[governance] IGC statement REVISION 3.0: consensus call comes

Wed Feb 17 04:07:09 EST 2010

Hi Siva,

Thanks for laying this out.  While we've had bits and pieces of discussion about the ITU on this list over the past seven years, in general it's an arena that many folks have less experience with than IGF and ICANN, so this is helpful.   I'd like though to raise a concern about one dimension of your depiction—the notion that ITU is just a business cartel, "of which unwittingly Governments are a part."  As someone who's done a great deal of research and writing on the ITU over the past 30 years I have to say I find this rather misleading.  ITU is and always has been preeminently an intergovernmental organization.  Industry groups have been allowed to participate in some of its bodies over the years subject to various limitations, and for many decades some of them (particularly corporate users as represented inter alia by the ICC and INTUG) were quite unhappy with these procedures, and indeed with the whole market-regulatory, pro-monopoly orientation of ITU policy.  Starting in the 1980s various reform processes began to inter alia enhance business participation and liberalize long-standing regulations and market access limitations, and now companies can join the three sectors as members. In this context, the major national telecom carriers (former PTTs) and their preferred manufacturers exercise a good deal of influence on the design of technical and operational standards.  Nevertheless, the overarching policy frameworks within which such work is conducted remain intergovernmental and treaty based.  This is especially so on the radio spectrum side of the house.

With regard to the private sector, the important point is that business is not an undifferentiated mass.  There are a lot of different factions and interests, and those that gather in the ITU historically heralded mostly from the PSTN environment.  In contrast, ITU has had a great deal of difficulty attracting and keeping businesses from the Internet environment that have their roots in identifiers, applications, and so on, and has had tense and sometimes conflictual relations with the whole Internet administrative nexus.  So there are multiple lines of tension at work here—within industry, between governments and some industry, between governments and their preferred firms on the one hand and CS and the Internet technical community on the other, between models and visions of the Internet and the global info infrastructure more generally, and so on.  In all of this, governments are hardly the unwitting dupes of one industry faction; there's rather a close, symbiotic relationship based on shared interests which, alas, have been rather different from those of many people and orgs indigenous to the Internet environment.  To some extent that may be changing now, at least with respect to security issues, where one finds a lot of big players from the net space getting actively engaged and vested in the ITU process. 

I'm sure you know all this, just thought it was worth a friendly amendment to avoid misunderstandings.

Best,

Bill

On Feb 16, 2010, at 8:30 PM, Sivasubramanian Muthusamy wrote:

