ITU ‘Wrong Venue’ For Internet Governance Debate, NTIA’s Alexander Says
ASPEN, Colo. -- The ITU is not the right place to consider new rules for the Web, said Fiona Alexander, NTIA’s associate administrator-office of international affairs. “It is the wrong venue … because it brings broader harm,” she said during a panel Monday at the Technology Policy Institute’s Aspen Forum. Luigi Gambardella, chairman of the European Telecommunications Network Operators’ Association (ETNO) disagreed, saying telcos require the international forum of the ITU to address the international nature of the Internet.
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The ITU does not offer all stakeholders a say in the discussions, Alexander said. It is a “member state to member state” process which would require countries to implement its mandates through government regulations, she said. NTIA has a taken a “strong position” to support the multistakeholder model because it is “more flexible, it allows more stakeholders to engage and you can actually have a debate and discussion and debate on substance,” she said.
Gambardella said there’s a need to establish a “new balance” between the telcos and over-the-top service providers. The current ETNO proposal before the ITU calls for new international telecommunications regulations to govern IP interconnection agreements, something which FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell previously said would “turn the economics of the Internet on its head” (CD June 28 p1). Such a proposal would necessitate the creation of an international dispute resolution forum with enforcement powers, and ITU monitoring of Internet traffic flows, McDowell said in a recent speech in Rome.
The ETNO proposal does not cede power to the ITU, said Gambardella: “The operators should have the right to negotiate commercial agreements, that’s it. These commercial agreements should be based on the value of the information we are providing.” The reason to address this issue in the ITU rather than in treaties or another forum is because “the Internet is global and we need to address this in a global place,” Gambardella said.
Verizon Senior Vice President-Public Policy Development Kathy Brown agreed that the ITU is the wrong forum to debate international governance of the Web. Brown said she understands that ETNO members are “feeling the squeeze of revenues” and understands the desire for more investment opportunities, but “we have got to really explore the other places where we need to make that clear,” she said. “We need to get out of a place that could do us more harm then good.”
"The issue is capital formation and the availability for capital to build these networks,” said Brown. But addressing the problem through the ITU is “doubling down on a bad idea.” Essentially, European telcos are going to an international “super regulator” and offering proposals for more regulation, less flexibility and a lack of preemption, she said. “The old telecommunications regulation [body] is being morphed into something bigger … to something that is a universal international governance system over the Internet, she said. “I see no win in this situation.”
The ETNO proposal is “probably not the best strategy,” said ICANN Chairman Stephen Crocker. Part of the problem is that the proposals for Internet governance before the ITU lack focus, he said. Internet governance is a “very broad term that means whatever anybody wants it to mean.” The debate needs to be divided into different subjects, he said, like cybersecurity, phishing and fraud, trade and national security, for example.