New Treaty Update Issues Appear to Gain Traction with Developing Countries

GENEVA -- Preparatory discussions for a 2012 treaty conference focused on changing provisions in the International Telecommunications Regulations (ITR) to account for the significant shift of the industry to a modern market-oriented environment, according to submissions. At least some of the new issues raised during the 2009 World Telecommunications Policy Forum appeared to gain traction with groups of developing countries (CD April 27/09 p6). Preparatory discussions are at an early stage, executives and officials said.

The fourth meeting of the ITU Council working group this week was the first since a 2010 policy-setting conference agreed to a preparatory process. The meeting addressed 17 new submissions. The documents will be compiled with earlier submissions into a conference preparatory report.

The U.S. and European countries want to update the regulations to account for the significant shift to the modern market-oriented environment in most countries. The U.S. in a submission said the regulations need to have strategic and policy principles that ensure flexibility and accommodate technological advances. Most of the treaty’s provisions require only minimal if any changes, the U.S. said, despite substantial changes in the communications landscape since the 1988 revision. Changes to the agreement should spur development of services for economic growth while avoiding unnecessary and harmful mandates, the U.S. said.

The regulations should cover high level strategic and policy issues concerning international telecom services and facilities, a submission by the European Conference of Postal and Telecommunications Administrations (CEPT) said, not technical and technology issues appropriate for recommendations and other lower level instruments. The treaty’s provisions should be flexible and sufficiently broad to apply over time.

CEPT administrations said future regulatory provisions could address certain principles for tackling spam and its various manifestations. No technical measures or content related issues should be included, CEPT said. International attention is needed for the problem of technical harm to technical facilities and personnel, CEPT said, including the idea of prohibiting connection of terminals that cause that harm.

Changes to the treaty need to account for the privatization of telecom operators in the majority of countries, CEPT administrations said, along with the liberalization of telecom markets, spectacular growth of international telecommunications traffic and large reductions in prices, the extensive use of the IP protocol for conveying telecom traffic, including international traffic, and VoIP and its broad economic, political and social consequences.

Any changes to the regulations should be limited to defining broad principles of collaboration for the development of the networks and the provision of international services, the Global Voice Group said. Any attempt to define or include very specific rules is prone to be surpassed by market evolution, the group said in a perspective of the African market. Governments could however use the ITRs to introduce formal recognition of their ability to introduce obligations on certain important operators to spur transparency and accountability, it said.

Provisions on charging and accounting need to be substantially changed to account for the significant move away from the accounting rate system to competitive market agreements, the U.S. said referring other provisions on commercial arrangements.

Countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, and Asia-Pacific regional groups want the regulations to prohibit international double taxation. All Latin American studies show taxation on roaming services is a big obstacle to reducing service charges, Brazil said.

Discriminatory taxation of telecommunications services deters the adoption and use of broadband, mobile and other advanced tools that are major drivers of development and growth, the GSMA said. A 2008 GSMA study predicted many sub-Saharan African countries would increase their longer-term tax revenues by removing or reducing their existing high taxes on mobile services. Taxes on incoming international calls likewise shouldn’t be used for universal service or other government programs, GSMA said.

The regulations could be updated to account for the idea that collection charges and wholesale services will be priced by commercial agreement, the Global Voice Group said, and that governments have the power to regulate collection charges to users and wholesale prices for services provided in their territory.

The Latin American and Caribbean countries in preliminary views said revisions should better account for the differences in negotiating power between commercial operators and ITU member governments, and between developed and developing countries. The regulations should call on governments to ensure transparency for retail and wholesale prices, quality of service, and spur cost oriented pricing in the market, they said.

Changes should also call on governments to spur adequate return on network investments, the regional group of Latin American and Caribbean countries said in preliminary views. They also want the regulations to help spur advanced telecom networks in developing networks, the submission said. Brazil in a submission said the approaches were national matters, or weren’t in accordance with the regulations aim of spurring global interconnection and interoperability of telecom facilities.

The Latin American and Caribbean countries want the regulations to call on countries to ensure that international naming, numbering, addressing and identification resources are used only by the assignees and only for the purposes for which they were assigned, and that unassigned resources are not used. A November 2010 ITU study group on numbering discussed incidents of fraud and numbering misuse which in one case totaled $1 million in a single day, Russia said in a submission.

Countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa and Asia-Pacific regional groups want governments to implement international calling party number delivery. Data other than the country code that’s masked because of national data privacy rules should be made available to law enforcement agencies, the Latin American and Caribbean group said.

Recent ITU action to combat misuse of numbering resources hasn’t been sufficient, the United Arab Emirates said in a submission referring to national laws in certain countries which don’t appear to prohibit certain types of misuse. The UAE supports the regional groups on the idea of tighter practices and international calling party number delivery.

The CEPT administrations said they could accept certain, but unspecified new policy principles on supplying calling line identifier information. However, an obligation to introduce national measures to enforce ITU provisions are inconsistent with the purposes of the intergovernmental organization, CEPT said referring to efforts to prevent misuse and misappropriation of numbering resources.

Detailed operational provisions such as deadlines for settlements of accounts or payments should not be included in the revised regulations, however prompt payments to creditors should be ensured, countries in a Asia-Pacific regional group said. Competition issues, including definition of significant market power at the international level and its abuse, should be discussed further, they said. A definition of “hubbing” and other modern traffic exchange mechanisms should be added to the regulations, the countries said.

Cybersecurity, cybercrime and combating spam should be included in the new regulations, the Asia-Pacific countries said. The U.S. wants ITU’s cybersecurity efforts to focus on areas in its core mandate, namely the technical and development spheres, not national matters, such as application of legal or policy principles dealing with national defense, national security, content or cybercrime. A 2010 policy setting conference already clarified ITU’s limited scope, the U.S. said.

Only aspects of cybersecurity that protect networks from considerable technical harm should be addressed in the ITRs, CEPT said. The countries agreed with the U.S. view of limiting the scope of possible discussions on cybersecurity to what’s already been defined. Payload inspection should be outside the scope of discussions, CEPT said.

Other issues that should be addressed include termination rates and other issues for voice over IP services, the countries said, and special transit rates for landlocked countries. Other issues warrant further discussion, countries in the African, Asia-Pacific and African groups said, referring to consumer choice when roaming, for example the possibility of mandatory roaming with all networks, cloud computing and the cost of international Internet connectivity.

Russia said one possible solution to the issue of Internet address allocation and distribution is to oblige ITU to allocate/distribute some part of IPv6 addresses in the same way as it does for telephone numbering, so many operators and numbers distributors could exist inside a unified numbers space for both fixed and mobile phone services, and for the determination of necessary requirements.

Russia also said misuse of international naming, numbering, addresses and identification could lead to a determination of requirements for the correct use of international resources of naming, numbering, addresses and identification. Obligations could then be made for using some ITU-T recommendations following the example of the Radio Regulations, Russia said. ITU-T recommendations could thus be included in the ITRs, Russia said. The same approach could be used to deal with the absence of identification of the origin of traffic or callers, Russia said.