Reality ‘On the Ground’ for ITRs Includes Problematic Proposals, FCC’s O'Brien Says

The “on-the-ground” reality of revising the International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs) is more mundane than many press reports indicate, but there are still plenty of proposals the U.S. remains concerned about, said Kathryn O'Brien, FCC assistant International Bureau chief. ITU members are to revise the ITRs at the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT), which begins Dec. 3 in Dubai. “You may have seen some references in the press to this U.N. conference in Dubai in December, and concerns about the U.N. ’taking over the Internet,'” O'Brien said Wednesday at a Federal Communications Bar Association forum. “There is no sort of U.N. takeover of Internet governance, the specific functions of [the Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)] at this particular conference. … But there are still huge, huge areas in this conference for the U.S., for the government and private sector, to worry about."

The U.S. wants to keep the treaty-level ITRs a high-level document, as it was when the ITU first adopted the ITRs in 1988, O'Brien said. The U.S. had been resistant to reopening the ITRs for revision for about a decade, she said. “We basically kicked the can down the road procedurally because we knew that once it was opened, there would be a lot of interest to do things with this treaty that the U.S. did not like.” The U.S.’s official position papers for WCIT, filed Aug. 3, propose only minor changes to the ITRs to update the document for the telecom situation as it currently exists and to reinforce the principle of market competition (CD Aug 6 p2). Some ITU members want to change the ITRs to make it apply to specific regulatory issues, O'Brien said. “To my mind, they really boil down to two main themes -- ‘we want our money’ and ‘we want control,'” she said.

Telecom revenue flows were highly predictable in 1988, but have diversified in the years since as a result of market liberalization and changes in technology, O'Brien said. “[Some countries] are considering this treaty as a way to address that situation and find some other ways to get back their money,” she said. The U.S. has publicly opposed a proposal by the European Telecommunications Network Operators’ Association (ETNO) that would establish a “sender-party-pays” model for Internet traffic compensation that could require the sender of any Internet content to pay for its transmission. ETNO has said the proposal is a way to equalize what it believes is an imbalance between the amount of revenue operators receive and the amount of traffic streamed (CD Sept 12 p5).

It was easy to track telecom traffic when the ITRs were introduced in 1988, but that’s now difficult because of new Internet and telecom technologies, O'Brien said. “This causes great anxiety for a lot of governments who want to know where traffic is coming from, how it is being routed, either so they can stick the appropriate fee on it or so that they can control it if it contains content that they don’t like,” she said. The U.S. has voiced concerns about proposals it attributes to China, Russia and other ITU members that address cybersecurity issues in ways that could lead to increased Internet censorship (CD Sept 24 p3).

Google is concerned some countries are using the ITU and revisions to the ITRs to exert additional control over Internet content, said Sarah Falvey, Google policy manager. “The ITU is really just the latest battleground of governments’ desire to have increased control over the Internet,” she said. Google wants to ensure the ITU is not able to increase the scope of its mission to include the Internet, Falvey said. “If it were to happen … you will not see the Internet evolve in the same way that we've seen the Internet evolve over the past 20-plus years it’s been in existence,” she said. “You'll definitely not see the same kind of global buildout that we've seen.”

The U.S. cable TV industry is interested in WCIT and the ITRs because of the industry’s stake in the Internet, said Bill Check, NCTA senior vice president-science and technology. “We certainly support the efforts of the U.S. government and the State Department to keep the treaty at a high level,” he said.