that you cited are actually true, so we have separated networks and the performance of the public network is not going down by the existence of a private network in parallel, they are fine with that. Of course, the proof is in the pudding, and we have to make sure that we actually deliver what we have promised here, if we do, I have three thesis that we can test in the debate that is to follow, saying consumers and verticals will benefit from what is happening here, and there is no need for preemptive regulatory protection.

Along the same lines, more differentiation is not a problem, but in fact, will increase competition, especially between networks, as of course there will be differences in what performance can be delivered. And last but not least, what I just alluded to towards the end of the previous slide, if done correctly, there will be more traffic management, but it can be absolutely compliant with Net Neutrality rules.

So unless there is any questions, that is my first input presentation. Thank you very much.

(Applause)

>> KRISTINA OLAUSSON: Thank you so much, Thomas. We will have a short presentation by Jan as well, and I didn't say that before, Jan is ICT strategy advisor and board advisor of INTUG International Telecommunications User Group. Please go ahead.

>> JAN van ALPHEN: Thank you. Good afternoon, everybody. My name is Jan van Alphen, you already introduced me.

I am board member of INTUG, the International Telecommunication User Group. INTUG was established in 1974 and it has a permanent observer state, it is RTU and has an expert user group state OCD. We are representing around 3,000 large, medium and small companies worldwide. We have a close relationship with our sister organisations, for instance like BGD Netherlands, Australia and other associations.

We often have meetings and discuss themes and 5G is one of them, of course, because it's very actual. BDG is Dutch associations for representing 200 business consumer companies, that focus on ICT telecommunication. We are the longest existing one in the Netherlands, over 30 years, first focused on Telecom, later on, on ICT.

When we look at topic of 5G, we discussed there are several issues we have to think over. One of them is infrastructure capacity, and we acknowledge that there is a need for high density, and that will be, have implication, the implementation will be difficult. For that reason, we also have to think of solutions of remote management, and we must try to avoid an overlapping in infrastructure. As business consumers we think it's very important to work on complementary technologies to extend the scope and create a complete end-to-end environment. That is very important, for instance, I'm working at a university hospital in Netherlands, we are closely related to the university, and it's important to work on an infrastructure based on several techniques that work seamlessly together.

For that reason, it's also important to work on full coverage, and the expectations are high for 5G. We think it's very vital for continuity of our business processes, especially when we are working in the mission critical business processes. I'm working in healthcare but we also have members working for the airport, the harbor industry, the railways, etcetera. For that reason, it is important to create an environment that full continuity can be achieved.

We also work a lot in multi-user environments. I'm working in university hospital, closely related to the university, and then it will be very convenient if we all can use the same infrastructure, and the techniques based on that infrastructure can be used seamlessly. There is still a lot of problems with the in building coverage based on the existing techniques 3G, 4G, and we are working in the Netherlands for instance on a standard together with M&O for the distribution of antenna systems. When we continue with 5G, the infrastructure will be more complex, and for that reason we have to discuss this topic in advance, it's very important. Otherwise there will be as business consumers, it's very difficult to create solutions without help from M&Os or RCT suppliers that are related to us.

There is also a bit of concern by our consumers that there will be health concerns related to 5G. There are some reports already existing. There is no direct relation proved, but especially when you are working in healthcare or in home care, people are afraid of these topics. So we have to be aware of that.

When we focus on rollout, it's of course important to focus on maximum speeds, but more important, we think it's important to increase the capacity for realtime communication. That is the main point. For that reason, it's also important to work on low latency and high reliability and resilience. In the situation just explained we like to work on a converted ecosystem where all the line techniques will work seamlessly, but we know we still have a long way to go.

I think I went a little bit too far. When we focus on auctions, we think it important that the auction should not burden the market. We must add development and innovation.

So it's not, we don't want to have a delay, too much delay because of national or international discussions. We have to work on affordable prices, and cost transparency. Our customers are willing to pay extra for full continuous service. So maybe that creates chances to have new business cases, also for M&Os that have to pay a lot for the new auctions.

The spectrum allocation is also important, and we must focus of course on first rollout and not only on the benefits of revenues. For that reason, we think a environment of full competition is necessary, and for that reason we also have to think about prospective sharing and trading in spectrum, so afterwards the auctions. And it's important we don't create a new vendor lock-ins especially not switching from provider to provider, as business consumers use a lot of different M&Os and it's a difficulty when you want to switch from provider to provider. And of course, very important, we have to focus on the outlying areas. There are still problems, I just went to a symposium for home care yesterday, and there was a area near Germany and still there are problems with the outlying areas and coverage within the outlying areas.

There are in Sweden good examples for how to solve these kinds of problems. For instance, we have to work on that too. In general, we think it's very important to work on a global approach and to work on international guidelines.

That will be the basis for us to realize the full digital transformation we need. We have to learn early experience, for instance roaming discussion, it took a long time, much too long. We need more speeds to realize this topic too.

For that reason, it's still important to work on a certain network neutrality, and zero rating. We have to work on harmonization of international standards, and we have to invest in knowledge and time to experience, and because there are a lot of good use cases already, and proof of concepts going on, but there are still industries who are having difficulties to find, to define good new use cases, and for that reason we think it's important to collaborate with the M&Os and ICT suppliers that are involved.

For that reason we also think that there is a need of limitation of legislations. These are our thoughts about this topic.

>> KRISTINA OLAUSSON: Thank you so much, Jan. Please welcome back to the table and we can start the discussions.

(Applause)

Thank you.

