ITU Conference Preparatory Proposals Focus on Revenue, Losses

GENEVA -- Dealing with telecom fraud and misuse of numbering resources and spurring transmission of certain international calling party numbers dominated developing country proposals for an ITU Council group meeting later this month on preparations for the 2012 World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT). The group is preparing draft proposals for new ITU resolutions, recommendations and opinions and a final report for consideration by the ITU Council and the conference, the ITU website said. The treaty conference on revision or the possible abrogation of the International Telecommunication Regulations (ITR) is scheduled for next autumn.

The ITRs establish general principles relating to the provision and operation of international telecom services offered to the public and for the underlying international telecom transport, Portugal said on behalf of the European Conference of Postal and Telecommunications Administrations (CEPT) in a submission. The ITRs were established to spur global interconnection and interoperability of telecom facilities, to promote harmonious development and efficient operation, and to boost efficiency, usefulness and the availability of public international telecom services, it said. Proposals concerning national telecom services or the means of national transport should not be included in the ITRs, CEPT said. Requirements for administrations to enforce ITU recommendations or introduce national measures to enforce ITU provisions are inconsistent with the intergovernmental organization’s constitution and the purposes of the union, CEPT said. ITU-T recommendations are non-binding, CEPT said.

The ITRs should contain high-level strategic and policy issues concerning international telecom services and facilities, CEPT said. The ITRs should not contain technical and technology issues appropriate for ITU-T recommendations and other lower level instruments, it said. The rights of telecom operators and service providers to exercise commercial choice and to have operational and technology freedom in providing international telecom services and facilities should be safeguarded, CEPT said.

The economic impact of misuse of numbering resources is “significant” for small island economies in the Pacific Ocean and also for other countries, said the ITU-T study group on numbering. About 200,000 minutes of fraudulent traffic to destinations in Lichtenstein and Somalia were reported over several days, it said. There are “many cases” of misuse of Pacific Island numbers that are not reported because of limited time and financial resources of the small nations, the study group said. Certain types of misuse of numbering resources are apparently not prohibited in some countries, it said. Some organizations exploit loopholes in national rules by basing operations in such countries and publicly offering national and other numbers for premium rate services when those numbers have not been assigned for such purposes, it said.

A definition of fraud specified during a 2009 World Telecommunications Policy Forum does not account for activities involving the misuse or misappropriation of numbering resources, Micronesia, Fiji, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu, Telecom New Zealand and Vodafone said in a submission. The countries proposed a definition of fraud for the regulations as the use of any telecom facilities or services with the intention of avoiding payment, making incorrect payment by making someone else pay, or by using a wrongful or criminal deception to obtain a financial or personal gain. A regional ITU-T group of African countries addressing economic and policy issues backed the definition proposed by the Pacific Islands group, a submission said. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Cuba also backed the proposal. The Pacific Islands group backed a UAE proposal on misuse of numbering resources and calling party identification. The most effective measure to stem misuse would appear to be to ensure that all countries prohibit misuse of international numbering resources, the Pacific Islands group said echoing the UAE proposal.

Intentional misrepresentation of identity adds significantly to the problem of fraudulent activities related to financial dimensions and the assurance of correct payment, Egypt said in a submission. The practice of “hubbing,” where the call origin identifiers are not passed transparently or may be intentionally altered to mislead the destination party, and the increased use of the alternative calling procedures for international traffic, causes other types of harm or disadvantage to the called party or to the terminating administration, operating agency or country, Egypt said.

The UAE and Cuba want to add text that urges ITU members, subject to national law, to ensure that administrations collaborate in preventing and controlling fraud in international telecom by identifying and transmitting to the transit and destination administrations and operating agencies, pertinent information, in particular the calling line code, required for payment for the routing of international traffic. Proposals by the UAE, Cuba and Egypt also request administrations of other countries to investigate calls that can’t be billed, and to help resolve outstanding accounts.

The Pacific Islands group and the UAE proposed a regulatory article so that governments 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. Some ITU member governments have asked for explicit inclusion in the ITRs of an article requiring unconditional transmission of international calling party number and other identifiers, Egypt said in a proposal. It appears necessary to overcome limitations arising from incompatibilities of protocols and systems affecting the proper delivery of calling numbers between countries, Egypt said.

All transmission of calling party identification must be consistent with technical capabilities, the Pacific Islands group said. It would be desirable to harmonize national legal and regulatory frameworks, to ensure the seamless and transparent international transmission of calling party identification, the group said. An article in the regulations could be formulated to encourage harmonization of national legal and regulatory frameworks, it said.

A new ITR article should ask administrations to include in their legal and regulatory frameworks and instruments, clauses to mandate recognized operating agencies to overcome any technical or operational limitations to generate, transparently pass and receive calling party numbers in accordance with the relevant ITU-T recommendations, Egypt said. It said that even in cases where the calling party number is restricted due to a national matter such as national security, at least the national destination code and the country code should be delivered.

The Pacific Islands group, an African regional group, and the UAE supported a new article that international calling party number delivery be provided in accordance with relevant ITU-T recommendations to the greatest extent practicable. Transit administrations and operators must cooperate in identifying and transmitting to termination administrations and operators, the code identifying the calling line corresponding to the traffic they receive, Cuba said. Cuba, the Pacific Islands group and the UAE proposed governments provide for data privacy by authorizing the masking of information other than the country code and national destination code.

Adoption by the 2012 conference of a appropriate provision for call setup when using global numbering would be an effective means of promoting new services in the context of the global information society using global numbering resources, Russia said in a submission. The ITRs do not set out clear recommendations for national regulators on how to classify global telecom services (GTS) and global networks for the purposes of establishing national regulation of the principles and procedures for call setup between the networks of local service providers and the providers of GTS and global networks, Russia said. GTS is a service which enables communication to be established between an end-consumer subscriber and a subject or object whose physical location and national jurisdiction has no bearing on use of the service, Russia said. The service complies with recognized and accepted international standards and is provided over the public telecom network by one or more recognized operating agencies using the identifiers of a ubiquitous network in two or more countries, it said.

The absence of clear recommendations for national regulators in the ITRs leads to the establishment at the national level of rules where a call to a GTS is treated as an international call and is routed via a number of intermediate networks, Russia said. The country said it receives economically unjustified overpricing for local network subscribers calling a GTS or a global network number. Such overestimation of tariffs leads to prohibitive tariff levels and destroys the basis of economic competition, and undermines the opportunities for GTS and global networks, Russia said.