Adriana Labardini is an attorney, who graduated from the Escuela Libre de Derecho in Mexico City. She wrote her thesis in 1987, on legal and regulatory aspects of satellite communications just after Mexico launched "Morelos" the nation's first communications satellites. Labardini earned a Master in Laws degree from Columbia University as a Fulbright Scholar, became a telecommunications and corporate lawyer but gravitated to regulatory issues. In 1999 she was appointed secretary of the Board of the Mexican Federal Telecommunications Commission. She is now a practicing attorney and ICT for development consultant. A previous article about her: "Mexico Connects: Policy and Rural Broadband" is available online.

U.N Millennium Development Goal 8 says: "In cooperation with the private sector, make available the benefits of new technologies, especially ICT. There is a general agreement that Internet access is a key success factor for development."

Laos, Bangladesh, India, Cambodia, Ecuador, Brazil and other developing countries around the world are succeeding in empowering rural people through the use of wireless high-speed Internet, affordable cell phones, telecenters, training, micro financing, community programs and entrepreneurship, to help eradicate poverty and improve quality of life.

Information technology-based programs are varied in nature, ownership, scope and budget, but when it comes to connecting remote villages never reached by wired infrastructure, the respective governments/regulators have in common the recognition -- through visionary policy and law construction -- that innovative wireless technologies need a fresher, less theological approach to spectrum use. These technologies -- mainly Wi-Fi and Wi-Max -- can bring affordable, high-speed Internet access to isolated, rural areas. Spectrum is now a more abundant and sharable resource due to technological progress.

A Home in Rural Mexico

Sadly, Mexico has not yet recognized the need for a fresh look at spectrum use and regulation.

While there are huge business opportunities in "doing well by doing good," what is most important about these so-called disruptive technologies is eradication of poverty, unemployment and isolation through the use of innovative, low-cost information technologies and access infrastructures. It is about empowering more than 50 million Mexicans who live in poverty to find a sustainable livelihood, through access to important information on crop prices, microfinancing, distribution channels, efficient and less-costly remittance systems, health information and communication with their migrant relatives.

It is, in a nutshell, about building an entrepreneurial economy for millions of creative, ingenious and uneducated human beings who just need an opportunity to learn, to create, to be productive and independent.

Neglecting or opposing the use of such new technologies is not only immoral but suicidal as a nation, and contrary to the long-term business interests of the same telecomm carriers who paradoxically oppose any connectivity efforts using what is known as "unlicensed spectrum." The results? An Internet penetration of only 14 million users among a global population of over 103 million Mexicans.

Are government officials aware of the implications of such an omission and if so, has anyone made a feasible proposal to start changing the status quo within the imperfect, shortsighted Mexican legal framework? A thousand and one reasons why Wi-Fi and VoIP cannot "fly" right now, given legal constraints, are voiced by opponents and regulators still in love with auctioning spectrum without sound foundations.

A sustainable rural connectivity project with a grassroots community development plan could fly using free spectrum to reduce costs of broadband access. Innovative wireless technologies that make high speed Internet access available