Before we get going, I want to say this is a panel discussion, but I don't want to divide it in a typical discussion and then Q and A. I would really welcome from the audience, if you have questions, please raise your hand whenever you want. We will take them, we will integrate you into the discussions directly.

Yes.

(Speaker is off microphone)

Would you repeat that for the stream? That was a question about the reports Jan mentioned on health, and we will have a chance to give some information on that later. Thank you. And also we have a few microphones, so if you want to speak, we can try to send them around the room. We will have to help each other out, because it's a large room. But thank you very much.

Maybe I can start building on a bit, a question on the use cases we discussed, a question for Jan. You work at university hospital, and look at different use cases when it comes to new networks and technology. Is there anything you see in the near future where the capabilities of networks such as 5G would help you in your work, where you think it would be a case to integrate in your work.

>> JAN van ALPHEN: Yes, the position of the hospitals are changing. They are more working on based on region related services. For that reason, we need high-speed, and high data capacity, and I think there are a lot of solutions that we can create through 5G, healthcare on this, distance and broker functionalities between the hospitals and the patients and the security maybe is also an issue.

But we think there are a lot of possibilities with 5G. But we have difficulties to define them.

>> KRISTINA OLAUSSON: For me as a patient, when can I, when in the future can I expect to for example have a doctor's appointment in my home or when would it be possible for me to have a, like be in a hospital but having a doctor completing a surgery in another space, is that something we can expect in the next five years?

>> JAN van ALPHEN: I hope so, but it depends on how fast the Netherlands is rolling out. First we have an auction, beginning of next year. Then we have to start. It will be a good opportunity if we are facilitated by doing some projects already testing. For example, there is a programme going on in our neighbor hospital in the north already doing tests with 5G related to emergency cases and health.

>> KRISTINA OLAUSSON: Great. Thanks so much.

Since you mentioned spectrum, I'll jump on that question right away. So the session is supposed to be about the interplay between regulation and innovation. And of course, an important regulatory framework when it comes to telecommunications networks was the European Electronic Communications Code that was adopted recently. And among other things, spectrum management are addressed there. I also would like to note to you a topic we wanted to raise today was how we can achieve the gigabits society goals that is about achieving a hundred megabits per second connections by 2025 across all Europe.

And in this communication by the commission from 2016, something they noted on 5G roll out was that it will require early exploitation of EU harmonized radio spectrum. We see now currently in Europe a lot of spectrum options, and authorization and awards going on. I would like to ask the panel a bit what your views are on the latest development, we just heard that the German spectrum auction was closed so perhaps we can have a comment from Thomas there. I'm sure you were following that. It brought in 6.6 billion Euros, similarly in Italy it also landed around similar level, 6.5 billion. These are quite large amount of money, whereas just for your comparison, in Finland it was 77.6 million Euros so a little bit less.

Maybe could I have a comment from Thomas and maybe Ola on that one?

>> I'll go first. Germany was a very peculiar case, we cannot really be happy with the outcome, because it cost us a lot more money than we expected. It also took longer than expected. You also probably heard that all the involved companies have started legal procedures against the auction and the attribution. So yes, it is finished. But it's rather uncertain what will happen in those legal procedures.

So we cannot immediately start rolling out, I'm afraid. And having said so, the money that will be spent on that goes to the government, and the government has some plans on what to do with it, but it will not directly benefit mobile. So this is in fact money that will be missing for the rollout of 5G.

Last but not least, there is a lot of obligations connected to those licenses. But there is not much support when it comes to actually building the additional sites that will be required. So what I mean by that is we already today have difficulties in some places to get the approval to build additional sites. We will require a lot of more sites for the 5G rollout. So that also will be a problem. And now the most recent development announced by the ruling parties is that there will actually be a state owned infrastructure company in Germany, and having chosen a competitive market approach, this doesn't seem to be very coherent.

It would be good if they could build mobile sites, where then existing license holders for 5G spectrum could put up their sites. But if that is going to happen or not, we shall see.

>> I think we make some improvements, especially on peer review systems that are in place will bring some benefits. That said, I think the situation we have in Europe on spectrum would be strong national approach is problematic, and we clearly see in many member states huge effect on national issues coming up, so in Sweden we had a delay for almost two years from purely national issue on the 700 band.

Of course, the cost of spectrum is as well quite problematic and we do what we can to bring those costs down when we have auctions, but that is a problem that from a investment perspective that member states have the possibility to have that decision on their own, of course.

We know that connected, we discuss that more on the gigabit society, we know that there will be needed a lot of money to have every thing connected and this will take a lot of money out of the sector this way.

>> KRISTINA OLAUSSON: Thank you so much. We hear from the user side and providers that there is a lot of expectations, but there are certain hurdles on the way. But I would like to ask Hanane Boujemi from the civil society side a bit what your views are and your expectations on the benefits and challenges of these new networks. Thank you.

>> HANANE BOUJEMI: Thank you. I think we are all connected to the Internet, and we all feel like the need of speed and that is what 5G promises, is like the Internet would be a lot faster, but that comes with more challenging issues like the spectrum allocation and having the necessary infrastructure to deploy emerging technologies.

I think any new technology comes with a lot of promises, but we never know the extent to which it affects policy. I think we had a brief conversation about this before the session, and how tech companies, they rush into adopting and deploying new business models because the aim is eventually making money in the long run. But what is lacking actually is combining the two worlds, the technology world with the policy work. What happens, usually we all get excited and then suddenly we find ourselves facing a few challenges and how this emerging technology is going to impact life in general. So we value the service delivery, and that includes speed and now 5G promises to connect every single device, you know, that exists on the surface of earth, which is going to be a little bit more challenging when it comes to absorbing information.

