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Latin American Networks get together in Rio de Janeiro

Latin American networks are organizing themselves in order to promote regional integration. The first Clara - Latin American Cooperation on Advanced Networks - meeting was held in Rio de Janeiro. Representatives from Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, El Salvador, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela participated in this initiative. The meeting, organized by RNP and by the Information Society Program (SocInfo), was held on July 15th and 16th.

Clara initiative has not happened by chance. Some of these national networks had already been strengthening their ties somehow with the purpose of increasing knowledge exchange in the region. The European Union's intention to support the integration of the Latin American networks and their interconnection to Europe through the Alliance for the Information Society (@LIS) program was decisive to speed up the talks.

- In the previous interconnection projects, in 1991, there were many promises. Now it is the first time that there are really resources about Latin America. This is a golden opportunity - claimed Florencio Utreras, executive director of the Chilean Red Universitaria Nacional (National University Network).

Clara meeting pointed towards two directions: the formation of a regional infrastructure that unites the networks in Latin America, also promoting the interconnection of this infrastructure to Europe; and the constitution of a formal organization jointly representing the interests of the networks in the consortium.

- Latin America will be regarded as a block, so we have to think together as a block - warned Nelson Simões, RNP's CEO, referring to the @LIS program.

Working groups will conduct the process

In order to conduct the next stages, three working groups (WGs) were formed: organizational models, interconnection and financing. The people in charge of the WGs are, respectively: Ida Holz (Uruguay) and Rafael Ibarra (El Salvador); Michael Stanton (Brazil) and Guillermo Cicileo (Argentina); and Florencio Utreras (Chile) and Carlos Casasus (Mexico). Nelson Simões, from Brazil, and Sidia Sanchez, from Panama, will be in charge of the general coordination.

The groups are responsible for: elaborating an organizational model for Clara, involving the creation of statutes and a proposal of a common use policy; making a panel of the infrastructure existing in the region and proposing an architecture for the network; and studying sponsoring alternatives.

Network connection in Latin America

A dream that may come true is the creation of a great backbone joining all the advanced networks in Latin America. For this purpose, there is already a telecommunications infrastructure implanted and available as well as plans for this infrastructure to be expanded.

- There are more fibers installed than one can use in the next five years - stressed Florencio Utreras.

According to Tadao Takahashi, SocInfo's general coordinator, there is no lack of resources:

- There are available resources coming from the developed countries for specific projects, but there are no projects by the developing countries yet.

The @LIS is one of those financing opportunities. Many institutions in Latin America are getting articulated so as to present projects that can be approved. The participants in the meeting in Rio de Janeiro understand that the creation of the Latin American network must benefit from these resources since it is one of the primary goals of the European program, as it is explained in the "Declaration of Toledo" (see below).

Cheaper

It is believed that the creation of a Latin American network would lower costs. The proposal of the meeting is that all the members of the consortium equally pay for this network, that is to say, keeping the same value for hired megabit. It means that lines with greater capacity would be more expensive for the countries hiring them, but they would not increase the price of the connection of countries needing links with less bandwidth.

- Nowadays it is cheaper to make the Rio de Janeiro/Buenos Aires or Buenos Aires/Santiago connection than to connect to Miami - claimed Utreras.

Toledo Declaration

Clara initiative was also a result of "Toledo Declaration", proposed in a meeting sponsored by the European Union in Toledo, Spain, on June 13th and 14th. According to the declaration, it was "desirable to establish a Latin American research network." The meeting in Rio de Janeiro was planned in this document and one of its purposes was ratifying it. All the people present in the first Clara meeting signed the declaration, reaffirming their commitment to the development of a regional initiative.

A new meeting is supposed to take place on August 29th and 30th in a place still to be confirmed.

[RNP, 08.09.2002]