China favors manipulating voluntary global technical standards via the revised International Telecommunication...

China favors manipulating voluntary global technical standards via the revised International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs) to favor Chinese-owned companies like Huawei, wrote Richard Bennett, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation senior research fellow. China is seeking to alter Internet governance by changing current voluntary global technical standards -- the ITU-T “Recommendations” -- into mandatory “regulations,” he said in a report. “Technical standards are a genuinely global issue, and China has already shown a willingness to involve the ITU-T (ITU’s technical standards arm) in their development when Chinese companies are unable to get their way in the legitimate Internet standards forum, the Internet Engineering Task Force.” Other nations that seek to change the Internet governance structure at the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT), including Russia, can address their underlying issues outside WCIT, Bennett said. Russia recently proposed amending the ITRs to give all ITU member states “equal rights in the international allocation of Internet addressing and identification resources” (CD Nov 21 p7). In Russia’s case, “while [Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers] has been a whipping boy for a variety of interests, its shortcomings are primarily the result of a lack of participation by interested parties. Most ICANN participants today are domain registrars, but others are free to participate as well,” Bennett said (http://xrl.us/bn3moh).