Organization: ITU

A treaty meeting in December is pitching powerful forces against one another. The good news is that with fear comes opportunity.

Click for larger version. Cartoon: Patrick Taylor.

When representatives of the world's governments sit down in Dubai this December to discuss how to update global telecommunication regulations, they will, in one way or another, be deciding the future of the Internet's evolution for the next decade.

That's not something that has been missed by the country that continues to dominate the Internet's development, the United States, nor by the emerging powers of Brazil, India, China and Russia, who will use the WCIT conference as an opportunity to challenge the way the Internet is currently governed.

The organization that can keep pace with the Internet is destined to walk away with the rights to govern the global network

Who will break free from its cocoon first: ICANN, the IGF or ITU?

The world hates change, yet it is the only thing that has brought progress
-- Charles Kettering

Charles Kettering was a most remarkable American. As an inventor, engineer and businessman, he made many of modern life's luxuries possible, including the car (he invented the start motor) and the refrigerator (invented Freon). He also moved Henry Ford's famous black automobile into the world of color by developing lacquered paints suitable for mass-production.

Kettering was a fierce believer in change. "If you have always done it that way, it is probably wrong," he once said. And he was damning about people's inability to see what changes needed to be made and why. "People are very open-minded about new things - as long as they're exactly like the old ones," he warned.

The International Telecommunication Union is an old and august institution, created in 1865, making it the first ever international body.

It was created to help make the most of the then-new telegraph technology by getting countries to agree how they would deal with information that was relayed to, from and through their territories.

Having been successful in that, the ITU picked up more and more work as the human race entered the telecommunications age, eventually becoming the de facto body for telecoms, including standards, financing, metrics, and even installation.

In the same way that ICANN has change written into its structure, the ITU is notable for how it has changed over time, in many cases leading the way. It was the first United Nations organization to pull in the private sector; it values academics; it started developing new standards around the advances in technology that led to the Internet as we now know it; it tries to ensure equal participation from developing countries, as well as gender balance.

ITU Secretary-General Hamadoun Toure gave yet another speech urging calm over the WCIT conference that will take place in December.

Speaking on the first day of a three-day council working group whose job it is to prepare documents for the conference, Toure noted that "many of the fears, concerns, and criticisms" surrounding the conference were the same as when the regulations that will be reviewed in December were created back in 1998. "Those fears and concerns were unwarranted," he noted.

Toure also said that no issues would put be put to a vote but would be arrived at through consensus. He also highlighted the positive aspects that could come out of the conference. "WCIT is an opportunity to create a stable international regulatory framework providing the right conditions to allow markets to flourish globally."

Distinguished colleagues, Ladies and gentlemen,

It is a great pleasure to be with you here this morning and let me offer a very warm welcome to all participants.

I would like to start by saying how flattered I was by the attention that was given to the informal, impromptu remarks I made at 2pm on the 23rd of April, during this working group’s last meeting. I suppose that mentioning the word ‘Internet’ wakes everybody up, and gets them to pay attention.

Those remarks were recorded on the webcast of the meeting, so I am surprised that I seem to have been misquoted in some reports. I have reviewed the report of your last meeting, however, and my remarks have been correctly summarized there. Let us therefore consider the matter closed and move forward with our busy schedule here over the next three days.

Please also rest assured that these present remarks will be duly published on ITU’s web site; and I would also request that they be annexed verbatim to the report of this meeting.

Distinguished colleagues,

Controversy over the WCIT meeting in Dubai in December continued unabated. The meeting will revise a treaty covering international telecommunications rules that was originally agreed in 1988.

Previously confidential documents on the process were leaked and then published on a new website called WCITleaks.org. Relatively little controversy resulted from the actual contents of the documents, with a number of Internet organizations having already highlighted changes that concern them with regard to the Internet.

In the meantime, the working group overseeing the process met again in Geneva in an effort to produce a final document for the process. They were unsuccessful. There are too many pages of content and so a further meeting will be required, most likely in October.

The most unsettling moment in the multi-day meeting was the refusal of the chair of the process to identify whether a key proposal was intended to include the Internet. The entire controversy of the WCIT meeting revolves around whether it will be used as way for the ITU to involve itself directly in Internet matters.

During April and May 2012 the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs, Agriculture and Innovation, responsible for preparation of the Dutch position on the ITR review during WCIT 2012 in Dubai, consulted technical and business experts and stakeholders in a series of meetings. The main conclusions are represented in this summary report.

The ITR review is "managed" by the Council Working Group on ITR’s, and is building on the preparation that has been taking place over recent years, now with one more official meeting planned to take place in Geneva, 20 to 22 June 2012. In the years leading up to where we are today it has become clear that the ITRs will remain in place – even if some countries in earlier stages of the discussions were of the opinion that they were no longer necessary. So the focus is on getting the best possible result out of the meeting in Dubai, in December 3-14 this year.

No let up in vocal skirmishes as summary document leaks

ITR discussions begin to resemble Monty Python's argument sketch

It is an unsettling truth that if you are being physically attacked, experts recommend you should shout the word "fire" rather than "help".

Why? Because if people hear the word "fire" they immediate think it could affect them too, so you get their attention. Once you have it, people find it much harder not to rush to your aid.

It is difficult to picture the United States government in the role of victim, but even so it has been on a concerted and organized campaign to shout the word "fire" as frequently and loudly as possible in recent months over an upcoming conference in Dubai in December. The Internet is being attacked by the United Nations, come the cries, and if you don't help, you can kiss goodbye to the network you know and love.