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Free connectivity for residents in the Municipal District is one of the stars on the 5-star Civic Lists. Maurizio Gotta of Anti Digital Divide delivered an address on the issue of connectivity in Florence on 8 March. Once access to the Internet spreads throughout Italy, it will spell the end of the road for the current political class. They may never give up (is it in their interests?), but neither will we.

Main points of the address:

Italy without connectivity

The sell-off of Telecom Italia

Politicians and lobby groups against the Web

Connected communities

Text:
"I want to talk to you today about the current situation as regards connectivity in Italy. I lived abroad for six years by reason of my work, part of the brain drain if you will, although my heart remained here in Italy. In following my heart, I landed up making what was perhaps the most stupid mistake of my entire life.
What is happening in our Country would be absolutely unthinkable in any Northern European Country. I have worked in Belgium, Holland and France where, during a job interview, no one would dream of asking whether you know how to use a computer because it would be tantamount to asking: “Can you read and write?”. The question is never even asked because if the interviewer should discover that someone is unable to utilise the available electronic tools, he would feel obliged to ask: “Excuse me, but why have you come for the interview?”.

Italy without connectivity
Unfortunately, the situation here in Italy is not the same, for a variety of cultural, technological and infrastructural reasons. We have founded an association in order to prove that not all of the advertising claims made by Telecom Italia and their competitors are consistent with the reality: in our Country, some 25% of the communities, some small and others not so small, have no connectivity other than the partial, 56K-type of connectivity.

The sell-off of Telecom Italia
How is this possible? It is possible simply because we have what is arguably one of the most outdated telephone networks in the world, which began with the former “Sip Tel” and that later became Telecom Italia, the very same Telecom Italia that, as you are no doubt well aware, was privatised in 1999. But how does it happen that a company of such national importance get privatised? It was privatised by selling off the company and its contents, which included the national telephone network. From 1999 to today, virtually no more money has been invested in the maintenance and expansion of this network. What does this mean? It means precisely what anyone who has worked in the telecommunications sector knows very well, namely that, on average, 10% of the network equipment breaks down each year. Since it was privatised, this company has allocated a maximum of 2% of its budget towards maintenance, meaning that a large part of the equipment that breaks down each year is never replaced.
The problem of connectivity is even more evident in a Country such as ours, which is being held to ransom by the television networks and the somewhat biased information provided by the mass media, because I, for example, am someone who watches very little in the line of television news and prefer to get my news predominantly via the Internet. Not everyone is able to do the same as I do, however, because not everyone has access to broadband connectivity. And why has broadband not yet reached these people you ask? Because, as we were saying, our infrastructure is so old and because the powers that be never thought it was worth their while to invest money to update that infrastructure. But why didn’t they think that it was worth their while to invest money in the modernisation of the infrastructure? Well, because Telecom Italia was privatised on the terms that we all know, in essence the company’s debt was absorbed, as Beppe has always explained so well, they absorbed the debt that was necessary in order to purchase the company. And so, financially, they are in no position to expand the network, to extend the reach of broadband services and to improve the service. In recent years, certain agreements have been entered into with some of the regions whereby, using heaven alone knows what mechanisms, the regions provided Telecom Italia with public funds for the company to increase its ADSL coverage. Telecom Italia said thank you very much and provided certain connections, the so-called “mini-ADSL” connections, with which, just to make sure that we are all on the same wavelength, users can’t even view video clips on YouTube, just to quote one example, because instead of travelling on optical-fibre like they do in the large cities, here the signal travels along twin-flex copper cable and, to be clear, these exchanges will never, ever be upgraded. They have simply used obsolete technology in an attempt to provide a new service but, unfortunately, the results come nowhere near meeting the expectations.

Politicians and lobby groups against the Web
The problem we face is one of infrastructure and in some cases we have attempted to overcome the problem by using alternative technologies, such as wireless technology and so, with effect from 2005 it became possible to create wireless Internet access networks, however, while this kind of service was permitted in 2005, suddenly in 2006, I believe that the Pisanu Law that Beppe mentioned earlier prevented the country’s citizens from connecting free of charge to the wireless services by obliging all users to identify themselves by means of an identity document. At the time, we thought that Wi-Max would come to our aid, as Beppe rightly pointed out in a number of his shows. In Reset, for example, I remember seeing Beppe going around with a Wi-Max aerial, so we began to think that perhaps Wi-Max would be the answer. They soon realised that this option posed certain problems with freedom of movement and so they came up with a very simple solution: a technology that could have been the best solution ever in terms of overcoming this problem was simply incorporated into the concept of transmission frequency towers, a concept that had already been adopted successfully for mobile telephone purposes, but in a way that essentially excluded from the tender process some 80 to 90% of the companies in the country that were already involved in the field of wireless communications and instead assigning the frequencies by means of tender to, yes, you guessed it, Telecom Italia and certain other companies, somewhat strange operators that in many ways remind us very much of water provision multinationals, in other words, established specifically for the purpose of submitting bids for these contracts but that have virtually no know-how in this field and are funded by risk capital invested purposely in order to get their hands on the frequencies.

