Before going into the local content I want to put this
issue in the right context. There's a more general
problem.

A big part of the development goals is of course
connecting the remaining billions of people to the
Internet.

But that is NOT enough. We need quality AND
quantity. The openness, the local content, the ability
of everyone to be able to create services and business
no matter where they are. Being able to trust the
Internet service. And avoiding surveillance or
censorship.

We are talking about the quality of the Internet from
point of view of a local community.

Getting the Internet to everyone sounds hollow, if it
just about giving access to a global product. The
Internet is a not cable TV channel from the other side
of the world. People need something that responds to
their local needs and allows THEM to create what they
need. And no matter who runs various services, getting
them in your own language is crucial.

How can we improve that? Some of the actions are
global, such as the work we do at the IETF to improve
privacy in the underlying Internet protocols.  The IETF
also wants to make sure technology responds to the
different needs. For instance, internationalized domain
names, power constraints, and many other issues. And
we'd like to understand more about the needs, for
instance we have a research group, GAIA, looking at the
challenges of a growing digital divide.

There's plenty to do also with better support of
languages in various global products and platforms.
While there is often support for different
languages, many services get things wrong.
It seems like no one tested them.
Just to pick on a very widely used flagship
product, iTunes gives me everything in Danish
for no reason. Maybe they don't have Finnish
and think Danish is good enough because
Denmark is close to Finland?

But many of the actions are local, too. But I am also
not saying any of this easy. There are many practical
barriers, from economics to competition between local
and social media content, and so on.

But there are technical things that help, such as IXPs
that ensure local content business can interconnect
reasonably.  Sea cables and international connections
that provide sufficient connectivity. Local cloud
services that ease the creation of local services.

By the way, we should separate where the infrastructure
is from who provides the content from how well the
content is in the local language etc. My personal
local content which is in Finnish runs on cheap
cloud service in Frankfurt.

There are also regulatory and business environment
actions that can help. Removing barriers for people to
run Internet or content services within the country,
ensuring competition, supporting the media and art
communities, and so on. And governments can and should
set an example by providing their own services over the
Internet.

In conclusion, content is king. And once again we
find that multiple stakeholders need to work together
to achieve progress, ranging from the technical to policy,
and from global to local.