So we will have a lot of content generated due to the connectivity speed and also due to the frequency of it. So our lives will be definitely, we will have like a parallel level of the virtual life on a daily basis and every minute. So that will definitely pose a lot of challenges when it comes to how we want our life to evolve in the future. So do you want a technology that is more maybe human-centric, where we are not only exchanging information and data with devices, because then life will become really challenging.

The promise of 5G when it's fully deployed in the next maybe ten years we will know the impacts, because the trick with technology is that we never, ever understand the full extent to which it's going to impact life until it's done. It's like the problem with Facebook now. We talk about it as the evil of the tech industry, but when it was founded, I think there wasn't that agenda there. The same applies on 5G or any other emerging technology.

We have to keep certain benchmarks in check to be able to understand the impacts of these emerging technologies on life in general. That is why I strongly supported discourse between the Telecom world and the policy world which happened to combine because we don't see the business sector present in this kind of fora because I can imagine that most of you even question what interests people in the Telecom kind of market, you know, discussion. But I can assure you that there is a lot of issues that maybe this conversation will ponder upon, and that is discussing the security hindrances, the privacy issues that comes with deploying technology like 5G. The consumer, increasing capitalism kind of perspective of how products are managed, distributed, shared and so on.

So we promote of course the service because in the end, you are a business model that supports expanding in terms of market acquisition. But I think we need to keep the policy discussion in check, to be able to understand the impact which it actually influences our decisions as human beings.

>> KRISTINA OLAUSSON: Okay. Thank you very much. I hope to dig deeper into how we can improve that discussion also later. But maybe just now, it would be interesting to hear your views. We were talking about a bit of problem maybe of the chicken and the egg, what comes first. Is it that the supply drives the demand, or is it demand that drives the development of certain use cases.

You say that of course there are a lot of benefits with this new technology, and just, it would be interesting to hear your views having seen the type of use cases that Thomas and Jan spoke about. Do you think these type of early use cases can stimulate further demand among user groups? And would of course open that question also to the industry representatives. Thank you.

>> HANANE BOUJEMI: I think from what I've seen, in the health sector mainly, I think there is a huge potential of this kind of technology to magnify the impact of the Internet, because now we are talking about two things. So we have definitely the Telecom world marrying to the content industry which was I think it's a piece of market that escapes the Telecom operators, and it's being handled now by OTT providers.

But now, I think with 5G, we are probably going to expect the marriage between the two worlds where we see the Telecom industry tapping into the market in a more lucrative way. I think 5G will definitely help foster and magnify other emerging technologies like AI which I believe can be of significant help to the health sector, because beyond actually being able to talk to your GP via an app which already exists, by the way, like in the UK now you can get a consultation from your GP through an application, because of the health sector in the UK is so saturated, that there is not possibility anymore to get a consultation physically.

I think with the help of learning machine which will be powered eventually by 5G, you can get more customized advice based on data that is generated previously through the records and so on.

So I see how this could be beneficial even for scientific research, because at the moment, there is some kind of difficulty populating data in a way that you can make sense of it. So I'm sure you hear a lot about the importance of data analysis and data is the new oil and whatnot. But the thing is, we reach the point where we need to make sense of this data, and see how it can help us in improving specific scenarios. It could be in the health system, but it could be also in disaster management, and a lot of other industries.

I think that is why there is a need of speed that I spoke about. Now we can know that information but a lot faster, and it will help us probably advance. But I can't help but looking at, you know, the other side of the coin and this is what we have to keep in mind as a community, that involves a lot of people, people who want to make a little bit of money, but people who are concerned as well with the impact of such technology.

If we are able to conceive new technologies in a way that help us imagine what the challenge is so we can include it in the design phase, because what happens is that you see the industry divided into a lot of silos. So the Telecoms, and the manufacturers, and the regulators, they all swim in their own kind of pool. But what we need to see is more convergence, we need to see all these people in one room and trying to design the future together. That is how we can actually tap into the potential of a new technology, but also be aware of the limitations that can pose in the long run.

Obviously we will never be able to know everything ahead, because even in terms of regulation, I know that the new regulatory framework for example in Europe is trying to be ahead of the curve, but sometimes the kind of regulation we need is incremental. It's purpose is more kind of keeping in check what could happen, because you cannot regulate software, because you never know how it's going to behave. Nobody knows, even the people who actually invent new tools, they really cannot possibly understand how it's going to impact life and people. That is why we are facing a lot of issues now with data and privacy and surveillance and so on.

The reason why I keep insisting on engaging, merging these words together because it's important to understand how we can build a better future where we actually can all co-live, without major issues like the ones we have now, because at the moment, we are having this policy discourse for a number of years, but today we heard that EU commissioner saying finally IG is highly featured in the political agenda of European leaders because they understood the value of having a policy discourse while deploying emerging technologies not because we want to regulate, but because we want to have the ability to make an informed decision on what could work and what wouldn't work.

So overregulating is definitely an issue. So but I know that regulation also triggers trust in a specific market, and it's what is basically Telecom operators would like to have in place, because then it's a guarantee they can do business. But I'm saying it's more than that. We need to be more inclusive.

>> KRISTINA OLAUSSON: Yeah, thanks. So thanks so much. I think what you are essentially, what you are talking about here is the vertical integration of different sectors, as we see the potential with 5G also as we saw in Thomas' presentation earlier. Maybe we can have a quick comment from Thomas there, what this means for you.