> Hello Katiza
> 
> ITU is an anomaly that deviates from the ancient wisdom behind the dictum that "a nation's capital should be situated as farther away from the sea shore as possible": (merchants congregate near the sea; if the capital is close to the sea, merchants would have proximity to the members of the Government, so there is greater likelihood of the merchants corrupting the politicians). Telecom corporations have the rare advantage of being seated alongside Government at the ITU. This anomalous position makes it possible for the telecoms to exercise an undue influence on governments, unnoticed by the Governments.
> 
> The ITU was established because telegraphic communication needed to be standardized for interoperability across continents. ITU established standards for telegraphic and phone communication.
> 
> Governments chose to be part of the ITU when Governments owned telecom corporations. Over time, most Governments have withdrawn their stakes in their telecommunication corporations, but haven't ceased to be a part of this business cartel. The result is that we are now left with a business-government nexus, of which unwittingly Governments are a part.
> 
> This status is a unique status, not conferred upon the business unions of any other industry. ITU has been in a position to influence national and global policies related to all communication. ITU's core concern is that it should govern and control all business of communication. The ITU sets policies and rules in all communication: Telegraphs, telephones, mobile phones and it also manages the RF spectrum and satellite communications with the exception of the Internet.
> 
> ITU's idea of an Internet was a networking solution provided by telecom companies on a commercial business model. ITU tried to take charge of the Internet in the early days of Internet. This did not happen as the Internet took shape as a free and open medium. The Internet evolved to be way beyond the purview of the ITU and it shape as a world on its own.
> 
> In its recent attempts to impose itself in Internet Governance, it couldn't succeed because the mutli-stakeholder approach has rendered the Civil Society as a powerful force in any policy debate (if not decision) related to the Internet.
> 
> This must have made the ITU very uncomfortable and as an organization with its anachronistic status as a UN Agency, the ITU The Internet threatened the business models of telecom companies as technologies such as email, VOIP began to be adopted worldwide. The ITU also found a new breed of phone companies like Skype that didn't obey the ITU rules becoming phenomenally successful and an emerging threat to phone company revenues.
> 
> The freedom of the Internet is because of the open architecture of the Internet and due to such principles as the end to end principle, all of which could be easily redefined if the task of Internet architecture and Internet standards comes under the ITU umbrella. So the ITU tried to interject itself in the Internet Standards process. The Critical Internet Resources could be brought under the ITU umbrella by taking over a vulnerable corporation called ICANN. That could ensure a technical dominance of the Internet by the ITU. But for overall control, ITU needs to take over Internet Governance with the argument that easily fools at least a few policy makers: that the ITU is a well organized, 145 year old organization that has 191 national governments as its members. It attempts to derive a position in policy making (which is otherwise in the realm of Governments) by interjecting itself in the policy arena as a UN Agency, while it is in reality a business union.
> 
> The ITU organizes the World Telecommunication Policy Forum in an attempt to position itself / retain its position in the policy arena. The ITU asserts its position in policy making in subtle ways. For instance, at the IGF in Sharm el Sheikh, an ITU representative said " We have no intention whatsoever to do the business of the ICANN, what the ICANN is doing best...everybody doesn't want the ICANN to do what is the mandate of the ITU of policy-making, public-policy issues and so on”
> 
> That was subtle. The ITU representative had managed to assert that policy making is ITU's birthright and that the ITU has a legitimate and unequaled role in policy making. This inappropriate statement was somehow allowed to slip in without a challenge at the IGF.
> 
> At Egypt, ITU's representatives raised questions about IPv6 allocation system, in an attempt to bring the ITU into the function of allocation of IP addresses. This was mild compared to a blatant speech by the Secretary General at ICANN Cairo, which almost amounted to a bid to take over ICANN.
> 
> ITU's constant attempts to gain a "controlling interest" in Internet Governance is resisted by the Internet Community. This is what causes the 'tensions'.
> 
> Sivasubramanian Muthusamy
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 10:21 PM, Katitza Rodriguez <katitza at datos-personales.org> wrote:
> Greetings:
> 
> Can someone explain me the ITU-IGF tension? I do not follow ITU.
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> 
> 
> On Jan 21, 2010, at 11:42 AM, Yehuda Katz wrote:
> 
> My constructive dissection:
> 
> None of these suggestions would fundamentally alter the IGF as an institution;
> for example, we are content that it remain formally convened by the UN
> Secretary General, with an independent budget and a Secretariat under contract
> with the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA).  We
> do not see any benefit to the IGF in moving underneath a different UN body.
> 
> I take it that: "... We do not see any benefit to the IGF in moving underneath
> a different UN body. ..." addresses the ITU's position.
> Myself, I see no insult in addressing the ITU's position more directly. (Spit
> it out)
> 
> Add something like this: And it is genraly felt that if the IGF is to be
> subsumed by the ITU, then IGC members would prefer the IGF remain independent
> of the UN umbrella.
> 
> I am suggesting to leave open 'The-Thought' of an Independent IGF for serval
> reasons,
> 1. There may be Other UN Branches (Other than the ITU) that want to hose the
> IGF
> 2. It may be that the IGF can be Independent and 'First among Equals' (among
> all the UN Branches) in respect to Internet Policy, underwritten by the MDG and
> WSIS Declarations.
> 3. if the IGF is in fact slated to conclude, the statement establishes the
> IGC's commitment to the IGF's ongoing Independence.
> ...
> Don't be Shy, the Chair at the ITU certainly is not. Give them (Dese & Markus)
> the fuel to fight.
> I don't feel you'll insult anyone by being Frank & Direct, in fact now is the
> time to do just that, the delicate 'Modalities' as Bertrand de La Chapelle puts
> it can come later.
> 
> Else where in your statement, you should add something a-kin too "Piercing the
> corporate Veil", that is make reference to the 'Invisibility' of the UN
> Umbrella Insider negotiations (UN inside modalities) regarding the
> determination of the IGF's composition, that should be made real-time and
> transparent to All.
> 
> I use the 'Piercing the corporate Veil' analogy because I feel They (the
> UNSG/UNDESA/ITU/IGF Chairs) have broken their contract with US, in regards to
> Transparency of the final negotiations. Last Year's transactions/actions were
> evidence of the fact.
> ---
> 
> * Piercing the corporate Veil
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piercing_the_corporate_veil
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***********************************************************
William J. Drake
Senior Associate
Centre for International Governance
Graduate Institute of International and
 Development Studies
Geneva, Switzerland
william.drake at graduateinstitute.ch
www.graduateinstitute.ch/cig/drake.html
***********************************************************

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