This year’s Annual Report of France’s Electronic Communications and Postal Regulatory Authority (ARCEP) includes a section written by Professor Luca Belli, the coordinator of Fundação Getulio Vargas’ Center for Technology and Society (CTS-FGV), discussing key points of the book The Value of Internet Openness in Times of Crisis.

The book, which is organized by Luca Belli, Osama Manzar (the director of India’s Digital Empowerment Foundation) and Nikhil Pahwa (the director of Medianama.com), explores the value of an open internet. It is the outcome of the United Nations Internet Governance Forum’s Working Groups on Net Neutrality and Community Connectivity, coordinated by Professor Belli.

According to Belli, the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the internet’s importance to our societies, economies and democracies, as well as huge disparities between those who are connected and those who are not. Even among individuals formally considered to be connected, there are major inequalities, in terms of frequency of internet access, the quality of connections and which platforms are actually accessible.

In this context, the study coordinated by Luca Belli notes interest in studying alternative connectivity models such as community networks, not just to help expand internet access, but also to do so in a sustainable way, while fully protecting users’ personal data. This is the first time than an official ARCEP document has explicitly referred to community networks, while emphasizing their potential for “digital self-determination”.

You can see ARCEP’s complete report, The State of the Internet, in French and English.