U.S. Draws Hard Line at WCIT, Wants ITRs Limited to Universal Service Carriers

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates -- The U.S. delegation put its foot down in Wednesday’s session of the World Conference on International Telecommunications. There must be clear limitations on what kind of operators will be covered by the International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs), said Richard Beaird, deputy head of the U.S. delegation, introducing language to limit the treaty to “operating agencies authorized or recognized by a Member State to establish and operate a public correspondence international telecommunications service."

The U.S. said the text would finally resolve the dispute over whether operating agencies or registered operating agencies should be subject to the ITRs. But the issue was still undecided as of late Wednesday Dubai time, as were the issues of Internet naming and numbering.

Terry Kramer, head of the U.S. delegation, told us: “By introducing the term correspondence we wanted to make it completely clear that this is about public telecom operators, and private networks or government networks are not included.” Kramer said “correspondence” would limit the scope to those operators that have universal service obligations.

Kramer said there was concern that negotiations “were going into the wrong direction.” Asked if they could fail altogether, Kramer said: “At some point you possibly have to say that this is not going to happen.” For the moment, Kramer said, his recommendation to the WCIT chair would be to focus much more on the original ITRs’ text.

There’s no possible compromise on any inclusion of the Internet in any way, Kramer said. The Wednesday plenary included a bitter debate about the proposed inclusion of “naming, numbering, addressing and identifying resources” into the ITRs. All of Europe, Japan, Canada and Australia, plus the U.S., clearly rejected the Internet provision.

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski observed that “the situation is fluid” at WCIT, which he and Commissioner Robert McDowell attended. “The issues are important and I think we all understand that this will not be the last conference at which these important issues arise,” Genachowski said at House Communications Subcommittee hearing Wednesday. “Fighting for Internet freedom and openness globally will be something that we'll all be working on together for quite some time.”

It’s decision time for WCIT, McDowell said at the hearing. “Right now is a crucial time,” he said. “Literally, as we sit here, it’s nighttime in Dubai and it’s at a crucial intersection and the next 12 to 24 hours will determine the fate of things.” Both FCC members noted that the questions are likely to arise again, especially at the ITU Plenipotentiary Conference in 2016.

"The term naming, numbering and addressing, and identification resources is a very broad one and includes names and numbers not within the ITU. Germany therefore preferred to suppress such regulation,” said Hubert Schoettner from the German Ministry of Economy. “A red line is a red line,” said one member of the German delegation after the debate.

Europe also rejected the new paragraphs on security and spam. Anders Jonsson, head of the Swedish delegation, said: “We do not see how this paragraph can apply without looking into the content of the messages and then we are discussing content. And I thought everybody agreed we should exclude content.” A proposal to add in the preamble a provision clearly excluding all content issues from the ITRs, by WCIT Chair Mohamed Al Ghanim, failed.

There were harsh reactions to the red lines by countries seeking a broader scope, and once more the negotiation seemed close to a breakup. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Russia eventually said that, given the lack of compromise, they wanted to officially submit their own, much debated proposal.

The UAE-led proposal clearly would make the ITRs an Internet treaty. Tariq Al Awadhi, leading negotiator for the UAE, warned that the Arab group would consider resubmitting all proposals “including telecommunication/ICT and telecommunication/ICT services, fraud, spam, whatever.” He said the Arab group was the first to compromise and had withdrawn some of its proposals, but was prepared to resubmit them, including proposals to control numbering, naming, and addressing. The Arab delegations have repeatedly said none of the resolutions were about the Internet, Internet content or Internet governance.

The delegations again got mired in a debate over a proposed Internet resolution that advances the ITU work on Internet governance. Al Ghanim eventually declared that the resolution passed after a majority of delegations indicated by a show of plates -- rather than an actual vote -- that they supported the resolution. Kramer said during the meeting that the U.S. was opposed to the resolution. “We do not believe the focus of this conference should be on the Internet and we did not come to this conference in anticipation of a discussion on the Internet,” he said. There are other fora like the World Telecom Policy Forum next year where that could be discussed, Kramer said.

Al Ghanim said he was surprised at U.S. opposition to the resolution, since “I thought we have reached a consensus where the U.S. agreed to remove text related to Internet from the body of the ITR[s] and put it in a resolution and [ITU Secretary-General Hamadoun Touré] went through that line-by-line.” Al Ghanim had threatened to postpone further discussion of the resolution because the session was already running long and because “we are not moving forward."

The resolution was resurrected after Touré pleaded with the delegates to accept it. The resolution would be more palatable than more controversial proposals that had previously been on the table. “That is the risk we are running and at this late hour we don’t want to put that back on the table,” he said. “Please, if we can add a few references of broadband on this text, and make it work, this current text doesn’t harm anyone."

As the plenary session stretched into early Thursday morning Dubai time, progress on issues still on the table at WCIT remained “inconclusive,” a U.S. official told us in an email. “We'll know more tomorrow."

A bad outcome from WCIT has big implications for international companies like Verizon, even if the U.S. doesn’t go along, Senior Vice President Kathy Brown said at a recent Phoenix Center conference. “It obviously increases the costs of doing business, but could actually change the way we do business, something I think nobody wants,” Brown said. “If you look at the map of the world and you look at where the international networks are … we are among the largest international networks,” she said. “We are connecting the world. We are the Internet backbone. It’s very important not only to the United States, to our companies, of course, I don’t want to be overdramatic, but to the world."

McDowell agreed with Brown. “Regardless of the outcome of the WCIT, the implications will be far-reaching -- either all policies will be adopted by some nations or blocs of nations that will affect the Internet and have a ripple effect back in the states and/or issues will be delayed until a much bigger negotiation in 2016,” McDowell told us. “But the uncertainty created by a bifurcated Internet between those countries that want more regulation versus those that prefer the multistakeholder model will drive up costs and inhibit innovation in all countries."

"We're concerned about any changes to the fundamental open architecture of the Internet,” said Free Press Policy Director Matt Wood. “Threats to that openness can come from governments censoring their citizens, or from network operators blocking innovation while exacting new tolls for Internet traffic. The ITU is a concern because it lacks transparent processes, and while it cannot force changes upon individual countries or companies it can set bad precedent and bad examples."

"My sense is there’s indeed potential for harm to individual companies-- albeit to varying degrees -- from global-based regulation of the Internet,” said Jeff Silva, analyst at Medley Global Advisors. “In the long term, the overall negative economic impact of overlaying such a regime on the web could be significant in ways explicit and subtle. The risk is not limited to only existing companies currently in Internet space and those who depend on unfettered web access. On a fundamental level, any system that restricts free expression necessarily has the ability to limit ideas and the kind of creative spark at the heart of innovation … and wealth creation generally.” The push for ITU power over the Internet “appears in part to be a power grab by certain actors on the world stage,” Silva said. “While there’s some truth in former President Bill Clinton’s observation that policing the internet is like trying to nail Jell-O to a wall, a number of countries are obviously up for the challenge if they can secure political cover from a global regulatory body. Even if they fail in Dubai, as I suspect they will, they are unlikely to surrender their cause. This is the beginning, not the end, of this debate. The U.S. and its allies on this issue should be prepared to re-fight this battle for years to come.”