>> THOMAS GROB: Thanks. I think the industry is changing, the teleco industry that is, I mean with the 5G example only a couple of years ago the prevailing recognition was, well, we will have new services, we will have new revenues. It is going to be exciting and great for us.

We have become a little bit more realistic, I think in the last five years, and now we don't actually see a lot of revenue potential here, additional revenue. But a way to run and operate our networks more efficiently, which means giving the capacity that is needed to those that need it in realtime.

I see or we have seen this integration of content, especially in the United States, but also in Europe, but I think that trend is already reversing, because inherently there is not a lot of synergy between providing network transport services and having content rights, at least Deutsche Telekom doesn't bank very much on the content side. We see ourselves as a service provider, not as a content producer or owner.

Having said that, I think the future will indeed and that fits well with the EuroDIG motto this year, see a lot more partnerships and cooperation models, because we need to provide what is actually demanded by industrial partners, and also the possibility of, for example, software defined networks opens up new ways to increase efficiency, and it will not be as in the old days that the operator defines the offer and the consumer can take it or leave it.

It will be a lot more interactive and dynamic. Of course, that will also raise some regulatory questions. I mean, I would hope that at the end of the day, we still retain the control we need to assure that those networks operate safely and efficiently, which means that not everybody can configure everything how he likes it, but at least there will be a menu that is increased from what we have known in the past, and there will be more options that better fit customer needs. I'm pretty sure that this will be also the discussions that we will have in the future years, what are those interfaces, what control points need to remain with the network, and which ones should go to the edge.

>> KRISTINA OLAUSSON: Thank you. Maybe from the regulator side, how do you view your role in this changing environment that were described of vertical integration of different sectors, but also new technologies such as the software defined networks, how do you view that development and your role as regulator?

>> I think that is quite a huge shift now for regulators. It's been fairly easy, maybe the wrong word to say but fairly straightforward before, and we knew what to regulate. We spent a lot of time with operators. We had state monopolies basically trying to have more competition on the market.

I think now especially with 5G, we are, the trend is now that regulators are becoming much more sort of promoter of investment as well. So we need to have that balance. We have a lot of tasks from our ministries on how to promote the digital society, how to promote innovation and so on. On the other hand, we see the huge number of new stakeholders we are meeting, and from a regulatory, regulator perspective, we are used to meet with vendors and operators, but how do we reach out to other stakeholders like the tech industry in particular.

We meet with some of the big companies of course but how do we reach out to the whole tech industry. That I think is the main challenge. Also we see now that we are involved in much more regulation than before. Before it was sort of competition regulation, maybe consumer regulation but now we see areas like cybersecurity. It is so important that the regulators get this balance right, because we need to be very open on how we see the future of regulation, of course there are different scenarios because we have not the right picture of exactly how the market will develop, but we need to be open how we see different scenarios and how we could see how possibly regulation could play a role in that. But it's a important task for regulator side.

>> KRISTINA OLAUSSON: Thank you. I would say to the audience, please feel free to raise any questions you have. We have one, I think you have a microphone. Fire away.

>> I'm liking the discussion about the environment, the sustainability in this area a lot.

I'm thinking of, you say, actually is there any studies like control studies on the effect, impact on health due to being exposed for 5G or the antenna of the masts so to speak.

>> Is there any studies?

>> I want to see them.

>> There is a lot of studies. I'm not the expert for the health issues. I just know that it's discussed controversial but from a scientific point of view, so far it has not been demonstrated that there actually is harm.

Of course, the scientific test theory, it's very difficult to prove that there will be no harm in the long term. But at least we do not have an indication that there is a immediate harm, otherwise, we couldn't roll out this technology, of course.

>> What is the difference between 4G and 5 generation.

>> As I said I'm a economist, not a engineer. But what I have understood is --

>> Does anyone know?

>> Yes, of course, the technicians will be able to explain this to you in much more detail but let me try what I have understood especially this technology of beam forming which means in the past, up to 4G you can imagine you have a mast and you install antennas in sectors and they send like a electronic field in one direction.

And it has basically the same strengths going out and with this beam forming it will be much more pinpoint. You can localize the device, and you will send the information that is destined for a specific device more condensed.

Now what the exact effects on health are of this change, I'm the wrong person to ask.

>> I think that is something we really need to consider here. I've heard that 5G is much more stronger in the radiation.

It actually impacts the cells of us, and it's like a microwave oven. People who are living in this areas, they don't know that they are exposed.

I think that is against democracy rules, that we have to have regulation on that.

You say that we have a regulation on cybersecurity. We also need to think about people's health. I think that is very important.

I like to see those studies because I don't think there are. I wonder, because I don't know the name of the gentleman.

>> Jan.

>> But he says that people are afraid, that works in hospitals, and we should be aware about that. But how? How should we be aware about that and why.

>> So, sorry, your last question was, could you just repeat it again, please?

>> So, what is his name?

>> It's a question for Jan.

>> Jan, exactly. In his speech you said that people are aware or are afraid, working in hospitals, they are afraid of this technology, and we need to be aware about that. What does he mean by that?

>> JAN van ALPHEN: That the way people experience healthcare, and healthy healthcare, that it can depend on the experience, the surfaces. For instance, we have a special department is working all the time looking, doing study on interference and those aspects and we rely on national healthcare research, and we are in dialogue. There is even special association focused on these topics.

So if there are any comments about our patients, then we do research, and we try to make it realistic for them to show them the facts, and the way our hospitals are dealing with that. There are some studies done yet in the Netherlands, and we continue those studies.

>> Where can you get those studies?

