I have during the years been helping the N4C project, financed by the FP7 programme by the EU. Today (April 14, 2011) there is the final conference of the project, where I am speaking.
The presentation I will present you can find here.
The goal with the presentation is similar to many other of my presentations, to show that we are moving into the third phase of the Internet, where many more changes happens than ever before. The connection with N4C project is similar to the connection to Human Rights issues. Only with robust communication one will be able to communicate when some parties tries to limit communication (and because of that limit your ability to express your opinion).
One do need multiplicity in communication alternatives, and for that to work one need deregulation in the telecom sector. Note, deregulation, not “no regulation”. So emerging democracies must to be helped both get help regarding modernization of regulation (and for example get an independent regulator) and getting infrastructure. Further, the investment climate must be such that one get multiple international providers of transmission so that competition is enabled etc.
What N4C has been working on is Delay Tolerant Networking which in a situation under stress might be extremely useful when no other alternatives exists for communication. I.e. DTN is not only useful when one communicate very long distances (like 40 000 billion kilometers), but also on short distances on earth.