[NA-Discuss] Interesting article pre WSIS

[Eric Brunner-Williams]

> 
> This white paper( no joke intended) is interesting as to ICT  and
> Indigenous Communities.

It was about 18 months ago that I decided that the cost, at $185k for
the filing fee, and the attendant costs, and the risk that the ship of
wiseguys called "anything goes" might not float, was too great for a
pan-tribal application for a gTLD.

I'd been approached by tribes/bands interested in the possibility. It
is something I've socialized since ... the National Indian
Telecommunications Institute (NITI) and the Ford Foundation hosted
Digital Council Fires: A Native American Telecommunications
Conference, in Albuquerque, new Mexico, in May 13-16, 1999.

Localization has progressed since then, in languages written in Latin
script, and those written in Cree or Cherokee Syllabics, on several
platforms.

Northern bands, and remotes have to make due with VSAT, and many
governmental, cooperative, public and private benefit data enterprises
have very limited bandwidth available to them -- it is still the age
of dialup -- though fixed point wireless has been deployed in some areas.

I don't know that the na-discuss list is the best place to communicate
about native networking, but your note was at least read by one with
interest.

Eric