>> JAN van ALPHEN: I was just looking up for you reports. But I can deal with that later.

>> I have a last question and that is, we cannot regulate like algorithms. We in Sweden have created a due diligence process for AI. I'm not focused on radiation and 5G, but I'm very interested in that, but what we want is actually if we do something in the AI area, we can call it erase ability but we can't actually erase. I'm thinking about all the satellites that is up in the air right now connected to the 5G and the masts. If we don't want them, and if we see that the nature is affected and we don't have food, what can we do if we can't erase them? I think it's very important to think before right now because this is, it is not like -- there are more energy into this but have a real negative impact on the world.

>> I think I know exactly what you would like to hear from the panel about the risks of deploying 5G on health and impacts.

But if you recall, we have heard this conversation many times, when the initial infrastructure for mobile was being spread all around, we heard the same stories. When mobile became mainstream, we heard the same concerns about the impacts of radiation and using mobiles and so on.

I had the opportunity to be moderator in workshop with GSMA which is the association of GSM operators, and one of the questions that the policy people at GSMA wanted to trend on was how to answer this but there is no scientific research as the gentleman said, to prove, you know, the impacts of 5G networks on health.

I think somebody should invest in that, to demystify the myth. I wanted to stress the fact that specific question comes up with deploying any new technology, but nothing is proven yet. It is just creating a little bit of noise by a bunch of people, I understand that.

Now when it comes to the impacts assessments, because you said we have to be in a position to track back, I understand that. But what I said actually is we cannot fully understand the impacts of the software or algorithms that are in place, because you design them to perform a very specific function, but then they end up doing something completely different in reality. That is what we can't regulate.

Now, having the opportunity to track back is obviously, you know, it's a possibility, and that is why I said it's also good to have a fluid framework, legal or regulatory framework that we can use to be in a position to make tweaks and changes so we can be more in line with the need in place. All what we do here is trying to kind of think how, how we could do something better, but nobody knows the ultimate solution.

What we know is that there is a business opportunity, and there is a lot of investments in deploying this kind of technology, but what we need to be aware of is how to set the guidelines to perform impact assessment that will not hinder innovation, because this is one of the major discussions that we have in different fora about how regulation shouldn't stifle innovation and the way to do it is to be more incremental about it. But obviously, we cannot always keep thinking about the negative. We need to talk about the two levels.

We need to have a conversation at a level where technology wizards are on the same page with the policy people, and then when we have an outcome it's concrete, and it's plausible. But there are a lot of theories about the impacts of 5G on health, which are not confirmed and I'm not defending the technology. I'm just trying to be more pragmatic and realistic about what we are trying to do here.

>> My opinion is that we need to see the security principle that we follow, security principle, instead of just being an anarchy and just putting the technology and then don't know the consequences. That is very strange that we actually do that.

I was thinking about the market, there is not any, where they have done research on people's blood all over the world, they have not found any people who don't have the phone in their blood specifically so maybe we should be more aware this time, I mean, on these effects. Yes.

>> Thank you. So we have first a comment from Deutsche Telekom here, and we have three questions from the floor from the gentleman around the table.

>> Last and quick comment on the health issues and food for thought maybe. The scenario where your hand-held device emits the highest amount of power is actually the one when you are far away from an antenna.

I think a common misperception is that in this 5G scenario, where we have to expect a lot more antennas, that this will create the health problem. It might actually do the contrary, as your distance from the next antenna will diminish in the near future. So maybe that could also be comforting a bit.

I can assure you that the government wouldn't attribute licenses if the government thought that the technology was as unsafe or unstable for the time being. I mean, this has been tested.

(Someone speaking off microphone)

>> Yeah, thanks. Definitely seems to be a topic for more discussion to come.

But first, three questions here in this order, gentleman over here in the purple and gentleman at the end. Thanks.

>> Thank you. I'm a regulatory expert. Thomas, Jan, thank you for your interesting presentations.

You both mentioned Net Neutrality as being a important topic in context of 5G.

One could say that a strict interpretation on the concept of prohibition for tariff differentiation zero based rating and prioritization could potentially be hindrance of successful implementation of 5G based services. I was wondering whether, what are your views on the needs to recalibrate the concept of Net Neutrality in terms of the rollout of 5G?

>> Who would like to start? Jan, please.

>> JAN van ALPHEN: I said certain Net Neutrality because I understand that we are changing (overlapping speakers) difficult to define which kind of Net Neutrality, but I think it will stimulate the innovation development first.

And I also said that our customers are willing to pay for extra services. So they have to guarantee that they have their service they want, and they are guaranteed delivered, then maybe it's time to change the model a bit.

>> I consider that a yes.

>> I think the European approach we have is a workable one, as long as regulators act pragmatically, and having said that, I actually do believe that for the time being, we do not have a acute problem with the rollout of 5G because of Net Neutrality rules. But also having said that, I still see a need for recalibration, as you mentioned, because I would support also, I mean, we have the one Internet, and we shouldn't have very strict rules in Europe when there is no rules at all in the U.S. and a lot of different rules in Asia, for example.

So I think it would make sense to recalibrate. Now, what do I see here specifically for Europe? One problem that we have with the current rules is, for example, we have kind of a guarantee that it is fine to roll out the network slicing and that as such doesn't pose a problem. But, the regulators will go and test every single service that we implement on those slices, and they will ultimately come to a judgment if it's justified to have something as a specialized service or not. And also, if they are positive and say yes, it's justified, this is not a guarantee that it will be justified in five years.

