CEE-TP Brings Participants to Pittsburgh for Executive Education Course

CEE-TP hosted its first in-person course.  It was a weeklong course at CMU’s campus in Pittsburgh for government and industry telecommunications leaders from across the world.

From August 8-12, 2022, CEE-TP delivered the first two in-person courses for its ICT in developing countries program.  The courses were Preparing for the 2022 Plenipotentiary Conference of the International Telecommunications Union and Approaches for Expanding Internet Connectivity.  All participants attend both courses in Pittsburgh, PA, USA.  The courses were offered fully in person. 

The first course, Preparing for the 2022 Plenipotentiary of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), was taught by Jennifer Manner, a Senior Vice President at Echostar Corp. / Hughes Network Systems. She is Co-Chair of CSMAC, the spectrum advisory committee to the U.S. Department of Commerce.  She has previously served as Deputy Bureau Chief at the Federal Communications Commission, and Vice President of SkyTerra Communications.  She has participated in ITU and World Radio Conference (WRC) meetings for over two decades. She actively participates in a network that mentors women worldwide to participate in ITU meetings.

The course covered how the ITU and Plenipotentiary conference work, strategies for how to be effective at these meetings, the specific issues on the agenda for the upcoming 2022 Plenipotentiary, and the current candidates for major ITU offices. The course was useful for building an understanding of and appreciation for the ITU, and for shedding light in a variety of policy areas including spectrum management, telecommunications, Internet governance, cybersecurity, and space sustainability.

The second course, Approaches for Expanding Internet Connectivity was led by Dr. David Reed, Professor at the University of Colorado-Boulder.  He has served as the Chief Strategy Officer at CableLabs, as the Director of the Interdisciplinary Telecommunications Program at the University of Colorado, and in the Federal Communications Commission.  Dr. Reed is known internationally as a leading expert on Internet architectures and their engineering economics.  This includes cable systems, fiber to the home, and wireless. 

The focus of this course was on technology, policy, and economic issues of bringing Internet access to regions that have little or no broadband infrastructure today.  Along the way, the course provided an explanation of the underlying technologies in a form that is valuable to policymakers with a non-technical background.  The course included a discussion of different policy mechanisms to support or incentivize deployment. 

This course ended with a guest lecture from Thomas Koutsky, a Senior Connectivity Policy Advisor at USAID who leads the Digital Inclusion team.  Mr. Koutsky gave participants an overview of all the many ways that the U.S. Government can assist with Internet expansion, including programs at USAID, the State Department, the Commerce Department, the International Development Finance Corporation, the U.S. Trade and Development Agency, and the Export-Import Bank.  He also discussed specific projects that USAID has supported in Africa, and important lessons learned.

Participants came from the Philippines, Panama, Cabo Verde, Ecuador, Costa Rica, Rwanda, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Pakistan, Thailand, and Laos.