I was on a panel with Ethan Zuckerman and Colin Maclay (moderated by John Palfrey) about the obstacles to spreading VoIP connectivity. We spent most of our time talking about Ethan’s opening statement in which he said that if you want to get VoIP into developing nations, you’re probably going to have to compromise a little. For example, he’s proposed to Ghana that they tax calls outside of the country in order to give a small and temporary subsidy to entice providers to provide access to rural areas. The group here apparently doesn’t like the idea of any subsidies. Ethan doesn’t particularly like them either. His point was that systems are being put into existing infrastructures that are typically over-regulated and that are not going to go overnight to no regulation. (Ethan, if I get this wrong, please correct me!) [I personally am a liberal and not a pure free market extremist like many here, so I’m not always against subsidies.]

Judith Meskill has blogged will be blogging the session.

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