Discussion Paper with Regard to
Holding a Global Summit
Concerning the Establishment of
Global Services Trust Fund (GSTF)

IIC Foundations Meeting on the Digital Divide
Tampa Bay, Florida
September 25-28, 2000

(September 21, 2000)

Purpose: Convening in Washington, D.C. in mid-year 2001 key leaders to consider the possible creation of a Global Service Trust Fund that would use available satellite, telecommunications and other information systems to further the cause of world-wide tele-education, tele-health and other social services such as emergency warning and rescue. These world-wide leaders would represent the top officials from satellite, telecommunications and information organizations, foundations and global institutions, aid organizations, educators and health care providers and political leaders.

Organizers: This event would be organized by an international invitations committee under the auspices of the Sir Arthur C. Clarke Institute for Telecommunications and Information and its worldwide affiliates and partners (including GLOSAS, the Global University System, VITA, the University of Surrey) as well as others to be agreed such as Worldspace, INTELSAT, Japan US Telecommunications Research Institute (JUSTRI), the Japan US Science Technology and Space Application Program (JUSTSAP).

Critical Next Steps: Seek support of International Institute of Communications and its Digital Divide Foundations Coordination Group. Obtain $250K grant to support organization of the Global Summit.

Host Site for Global Summit: INTELSAT Headquarters, Worldspace Headquarters or the World Bank.

Candidate List of Invitees: See Attachment No. 1.

Preparation of Background Document for Global Summit: Much more information needs to be assembled to describe the available technology and service capabilities of existing and planned systems. Also further efforts need to be made to seek expressions of support or commitments from satellite service providers, ground terminal equipment providers, and user computer and telecommunications equipment. There is also a need to complete an inventory of needs and organizations around the world that would seek to use the resources of a GSTF. This would include both a market assessment and an effort to obtain specific commitments from organizations to support the effort in terms of in-kind and financial support for tele-education, tele-health or related programs. (See Attachment No. 2.)

Preliminary Concept of Format for Summit Meeting

The meeting would last no more than 90 minutes and include no more than 30 to 40 participants. The format would be highly scripted. There would be a multi-media presentation on the purpose, goals and five years objectives of the GSTF. Organizations that have made commitments to support the GSTF would be highlighted in this presentation. This would, in particular, cover satellite service providers that had committed to making 1% to 5% of their capacity available to support the GSTF, equipment suppliers that had made substantial commitments to supply or supply at highly discounted prices (earth stations antennas, transceivers, satellite radio receivers, computers, monitors, digital telephones, etc.), foundations and/or international organizations and tele-education and tele-health experts or national aid organizations that had made substantial commitments to participate in and use the resources of the GSTF (including their own pledge of resources or in-kind participation).

There would then be presentations from the key organizations that have made the most important commitments. There would be a copy of vision speeches that address where we might go from here. These might be made by such individuals as Jimmy Carter, the Secretary General of the UN, Sir Arthur C. Clarke, etc.

The meeting would be followed by a high profile press conference that would announce the formation and nature of the GSTF. Arthur C. Clarke might be invited to participate in the press conference via satellite relay to talk about his initial vision of the “electronic tutor” and how the GSTF might be able to accomplish some of the goals he had envisioned some 2 decades ago.


Attachment No. 1

Candidates for Attending Summit on GSTF
Dr. Norm Abramson, President and Chief Technical Officer of Alohanet/PEACESAT
Kofi Annan, Secretary General of the UN
David Bell, President, Care International of the United States, Atlanta, Georgia
G. Berretta, President and Director General, EUTELSAT, Paris, France
Jimmy Carter, The Carter Foundation, Atlanta, Georgia
Dr. Kodai, President, National Aeronautical and Space Development Agency, Japan
Conny Kullman, Director General, INTELSAT
Fredrico Mayor, former Secretary Genera of UNESCO
Rupert Murdoch, The News Corporation, New York, New York
Noah Samara, Chairman, Worldspace, Washington, D.C.
Tadahiro Sekimoto, Senior Board Member, NEC, Japan
Michael Storey, President of Inmarsat
Ted Turner, Chairman, Turner Broadcasting
Yoshio Utsumi, Secretary General, ITU
John Wolfensohn, President World Bank
Andrew Young, Atlanta Georgia
Koichiro Matsuura, Secretary General, UNESCO
Hiroshi Inose, Director General, National Center for Science Information System (NACSIS)
Taro Nakayama, Former Minister for Foreign Affairs, Japan

Other possible invitees (Total participants not to exceed 25)
President, Gates Foundation
President, Markle Foundation
President, Ford Foundation
George Soros, President, The Soros Foundations
Vartan Gregorian, President, Carnegie Corporation of New York
Reinhard Keune, Frederick Ebert Foundation
Tim Wirth, the Better World Foundation
President of VITA
President of Red Cross International
President of Oxfam
President of Hughes Network Services
President of Gilat
President of Dell
President of HP
President of Alcatel Espace
President of Toshiba or Melco
President of Hitachi
President of Motorola
President of CNN
President of Reuters
Head of WHO and PAHO
Tele-education or Tele-health Organizations Making the top five commitments to support and
use of GSTF
Representative of U.S. President elect
Representative of the United Kingdom
Director, JICA (Japan)
Director, AID (US)
Director, CIDA (Canada)
Director, DHW (Germany)
Director, British Council
IBM Foundation


Attachment No. 2

Preparations and Schedule

  1. At least two supporting documents for the meeting will be prepared as noted below.
  2. Invitations will be extended to participants starting by end of February 2001 with the most critical individuals who are committed to bring the GSTF into being will be invited first.
  3. Invitation and Coordination Committee for Summit (to be formed by year end 2000)
  4. Media committee will arrange for information kits for attendees, power point presentations, press conference, etc.