So this is a framework with a lot of uncertainty for us. We are rolling out 5G, but we have some, I mean I'm pretty confident for a lot of the use cases that I had on my slides that they will pass the regulatory test, and they will also pass it in five or in ten years.

So it doesn't need to be a huge problem. But there is inherently uncertainty that doesn't necessarily need to be there.

>> I'll say there is a need to start a debate on whether, to what extent we should recalibrate, that could be a call upon EuroDIG to contribute to these discussions at a policy level.

>> Maybe for next year we expect a workshop organized by you on that topic, yeah? Great. Looking forward. The gentleman here in the corner.

>> I have a question about the frequencies. I understand there was some use cases in Germany. My question is what kind of frequencies, is this actual frequency that is used for the total rollout for 5G within Germany? Because I know in the Netherlands there are some test cases, but the frequencies that are used are not actually the actual frequency that will be allocated for 5G, because I know that the frequency that they want to be allocated is a very high frequencies, in the gigahertz. And I know from experience because I'm a senior frequency manager, was one of my jobs, that a lot of those frequencies are already in use, especially by the military. I think that, I don't know if that is in other countries the same way, but I think that is one of the biggest hurdles we have, besides the auction, the money, but I think that is one of the biggest problems.

Saying that, is there any contact with all the national frequency agencies in harmonizing frequency, because I think that is a big issue, because I already know that the amplifiers are already a problem, and if all use totally different frequencies, like we have with Europe and the United States, that is going to be a, from my opinion that is going to be a big problem. So is there any real contact between the national frequency agencies to harmonize the frequencies, of course, together with the regulations of the ITU for the regions.

>> Yeah.

>> Yes. Both especially in the RSPG they have managed to come to some agreement to at least some harmonized. But I see the problem ahead because there are a lot of bands that would be possible to use 5G that are occupied now by military and other national agencies so that might be a problem.

But there is a process for this at least. So I think for the coming years, I think that is a manageable problem I hope.

>> Jonathan, please.

>> For the web stream listeners.

>> I want to make a first comment on the point of view of somebody who spends his life scrutinizing impact assessments. I'm with a regulatory policy committee in the UK, we consult with the ISB at the commission level. What is acknowledged among all the regulators and regulatory scrutineers even at OECD level around the world, impact assessment is one thing and we are making good progress there. Evaluation is another, and we are not making good progress there.

In this case where there are uncertainties about the impacts, it may be about the health impacts, may be about the spectrum allocation impacts, and what was alluded to about the implicit market segmentation in hardware devices, the adoption of the different kinds of licenses that may be more flexible or may allow change of use more flexibly like SULs. In many of these cases these uncertainties will only be resolved by experience.

Not all of it can even be done in regulatory sandboxes, although that helps. So unless we acknowledge that we are making a experiment with the regulation, and we study the results and take them into account in rigorous evaluation, ex post evaluation and adaptation, we will not get the kind of acceptance of these technologies that leads to their optimal use.

The second comment I wanted to make is that the 5G enthusiasts, I'll call them that, are telling us about use cases, but they are selling on two markets. They are selling on the markets of the people who will deploy these services and use these things, but they are also bidding for regulatory forbearance. We heard quite a explicit appeal here for what might be considered rescaling, might be considered firing the starting gun in race to the bottom.

Unless we have a clear view of what markets we are competing on and where they are, that the fact that we offer and the information we are being provided is selling both in the use market and the regulatory market, I think needs to be taken into account.

Finally, I wanted to make a comment entirely with no prejudice about the role of Telecom firms. Telecom firms in the history of Internet regulation have assumed an inordinate amount of incumbent power, regulatory power, political persuasion, influence over policy, because they provided the wires over which this stuff went. What we hear with Net Neutrality is that this little thing about transporting packets is allowed to preempt all the different nonneutralities and inequalities that occur in the use place, and of course, as with the future Internet, the FFI3P, FI3P, that they will attempt to preserve this incumbency position. I'm not saying it's useless because the relation between the regulator and the regulated sector is a useful one, and you can deliver through that regulatory traction, insights back into regulatory process and influences on the things that the Telecom providers can provide downstream, that may be very useful where there is no direct regulatory relationship. But it is not the relationship that is there on the ten, not regulating the Telecom firms because they are Telecom firms, it is because it gives them traction of the use value chain.

If we don't acknowledge that, the system becomes corrupt. I think that my view of the role of Telecoms in standardization and policy is that it has been corrupt and it has affected the development and deployment of these technologies. I figure since this is an activist forum, I can step aside Net Neutrality and be a activist.

But one final thing, which is there was mention made of how these things are used, NHSX in the UK is developing ethical guidelines for the commissioning of health apps, and the point about health apps as opposed to health tech that uses machine learning and digits is that an app sits on the user's device. It can therefore be repurposed and used for other things. And thinking through what those other things are is a much harder ethical problem than thinking how the patient/doctor relationship might be changed by virtue of data. 5G as a irritant or perturbation is a marvelous opportunity, but I wouldn't regard it solely as a opportunity to do what we do now more.

>> KRISTINA OLAUSSON: Thank you for provoking thoughts.

We will let the whole panel, feel free to answer these questions and remarks.

Then we will move into the closing segment of the session. Thank you. You want to go ahead?

>> I have a quick point about the importance of impact assessments evaluation, but also we can set metrics based on which we can understand the impacts, the full impact of any technology that we would like to deploy, beyond 5G. What we are used to, we used to see the metrics for either business development, we see a lot of figures on market acquisition and so on but we never actually manage to measure the impact of regulation on the technology. So that will require some work because we are not used to that vertical convergence, and we probably have to work on a set of indicators that could work as pointers on how we can tweak again the regulation to understand how to position it in the middle of all the operation work that requires a lot of attention in terms of the technical deployment, training the staff, preparing the market, working on the substantial piece of work that you are used to.

