Source: https://www.derechosdigitales.org/wp-content/uploads/webrtc_en.pdf
As a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, in recent months we have faced the promise on with internet was built. From one moment to the next, much of the world turned to digital environments. In many cities around the world, only the “essential” activities of care, cleaning and surveillance remained in place, while a large part of the population was forced into confinement. In addition to the imminent crisis generated by the suspension of economic activities, in regions such as Latin America and the Caribbean, there was also evidence of the persistent gap in internet access, in its multiple dimensions. The figures are very unequal between countries, but also internally, between urban and rural contexts. But what does it mean to get access to the internet? Perhaps, it means to have access to a device, a tablet or a cell phone, even if it is not the same as a computer, and it is not the same to connect to fixed or mobile broadband, also because the cost is not the same. The cost depends on the infrastructure; for instance, in poorer countries it is more expensive to connect and connections are slower. Hence, it relies on how much infrastructure is available and how robust it is, which in turn also depends on the materials that are used to make the connection and the technologies that run devices. But this is only one dimension of access: once we can connect, our technical, linguistic, and cultural skills also determine our ability to ‘navigate’. But for now, let’s go back to the promise of the internet. In 1989, at the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN) a tool for collaboration and information exchange was proposed to become the World Wide Web1 , and materialized in the HTTP protocol (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) that we use today to navigate the internet.
The proposal consisted of a distributed hypertext system, legible for people and where information was connected in an unlimited way, not based on a fixed hierarchical system. From the beginning the Web was designed to organize and streamline the work of a specific scientific community. It was conceived as a universal interconnected information system, supporting different platforms and extensible to new data formats. With that purpose, between 1993 and 1994, it began to be an attractive product for the market and little by little, it was entering government offices, companies and homes, in an expansive process that has continued until today. Almost ten years later, the transmission of video over the internet greatly increased the traffic of digital information, while the development of 3G technology in mobile telephony, which allowed connection to some internet services, skyrocketed the level of connections.
Nowadays, we not only connect to work, learn or do administrative procedures, our emotions and feelings are also connected. Thus, in a pandemic, our circles of affection, trust, and political organization are necessarily mediated by internet technologies. Collaborative editing, file sharing, and audio and video streaming are perhaps the most useful digital tools in times of confinement, but why do video calls and video conferencing became so popular in recent months? Despite consuming many resources and that communication is often not fluent or understandable, we choose to see each other: in class; in meetings with few or many people; in presentations and workshops; in the parties; in sex. Beyond the reasons that lead us to prefer real-time audio and video tools, or commercial alternatives and their characteristics in terms of quality, security or privacy, in this document we want to understand how this communication is technically possible, and we wonder if access to video calls and video conferencing is universal. In other words, what does it depends on being able to use these services optimally?