Connected communities
What can you do, those of you whom I hope will soon be holding responsible posts in the town councils? I say this partly because I sincerely hope that I won’t be obliged to emigrate once again and also because, notwithstanding the fact that Beppe doesn’t hold out much hope, I have great faith in all of you. There is something very simple that you could do, namely to use the technology to your advantage and that of the residents for whom you will be responsible as Town Councillors. We spoke earlier about the Town Councillor of Treviso that has done a wonderful job of implementing a communication system for the Municipality and you should be aware that if somehow you manage to get the concept passed that connectivity is one of the essential assets of a modern society, perhaps by latching on to the local mobile telephone transmitters or by any other means that may come to mind, in this way you could, for example, set up municipal networks where the municipality itself provides free connectivity to the town’s inhabitants, to residents and perhaps even to tourists. I live in southern Piedmont, in the Langhe Region to be precise, where we make some very good wine and while we don’t have much connectivity, we do have many tourists. I often see the flabbergasted looks on the faces of certain tourists when they arrive in our area and say: “What, you don’t have Wi-FI and you don’t have ADSL? How on earth do you communicate, by smoke signals? How do we go about sending an e - mail?”. They are told: “No, but you can send a fax”, “A fax? Are you insane? Do you honestly think I take a fax machine on holiday with me?! No, I take a laptop and then look for a Wi–Fi connection”.
All in all, there is a lot that you can do. You can assist in setting up these public networks and you will soon discover that these networks can be used to provide an infinite number of other services too, such as free telephone calls: by loading a simple software package, be it Skype or one of many other telephone software packages, you will enable residents to log on to the public network, free of charge, and speak to each other, also free of charge. I do understand that perhaps my 90-year-old grandmother may find it somewhat difficult to understand the workings of Skype, however, with the technology looking after itself, if you put a telephone handset in her hand then there is no need for her even to know that she is using Skype. My grandmother and her sisters will speak for hours and my grandmother will feel less isolated. Your mothers, your grandmothers and your friends will also feel less isolated and any initial set-up costs will be very easy to defray entirely. Furthermore there are other truly revolutionary ways in which to use these networks. Just think, for example, you could use it to let everyone listen in on what is happening in your Town Council meetings, free of charge, just to mention one thing.
If there is such a communal Wi-Fi network to which everyone has access, irrespective of whether or not it is free and although it would be preferable if it were free because the costs can be defrayed in some other way, you could simply walk into your Town Council meeting carrying your little video camera, connect to the network via your Wi-Fi mobile phone and, hey presto, you will be transmitting the proceedings of your Town Council meeting in real time. There are a myriad of potential applications. Just think, for example, of emergency services. Once you have a wireless network, which costs relatively little to install and maintain and can be installed virtually anywhere, you could also have an emergency services management system. For example, take the little old granny who feels unwell. She could simply press a button instead of having to make the usual phone call, and this perhaps in an area where there are no telephones and perhaps no mobile phone signal, via your Wi-Fi aerial and wireless network you will be able to send help. The only thing you should know up front, is that, as Beppe has already mentioned and as you probably already know, the minute you touch the issue of telecommunications, it will be just like the issues of water provision and refuse collection and you will find yourself running into some very powerful interests, because the people running any Country’s telecommunications sector in fact control that Country, so you must hold on tight, be strong and try to use your head, be informed and remember that, for example, a Wi-Fi transmitter emits twenty times less electromagnetic radiation than the mobile phone that many of us carry around in our pockets, right alongside the family jewels. Therefore, by nature, these types of waves, namely Wi-Fi waves, hyperlan waves and Wi-Max waves that cannot affect you directly even at a distance of just 30cm, are already all around us in nature so, while I would suggest that you don’t sleep with the access point directly above your head, so far they haven’t been proven to pose any health risk. If any proof comes to light at a later stage, the specialists will soon advise us. I want to thank you and express my heartfelt hope that you will be able to bring back some legality into this country!". Maurizio Gotta of Anti Digital Divide

Ps. Tonight at 21h00, this Blog will be broadcasting live from Sonia Alfano and Beppe Grillo’s public meeting in Palermo.