Early Discussions Mixed on Wide Range of Issues in Telecom Treaty Update

The ITRs are “widely credited for creating the basis for today’s connected world,” Johnson said. “It was the major driver for liberalization and competition,” he said, and “enabled the development of the Internet.” The World Conference on International Telecommunications later this year will amend “the only truly global treaty on international telecommunications,” he said. The treaty is “well out of date,” he said referring to the last revision 24 years ago.

The conference comes at a time when the information and communications technology (ICT) sector is “having a major impact on both the economic and social development around the world,” Johnson said. The conference is “an opportunity to amend the treaty in a way which will further extend the benefits of ICTs,” he said.

Some of the issues on the table for the conference include “the right to communicate, security in the use of ICTs and the protection of national resources, taxation, international roaming, misuse and hijacking of international numbers, and interoperability,” Johnson said. “That has been highlighted by the industry,” he said referring to data volumes rising much faster then needed capacity. “There is a risk that there will be a lack of investment in the development of the infrastructure,” he said. The existing international regulatory framework “is simply not equipped to deal with all these challenges” over the next decades, Johnson said.

Some of the proposals to the ITU Council working group preparing for the conference may be of interest to operators, said Richard Hill, the TSB counselor for the group. He referred to mobile roaming, misuse and fraud, taxation, and some general principles on economic issues, he said. “There aren’t any proposals … that somehow ITU would get into doing something,” Hill said. “If anything is done, it would be done at the national level,” he said.

Two kinds of proposals have been made on mobile roaming, Hill said. One set of proposals is about price transparency while roaming, he said. A “much more delicate proposal” suggests saying something about price levels, he said referring to possibly setting them in a certain way.

In some parts of the world there is an increasing problem of using telephone numbers that are geographically oriented to do things that are not geographically oriented, Hill said. A caller thinks they're making a call to the Solomon Islands, but instead they're being connected to a domestic call center, he said. Proposals in varying degrees urge countries to stem misuse, he said.

Fraud is a more delicate question, Hill said. Some proposals suggest saying something about fraud in the regulations, he said, but others aren’t comfortable with that. Transmission of calling party identification is related to fraud, he said. Increasingly, the information isn’t transmitted, he said. Sometimes it’s not transmitted for technical reasons, he said. Other times, it may be related to certain kinds of “cost arbitrage,” he said. Some think it’s OK; others think it’s not OK, he said.

Discussions vary on general principles on costs, Hill said. Some say there should be transparency on costs, he said. A more delicate question is whether there should be something on cost orientation, he said. Proposals so far have not been very specific, he said.

There are proposals to ensure continued investment “with adequate return” into high-bandwidth networks, Hill said referring to compensation for terminating traffic. “None of this is agreed,” he said. Most of the proposals have encountered “significant skepticism” or “outright opposition,” he said.

There are two issues on taxation, Hill said. One with “somewhat more support” says there should not be double taxation, he said. There’s no agreement on how to define it, he said. Some tax specialists asked for more precision, he said. A second set of proposals is more delicate, he said. They say income and profit should not be taxed, he said. Some countries, primarily in Africa, have begun levying an extra tax on incoming international traffic, he said. Some think it’s not a very good idea, he said referring to proposals to say it’s not allowed. It’s a delicate matter because any tax reduces telecom uptake, he said, but some countries don’t have much of a revenue source, especially in a hard currency.

"Right now, there are no proposals that somehow the ITU should become a supranational regulatory authority,” Hill said referring to implementation. “There are proposals that national authorities should” do certain things, he said. He referred to an example in the discussions that called on member states to ensure there is no numbering misuse, he said. If a similar proposal were accepted, then it goes to a national ratification process that may require comparison with existing laws, he said. New ITU-T recommendations may be needed depending on the conference decisions, Hill said. A decision on the misuse example could use existing recommendations, he said.

Most proposals to ITU conferences are coordinated and submitted by each of six regional groups, Johnson said. “It’s very difficult to get a proposal accepted if it’s not got the support of the region behind it,” he said. A conference’s conclusion is “very much dependent” on the agreement of the six regions, he said. However, the deadline for proposals is just 14 days before the conference starts, he said.

The hope is that the new treaty will create “a stable international framework” with the right conditions for global “markets to flourish,” Johnson said. “It should act as a catalyst for future development,” he said.