Towards the Development of Broadband Internet in Tunisia

New Challenges, Opportunities and Perspectives

Republic of Tunisia Ministry of Industry and Technologies Tunisian Internet Agency

Broadband market actors need an evolution

2 The 3rd Arab Bloggers Meeting, October 3 – 6, 2011

Retail services

Wholesale Active infrastructure (Bandwidth)

Wholesale Passive infrastructure

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  Market opening strategy needs a serious update,   Wholesale market requires a particular attention, …

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Key events: Nascent competition   Before 1995: Telecom totally controlled by the Government/Administration.

  1995: Creation of Tunisie Telecom as a government establishment.

  June 1996: Creation of ATI, the Tunisian Internet Agency.

  1997: Internet market opening to competition: starting with 2 private ISPs and creation of public Internet communities (INBMI, CCK, IRESA, etc.).

  2000: Authorization of 3 new ISPs.

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ISP: Internet Service Provider

Internet ATI   New regulatory framework: Internet as a value

added telecommunication service.   Mostly narrowband Internet Access (dialup

more than 99%).   Monopoly in terms of telecom infrastructure

(local & international).   Partial competition in term of Internet service

providing but tariffs fixed by the Minister.

  A government controlled company: Tunisie Telecom 27%, IRSIT 10%, ATCE 13%, etc.

  A central Internet authority (one-stakeholder governance model/Regulator): Authorization regime, Domain Name policy, etc.

  Internet content control via caching systems,   ISP for public institutions and government

controlled companies.

The 3rd Arab Bloggers Meeting, October 3 – 6, 2011

Key events: Market liberalization   2001: New Telecommunication Act (law n°2001—1) and creation of a new

Telecommunication Regulation Authority, INT – www.in%.tn.

  2002: Mobile Market opening to competition (2G license): Tunisiana.

  2004: Data market opening to competition: Divona Telecom.

  2006: Starting of Tunisie Telecom privatization: Tecom-DIG controls 35%.

  2008: Amendment of the Telecommunication Act (law n°2008-1).

  2009: Fixed market opening to competition and new 3G mobile license: Orange Tunisie.

  2010: Tunisie Telecom got a 3G mobile license and bought Topnet.

  2011: Tunisiana controls 49% of Tunet, what else?

National strategy for ICT development, Information Society, WSIS, IGF, …, bla bla bla Best practices regarding Internet development have been simply ignored.

4 The 3rd Arab Bloggers Meeting, October 3 – 6, 2011

So what about ATI?

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  Tunisie Telecom still owns 37% of the capital of ATI,

  As Tunisie Telecom is not 100% state owned and according to law n°1989—9, ATI could not be a government controlled company,

  ATI remains under the control of the government as an authority that controls the Internet: “No matter what, any Internet traffic must be routed by ATI equipments”,

  The Ben Ali regime subsidized the development of a sophisticated censorship system including DPI (Deep Packet Inspection) equipments, content categorization database with required expensive support and maintenance contracts, etc.

  Any initiative to restructure ATI and update the Internet regulatory framework have been ignored or simply blocked.

Oh Easy! “Just let it be Ammar404 and everything gonna be better”.

The 3rd Arab Bloggers Meeting, October 3 – 6, 2011

Internet before the revolution #Ammar404

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  Regulatory framework: completely obsolete for Internet.

  Governance: inadequate mono-stakeholder model centralized on ATI – “so what about transparency and Neutrality ?”

  Competition: weak and requires urgent actions especially regarding the wholesale market,

  Broadband infrastructure: Relatively good compared to our neighbors especially international connectivity,

  Services and contents: poor hosting capabilities, lack of innovation, severe control by the Ben Ali regime, etc.

  Freedom and openness: Inappropriate censorship,

  Privacy: In practice not guaranteed at least for Internet.

The 3rd Arab Bloggers Meeting, October 3 – 6, 2011

What about Internet after the revolution #Jan14 ?

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  Kill Ammar404 and destroy ATI ? No !   Build a new Internet regulatory framework Yes !   Ignore best practices in term of Internet Governance ? No !

  Stop censorship and encourage free Internet ? Yes !   Forget about a Tunisian IXP (Internet Exchange Points) ? No !   Promote e-content hosting and build new datacenters ? Yes !   Encourage tunisian cctld .tn and .تونس ? Yes !   Promote innovation and deploy more plateforms ? Yes !

  Enhance quality of service ? Yes !   …

The 3rd Arab Bloggers Meeting, October 3 – 6, 2011

Internet traffic is increasing

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  Maximum Internet traffic bandwidth (Sept 2010):

  Traffic increase by 35% in 1Q-11 compared 4Q-10.

  Traffic increase by 60% in Sept. 2011 compared to Sept. 2010.

  Local traffic is increasing but it is just 5% of the international one.

The 3rd Arab Bloggers Meeting, October 3 – 6, 2011

Ammar404 for an increasing Internet traffic

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  ATI with the financial support of the government maintained Internet filtering systems.

  2009 – 2011: support + Smartfilter licence, 0,450 million TND/year.

The 3rd Arab Bloggers Meeting, October 3 – 6, 2011

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1,3 million TND (*)

1 million TND (*)

1,6 million TND

3,6 million TND

2,5 million TND is required to implement global filtering.

(*) Support and smartfilter licence included.

New challenges & opportunities

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  Change ATI towards a neutral and transparent IXP,   Transform the filtering equipments or offer a web filtering SAAS

platform (managed by the end user),   Foster new partnerships with Tunisian innovative SMEs as well

as multinational content providers: Video sharing platforms, streaming (WebTV/WebRadio), high value added services and applications, etc.

  Develop the 1st Tunisian open source mirrors:   Already in see mirror.ati.tn: Debian, Fedora, Ubuntu, Mozilla, etc.   Coming soon: Sourceforge, Tor, etc.

  Push further the debate regarding Internet governance, freedom, privacy and security.

  … “There is no TABOO subjects anymore for the new ATI”

The 3rd Arab Bloggers Meeting, October 3 – 6, 2011

Thanks …

Moez  Chakchouk,  Chairman  and  CEO  moez.chakchouk@a1.tn  −  twi%er.com/mchakchouk  

follow us @ati_tn