I think this could be a good starting point to have a framework based on which we can act in the future to understand the impact of regulation or even the law sometimes on business operations specific to the deployment of the emerging technologies, namely 5G. We have IoT and AI and blockchain and the list goes on. But I think that could be a good starting point.

>> So, with that, I'll just move into our last, sort of rounding out this session and the policy discussions we have had, since we also want to leave a bit of room to the session conclusions.

Basically, I think what we have seen here today is that new technologies such as 5G definitely brings a bit more complexity to the interplay between regulation and innovation, especially with the integration of different sectors and different verticals as we call them.

I've heard today a lot of regulatory principles mentioned by the panelists, but also from the audience, such as the possibility of having checks and balances, a flexible framework that can be agile enough to develop, to accommodate the new technology challenges, the role of guidelines and impact assessments, or where they don't work so well, and for example, a concrete example mentioned by Jonathan in the end was regulatory sandboxes.

I want to have as a final question to you, and that is also I think a bit the purpose why we are all here today, and at EuroDIG, we want to provide a channel to discuss new technology, technological developments, and the impact on our different stakeholder groups.

So how can we create foras or forums that answer to these new regulatory challenges? I would really leave that question also to every one of you in the audience since you are participating in this forum today. Thank you.

>> Well, as I touched upon before, I think the whole regulatory setup needs to be, I think redefined in a way. We now, a lot of these industries that we are now talking about have no connection to the teleco regulator. I think that is a problem.

We are trying to connect that dots at the national level, but I think much more needs to be done. We are trying to reach out to different industries. So I think that will be our main challenge for the coming decade and how we see this effects on 5G that we are not really involved right now, in particular data and privacy issues.

>> About the health records, I have something for you, so you can get that later. So that is not a problem. About regulators, that is something they already do a lot in European Union with that. The DIH, that is called digital innovation hub, we are setting one up here in the Hague. My name is Peter, I should introduce myself first. For the hospitals, I think it's most important part is that you can disconnect metadata from patients and get the real data because data is rich but you don't want to have all the data and the Telecom providers they can make sure we finally get rid of all the VPNs that are there, and help us to implement some more SD1 so innovation is what it's all about.

>> KRISTINA OLAUSSON: Thank you so much. With that we will continue the closing round of comments.

(Someone speaking off mic)

>> To create with a limited range of proximate sectors that interact strongly, with some of these others it's much harder. So when OFCOM was formed, broadcast standards agency and Oftel and rated communications agency it was to put all these things together, but the stovepipes persist to this day. Some things are not well-handled even though they should be better handled. But the positive experiences is maybe in the Internet harms bill, in the Internet harms bill there is again a connection of regulatory domains, and regulatory models, regulatory cultures, public sensitivities and so on. The idea was ultimately to create a special regulator to handle these things. But the interim step, transitional step when we learn what works and doesn't work, is being given to OFCOM not because OFCOM is best place to do it for the reasons that you say, but because it then serves as a platform for all the other regulators to come together, and that coregulatory model even among regulators may be a very useful thing.

>> I am very pro technology. That is why I'm here, it's just that just look at this, this is probably AI. Isn't it?

>> Captioning.

>> Yes, it's AI so it really helps us a lot. It's just that we need to be aware before, I mean and see the consequences, that is what I want.

>> Awareness seems to be an important principle to stress. Thanks.

>> I would like to pick up on this notion of, we have a very tech focused regulation in Europe and that might be a problem. We just had recently a European court of justice decision establishing that Skype out actually is a electronic communication service which I think it was high time and astonishing that it took so long, because obviously it is an electronic communication service, but that just shows the problems and the reluctance also of European regulators to engage with those OTTs. Why? I'm not really sure.

But, if we really see a value in having an Internet regulation, we would have to extend it to those players. And that will require new legislation, because up to now, it has been very focused on my industry, I'm afraid to say. And factually, I've been a regulator in my earlier life and working with OFCOM Switzerland, and I always thought if we don't have to intervene, we shouldn't, because if the market plays out, then why touch it.

So working for Deutsche Telekom in the early days we have always tried to convince people that actual competition laws are fully sufficient to deal with any kind of Net Neutrality problems, especially in Europe, they already have an open network access regulation which you didn't have in the U.S. at the time. The U.S. still doesn't have it in Net Neutrality rules as well, so basically saying we are in Europe in a more comfortable position compared to the U.S., that we have stability, we have rules for the Internet, whereas in the U.S. as you have seen with Net Neutrality regulation, just switched the FCC chairman and the regulation changes, which I think is not a very future proof model, either, but somehow there always seems to be a election in the U.S. and never the time to establish Net Neutrality rules on legislative basis. Not advocating they should do that, of course, but just saying the Internet is so important that maybe we shouldn't leave it up to the personal composition of Federal Communications Commissions to see what the whole economic region has as an Internet governing rule there.

Coming back to what I really wanted to say is, there is interesting work from RSEP establishing that maybe the telecos and access networks are not the only bottlenecks when it comes to competition transparency, and that we should look more also into device manufacturers or into operating systems providers, or into the providers of dominant on-line platforms, which actually do have a much bigger influence on your Internet experience than your ISP, I would argue today.

