The discussion participants discussed the concept of real access, which arose in response to the growing evidence that even when people have an Internet connection, they may not fully enjoy the benefits of the Internet. How a person connects to the Internet and what content and services he or she can access is an equally important issue for the experience that a person will get once online, and even more so for the community/country in which he or she lives.
Since 2022, the IGF Group's work on Real Internet Access (PNMA) has focused on the agreed three comprehensive topical areas: inclusion and connectivity (infrastructure and business models), digital inclusion through a citizen-centered approach (accessibility and multilingualism: local services and content in local languages based on local needs and resources) and capacity development (technical skills training).
PNMA has actively promoted, both within and outside IGF communities, the identification of a certain number of best practices and policy solutions and their preservation as possible models for export or application in other regions of the world. Stakeholders from different groups have joined this venture: government, international organizations, academia, private entities, non-profit organizations and local or language communities.
At the current session, the problems of improving local content and languages on the Internet, real connection to the network, providing access to the network library in countries with underdeveloped network infrastructure were considered. One of the central subjects of discussion was the successful experience of the African continent and Papua New Guinea in solving the problems of real user access to Internet content. The participants of the discussion analyzed scenarios for solving issues of integration and use of non-Latin alphabets in the global network, including in the field of IDN (international domain names). During the session, the successful cooperation of ITU, ICANN and regional organizations in solving the problems of real access was noted, as well as new promising formats of work on the implementation of PNMA in relation to developing countries and non-Latin domain structures were proposed.
