ECOM-LAC
eCom-LAC is the abbreviation for Federacion Latinoamericana y del Caribe para Internet y el Comercio Electronico or Latin America and Caribbean Federation for Internet and Electronic Commerce. Established in the year 1988 in a meeting held in Rio de Janeiro, eCom-LAC’s main mission is to promote the development of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) in the Caribbean region and Latin America. It also works towards supporting the initiatives that help to lower the digital gap in these regions.[1]
The eCom-LAC also represents the ICT private sector of these regions at an international level such as:
- IGF - Internet Governance Forum
- WSIS – World Summit of the Information Society
- LACNIC – Latin American and Caribbean Internet Addresses Registry
- ICANN - Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers[1]
Members
The members of eCom-LAC are mostly companies and entities from countries such as Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, and Guatemala, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay. [1]
Activities
eCom-LAC had earlier organized two regional electronic commerce summits. The first was held in Sao Paulo in the year 2000 and the second summit took place in Buenos Aires in the year 2001. The Buenos Aires summit saw the presence of Mr. Donald Evans, U.S. Secretary of Commerce.
eCom-LAC was also a part of an International Consortium which was established by the Fundació Aplicació of Barcelona (Spain), for which the European Commission (EC) had also awarded a 3.000.000 Euro subsidy under the @lis RFP. The project being worked on was named ATLAS de la Diversidad – Mi Lugar. As many as 400 schools in Latin America were instructed about publishing tools and website development. Under this project, a network of schools was also created with a view to share customs, history, music and so on.
eCom-LAC was assigned with the task of providing broadband connectivity to the schools that lacked the necessary resources. Recently, the eCom-LAC has undertaken some preliminary activities which aim to implement a TLD, similar to .asia or .eu, in order to help to identify the Latin American and Caribbean region and its culture on the internet internationally.[2]
Relation with ICANN
eCom-LAC negotiated with ICANN for four years to establish the Latin American and Caribbean Internet Addresses Registry (LACNIC), which was eventually established in 2003. LACNIC is a multi-sector partnership involving academic, private, civil society and NGO sectors from the region. The policies of LACNIC are defined by the regional Internet community, which deals with the handling of IP address blocks for Latin America.[1]