Supporting Document Number 1: The Needed Technologies (Options and Costs)

(This paper would be prepared by a team headed by Gary Gariott. It would seek the input and supporting analysis from Jim Miller, John Mack, D.K. Sachdev, Uli Knirsch and Joe Pelton)

Purpose: The purpose of this paper would be to identify the various options that are available or will be available within two years to provide national, regional, or global tele-education services, tele-health and tele-medicine services (and possibly emergency warning and rescue operations).

This paper will describe the technical options for delivering such services and a “typical profile” for each delivery system.

  1. Option One: Service delivery to a remote village via conventional communications satellite and local wireless loop systems where village does (and does not) have electricity (i.e. Intelsat, Eutelsat, Panamsat, Cyberstar). This would include asymmetric services between 64 kbps to 2 Mbps downstream and 4.8 kbps to 64 kbps upstream)
  2. Option Two: Digital Video Broadcast service to remote villages at speeds up to 6 Mbps with alternative upstream return via little LEO messaging or 2.4 kbps via mobile satellite systems. (Intelsat or Cyberstar (downstream) and Orbcom (upstream), Regional Satellite systems (downstream) and Vitasat (upstreams), etc.
  3. Option Three: Radio and Multi-media broadcast with alternative downstream services to request different educational and health programming to be broadcast (i.e. Worldspace downstream 16 kbps and 128 kbps).
  4. Option Four: Asymmetric Mobile Satellite Service via Inmarsat, Thuraya, ACeS or ICO Ltd. (432 kbps downstream and 144 kbps upstream).

This paper would also seek to address:

  1. The educational or health care services that could be provided via each option,
  2. The bandwidth (and time periods of service) associated with each option.
  3. The type of remote village terminal equipment access and connectivity required to deliver the service
  4. The earth station and telecommunications equipment required
  5. As applicable the power requirements that would need to be supported by battery or solar or other means.
  6. The local human resource and equipment needed to deliver the service (and the skill level and training that would be required)
  7. The cost of the equipment and human resources that would be required. (This should give consideration to such costs as transportation, shipping, insurance, maintenance and repair, and duties or tariffs that might apply.)

(Note: It should be noted that one of the objectives of the GSTF would not only be to have equipment donated or made available at reduced cost but to have local duties and tariffs associated with tele-education, tele-health and emergency communications to be eliminated.)

Supporting Document No. 2: Key Issues to be Addressed with regard to Implementation of the Global Services Trust Fund

(This paper would be coordinated by Frank Method, Peter Knight, Tak Utsumi, Joe Pelton and others)

This document would address the issue of:

  • How commitments could be made for in-kind contributions to the GSTF,
  • How nations, international organizations, foundations and corporations could support the program,
  • How issues of legal liability would be addressed,
  • How the precedents of InfoDev, Project Share and other programs would apply to the structure and organization of the GSTF,
  • How issues of tax-deductible donations would be addressed,
  • How pilot programs would demonstrate the feasbility of the GSTF,
  • How the technical distribution, human resources, and program components would be coordinated and integrated together,
  • How the implementation of the GSTF might evolve over next three to five years.

Attendance List for 20 June 2000 Planning Meeting on Global Summit on GSTF

Name
Affiliation
E-mail
Reuben Abraham Columbia Institute of Tele-Information ra319@columbia.edu
Bernardin Arnason 4121 Wilson Blvd, 10th fl. Arl. Va. 22203 NTCA barnason@ntca.org
Roger Boston Houston Community College www.teched.org
Janice Brodman Education Development Center jbrodman@edc.com
Tyrone Brown World Tel Sat. Services, 1776 K St. N.W. Wash, D.C. 20006 tb@wrf.com
Bruce Chadwick Winrock International bchadwick@winrock.org
Alice Dear 24 BP 190, Abidjan 24, Cote d’Ivoire amdear@aol.com
Anton Keller Consir Geneva and Swiss Investors Protection Assoc. swissbit@salami.com
Maria Kendro NTCA, 4121 Wilson Blvd. 10th fl., Arl. Va. 22203 mkendro@ntca.org
Peter Knight Knight-Moore Telematics for Education Development Peter@Knight-Moore.com
Uli Knirsch Advanced System Develop., INTELSAT (202) 944-7164 uli.knirsch@intelsat.int
John L. Mack John Mack & Assoc., P.O. Box 567, Upper Marlboro, MD 20772 jlmack@erols.com
Jim Miller Synerctics, Ltd. Seattle, Wash. jimmsl@aol.com
Laura Fitz-Pegado 1701 1701 Hutchinson La., Silver Spring, MD. 20906 ljfitzp@aol.com
Joseph N. Pelton Prof. GWU & Exec Dir. CITI, 4025 40th St. N., Arl, Va. 22207 ecjpelton@aol.com
D.K. Sachdev Worldspace, 2400 N. Street N.W., Wash, D.C. dksachdev@worldspace.com
Chitra Sharathchandra NTCA chitra@ntca.org
Michael Tetelman NTCA mtetelman@ntca.org
Takeshi Utsumi GLOSAS and Columbia University utsumi@columbia.edu
Steve Weisler Hampshire College, Amherst, Mass. Swielser@hampshire.edu

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