RE: The telephone network and the internet (RE: [ga] ALAC comment s on proposedBylaws modifications)

["Roberto Gaetano" <ploki_xyz@hotmail.com>]

Marc Schneiders wrote:

>
>I do understand that the ITU needs financing. But the path it has chosen,
>to do this in part by charging for texts, has the side effect that it will
>make participation more difficult, except for companies. Is that what you
>want?
>

I don't want to interfere with Richard, who is best qualified to explain the 
position of the ITU, but I would like to add a couple of bits from my direct 
experience.
Around 1997 (I'm quoting from memory, so it might have been 1996 or 1998) 
there has been a debate at ETSI, the European Telecommunications Standards 
Institute, to change the policy on publication of standards for the general 
public. The decision has been to provide them free of charge (in fact, it 
was cost recovery, but for internet downloads this means 0), and the loss of 
revenue was covered by other means.
At that time, I remember having had dicussions on this topic also with ITU 
people, and the matter was brought up also at TSAG. In private 
conversations, some of the ITU staff told me that they would have welcomed a 
similar decision from ITU, because they personally felt that the core 
business of the ITU was to produce recommendations, not to engage in 
administrative activities to sell them.
I would say, but that was only my personal impression at the time, that a 
range of different forces were pushing in that direction, and the target of 
access to docs at no charge seemed achievable.
ETSI could do it, because it would have recovered the costs from the regular 
membership fees, due to the increasing membership.

I don't know the situation at ITU, but at the IAEA we have a 
"zero-real-growth" budget that pushes us to look for alternative sources.
I would assume that this will be the current situation at ITU, because the 
budgeting policy is set by the Member States uniformly for the UN 
organizations (with few exceptions). Moreover, their non-governmental 
membership being mostly telcos, and knowing the current economical situation 
of the sector, I would not be surprised if the intention of changing the 
business model for dissemination of the recommendations were there, but not 
the possibility to cope with the corresponding loss of revenue.

However, I fail to see the link between the recommendation dissemination 
policy and a possible role of ITU for the Internet: this aspect has been 
even disregarded in the final drafting of the PSO charter in 1997. Nobody in 
a normal state of mind would propose the ITU as replacement of the IETF. 
Some could envisage to transfer to the ITU a small subset of the tasks 
currently under ICANN. I, personally, see the ITU as the natural repository 
for matters that are better placed under international jurisdiction, like 
the root.

IMHO, we are focusing too much on details that could have less relevance, 
and failing to discuss the innovative approach that some, including Karl 
Auerbach, are proposing: not to have one single monolythic gigantic 
all-covering structure, but to assign individual responsibilities to 
individual organizations, either existing or built for the purpose. In other 
words, instead of one solution for all, tailored solutions for specific 
problems.

Best regards
Roberto


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