Dubai WCIT Conference Not About Internet Governance, Says ITU Official
The upcoming World Conference on International Telecommunications “is not about Internet governance,” an ITU official said at a Google event in Washington late Wednesday. Scheduled for Dec. 3-14 in Dubai, the conference will consider a review of the International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs), which define the general principles for the provision and operation of international telecommunications.
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Saying there’s a $800 billion global shortfall for telecom infrastructure development, Gary Fowlie, head of the ITU liaison office to the U.N., said the conference was about finding ways to ensure that “interconnection and interoperability of the telecom network survives.” It’s also about “establishing a framework” to support infrastructure so as to “keep the mobile broadband miracle alive,” he told the Internet at Liberty conference. If there’s any need for telecom regulation, it has to be “light-handed, forward looking” and “even-handed” to ensure that the least-developed countries have an “equitable stake in the information society,” he said.
Regulation with a light touch is “something that encourages investment” and ensures that the “mobile broadband Internet … didn’t disappear,” Fowlie said. The public sector has the “right” to the spectrum for mobile broadband, and through an “open regulatory system” can attract private sector investment, he said. Responding to a question, he said nobody was suggesting that control of the Internet be transferred to governments, although some governments may try to impose their “desire” for control: What the ITU wants is a “framework that will support” mobile broadband infrastructure that will benefit all member states.
Pressed by Ben Wagner, researcher at the European University Institute, for an assurance that the Dubai conference “will not affect Internet governance at all,” Fowlie hedged, saying he doesn’t have a “crystal ball and the 193 member states do.” The group managing the review of the ITRs will make public the report, he said, and “we'll see what their sense is.” There’s wide agreement that part of the success of the Internet is that “states have been left out” and haven’t had a “hugely significant role” in its development, Wagner said. Suspicions and concerns are aroused when states seem to start taking an active role in Internet governance, he said.