Speaker Biography
Kees Rovers
President and CEO
Close the Gap BV, the Netherlands
Kees Rovers was born on June 23, 1945 in Son, village near Eindhoven in the South of the Netherlands. Kees Rovers is married, has two children and is a grandfather of four grandchildren.
The first 20 years of his professional he held several senior-management positions with the Dutch cooperative bank Rabobank. In 1985 he created his first multi-media enterprise; Telematica International, starting with introducing the French Minitelsystem in the Netherlands and developing the first electronic services for all kind of businesses. He strongly believes that electronic services can help us to transform our society into a more open, better, creative and intellectual society. A smart Society. A smart Community. No wonder that Kees was initiator and founder of several success full Internet and Multimedia companies and institutions, national and international.
Five years ago he took the initiative, together with a far-sighted Director of a housing-corporation, Henri Smits, in the Dutch town Nuenen for the today’s fiber to the Home network. Convinced of the potential of real bandwidth to quality of life of the citizens they wanted access to video-services which would allow elderly and disabled people to remain longer in their homes.
They were fortunate that the Dutch government had a policy of investing in pilot “Knowledge Area”. But how could they make sure that the benefits were open to all. Knowing about the Rochdale principles, Kees and his colleague decided that a co-operative business model was the only way to get what they wanted.
What is more, they were determined to base it on real member involvement in determining community need. Few people can get worked up about broadband in the abstract. But start talking about what you can do with it and lots of people start paying attention.
So the first thing they did in 2002 was to set up what they called a ‘user feedback committee’ to explore the benefits for all the different organizations and interest groups in the town - from the churches to the schools to the local Turkish community. This meant a lot of knocking on doors! But as the idea of Ons Net (Our Net) grew, people became more and more excited by the potential. Doctors saw that e-health care could become a reality. Ministers realized that they might find a new audience for their sermons. A real community spirit grew around the key ideas of ‘local for local’ and ‘more for less’.
In February 2003, Close the Gap tabled its ambitious plan to lay fibre to all 8,000 households in Nuenen. In December 2003 government funding for the project was agreed. In June 2004 the first cable was laid and five months later every home was connected, with 97% signing up for the first year’s free trial and for a membership of the local fiber cooperation Ons Net (Our Net). Now more and more services are being developed. These include TV and internet telephony - for which 75% of households have already signed up after just one mailing.
People
Ironically, it's by not talking about the technology that residents have been persuaded to embrace it. Kees Rovers is emphatic that "it's about people, not about technology" - that everything should be pitched at the level of a 75-year-old woman who neither has nor wants a computer (but does want services that will allow her to enjoy a high quality of life in her own home for as long as possible).
Kees is also emphatic that these are basic services which should not only be controlled by a small group of private investors. As he says: "It's time to reinvent co-operatives".
Close the Gap is prepared to assist local communities in creating their own fiber cooperative and a connected small community, on a national level in the Netherlands but also to export the "Close the Gap" cooperative model to other countries in the world.
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