I-Café Pilipinas links with Indian iCafé body

CEBU, Philippines - I-Café Pilipinas, the national advocacy body of the Internet café industry in the Philippines, has partnered with the Cyber Café Association of India (CCAI), in their effort to solve problems that concerns the industry in both countries.

According to a press statement, I-Café and CCAI signed a memorandum of agreement that bound both parties to work together in addressing concerns such as Internet penetration, security and growth of Internet cafes in both countries and the rest of the world.

Both parties also agreed to advocate for the recognition worldwide of internet cafes as a separate entity in the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

ICANN, which was formed in 1998, is a non-profit, public-benefit corporation with participants from all over the world dedicated to keeping the Internet secure, stable and interoperable. It promotes competition and develops policy on the Internet’s unique identifiers, according to ICANN’s website.

“ICANN doesn’t control content on the Internet. It cannot stop spam and it doesn’t deal with access to the Internet. But through its coordination role of the Internet’s naming system, it does have an important impact on the expansion and evolution of the Internet.”

To reach another person on the Internet you have to type an address into your computer - a name or a number. That address has to be unique so computers know where to find each other. ICANN coordinates these unique identifiers across the world. Without that coordination we wouldn't have one global Internet.

CCAOI is a non profit organization set up with the objective of promoting Internet to the common masses across India, particularly through the 180,000 Cybercafés, 50,000 CSC’s and 11,000 eCommerce service outlets.

CCAOI interacts and works closely with the Government of India, the regulators, police, policy makers and major industry chambers in bringing to the fore and voicing out the problems of the internet café players. Protecting the interests of the industry will result in affordable internet services to the masses.

Mr. Ed Zafra, I-Café chairperson said the linkage with the CCAOI is the start of more international linkages with other internet café associations in other countries that I-café has hoped for to be able to further develop the industry in the country.            

I-Café has urged other internet café organizations nationwide to affiliate themselves with the organization in order to enjoy the benefits of the projects and advocacies of I-Café.