>> Thank you. We are going to close in view of time with a last comment by Hanane and Jan, maybe a question on this, for you as a representatives of two user groups, do you think the current policy networks and foras we have are sufficient to address the regulatory concerns from your perspectives?

>> HANANE BOUJEMI: I want to like comment on your comment. I'm not sure what you just said will go down well in the policy fora when it comes to probably shifts in regulation of the Internet to one single authority, because that will really drag us into a trap that nobody in this fora wants to, and that is more multilateralism.

I think the discussion now is how to reinforce digital cooperation and I'm sure you all heard of the high level panel that was established by the U.N. Secretary General, and it just delivered a report which clearly states that the future of the policy discourse is identified and reinforcing the interdependence of different stakeholders on each other.

That is why I was trying to emphasize the fact that we really need to find a modality of work to be able to cooperate and to collaborate, to come up with policy solutions that would work for everybody. Now the fact that OTT providers are way ahead of the curve, the Telecoms, it's not competition. There is rivalry between these two entities. I understand that you would like to have one point of reference, where you want to know this specific regulation is not going to hinder my own business interests. But it doesn't work like that anymore.

We have so many stakeholders, like we know, the Internet as an infrastructure is so layered, and it doesn't work only because it's owned by a specific entity or could be regulated by one specific entity. We have to be wary of the fact that this environment is so like diverse, in terms of how it could be governed. But we just haven't found yet the modal based on which we can do it all together.

It is a work in progress. But it's work that requires the involvement of all the relevant stakeholders, and the relevant stakeholders are, they all exist but they all work in silos. That is what we need to avoid. We need to start working on getting everybody in the room. So we understand each other better, because at the moment, that is not happening. That is why we still hear narratives like I heard now, that we need to have one single entity to regulate the Internet. I can assure you that is not going to happen, because it's just very challenging, you know, to assign that task to one entity. There were attempts in the past, if you follow the policy process you would know that there was discussion that the ITU could take over and that would be very convenient for governments. But it's not going to work. We know now that it wouldn't have worked that the ITU wasn't like entrusted with this role, so let's keep this conversation happening.

Please organise another workshop about the same thing, maybe part two, next year, so we can keep this discourse happening to break the silos, so we are more kind of merged into one fora, that communicates to understand each other and then we start planning the future together. Thank you.

>> Thank you.

>> I have to quickly correct, that is not what I said. I didn't call for a single entity. I called for a legislative framework, which would produce in the Democratic process we have here, and which would be the exact opposite of the U.S. model which has the competence at the FCC.

(Speaker off microphone)

>> Anyway, onwards to Jan for the last comment on this panel. Then we are going to close for the session messages.

>> I agree with a lot of things you said. The conditions are still not ideal. We have to learn about the fast discussions on these topics, the last generations, we must prevent to go that way again. We must learn from the processes from the past. So I think it's important to create a new framework that will make it possible to speed up and make more, work more agile, and I agree with you that there are too much silos involved. And we are doing still the same things as we have done before. And that is not going to work anymore.

>> KRISTINA OLAUSSON: Thank you so much.

So, with that, we will close the session. But please continue to engage with us via Twitter or stay around after the session, I'm sure the speakers on the panel might have some time or now or later to discuss further.

So, I don't know if we have contributed with a lot of solutions today, there has been maybe more question raised than suggestions, but still, I think what we can conclude is that there is a call for more agile regulatory frameworks, especially with these developments of integration of different sectors, and we need to break the silos and create a better frameworks for cooperation across different sectors. So thank you very much. I'll hand over to you for the session.

(Applause)

>> Thank you very much for the floor. I'm from the Geneva Internet platform and today was the rapporteur for this session. As a participant I thank the speakers and moderator for such a interesting and rich discussion. As rapporteur I must say it was not easy to try to find common messages and common grounds during the discussion and try to connect all the dots. I tried to summarize into three, four points, apologies, any edits will be made later on. We said 5G is the new standard for advanced digital communications and promises to bring together fixed and mobile networks into one smart network, but there are challenges when it comes to balancing innovation that is promised by this technology and its regulation. Challenges that are on the lack of combination between Telecom and policy world, industry on one hand promoting innovation at specific business model, and on the other hand the policy world trying to address the impact of a given technology on society.

Since such fully comprehensive understanding of a technology's impact on society is difficult to reach, it is important to promote and foster more informed and inclusive discussions among all the different stakeholders involved, Telecom, manufacturers, regulators and so on, that should tackle both the potential of 5G for users and the private sector and also possible linkages with other technologies, for example AI was mentioned. As well, it should address its limitations in terms of security, protection of the data and health concerns.

Challenges also on the regulatory table and regulation per se, which means including also all different stakeholders at the regulatory tables and during the regulatory discussions. It was said not only vendors, but also the tech industry which is one of the major players into this field, as well as paying close attention to balancing the difference and different areas that are on the regulatory table, not only in terms of regulating competition but also regulating security, cybersecurity, data protection and consumer protection.

Lastly, the potential of 5G technology will be easier to grasp and appreciable for the private sector more imminently, as the use case of compass networks outlined. However, implementation challenges regarding infrastructure, existence of private and public networks in parallel, or the other challenges that were outlined, capacity, auction and spectrum allocations as well as Net Neutrality concerns still remain to be fully addressed by the regulators. Thank you, and full summary of the discussion will be available on the digital watch website this late afternoon.

>> Thank you so much. Thanks, everyone, for your participation. Thank you.

(Applause)

(End of session at 3:35 PM Local Time)


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[[Category:2019]][[Category:Sessions 2019]][[Category:Sessions]][[Category:Innovation and economic issues 2019]]