Rob McMahon and Heather Hudson presented at this year’s Pacific Telecommunications Council (https://council.ptc.org/ptc17/) conference in Honolulu, HI on January 15 to 18. The session, entitled “Policy and Regulation” included a discussion about the FMCC’s efforts at the recent CRTC hearings on the Basic Service Objective, including our proposals to address digital divide challenges in remote and rural regions. The description and slides of the presentation, titled “Broadband for All? Regulatory Lessons from Canada for Remote and Indigenous Regions” are now available on the conference web site (https://www.ptc.org/ptc17/program-and-attendees/proceeding.html?pid=252).
Along with the presentation, the FMCC delegates connected with colleagues at the Pacific ICT4D Collaborative, housed at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa’s College of Social Sciences. Despite different climates and geographies, communities in the Pacific region face similar digital divide access challenges to those located in Canada’s rural, remote and Northern regions.
Heather Hudson also gave a talk at the School of Communications at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa on Jan. 19. The talk was titled “Information & Communication Technologies (ICTs) for Development in the Pacific: Lessons from North and South”.