Internet Issues Up for Debate at ITU Summit This Week

The U.S. and ITU hope to return to a more consensus-based approach to international telecom and Internet policy Tuesday when the ITU convenes the World Telecommunication/ICT Policy Forum (WTPF), industry and government officials told us. WTPF is the ITU’s first major telecom summit since the controversial World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT), which met in Dubai in December. The WCIT, convened to update the treaty-level International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs), resulted in a series of fractious votes and a revised treaty that only 89 ITU member nations signed. The U.S. was among the 55 nations that did not sign the ITRs, citing the existence of Internet governance-related language within the ITRs and in an attached non-binding resolution. The U.S. remains a signatory of the original ITRs adopted in 1988 (CD Dec 17 p1). WTPF will also tackle Internet-related topics, but industry insiders told us it will be a far different conference than WCIT.

This week’s WTPF will result in a set of non-binding opinions that will be based on delegates’ consensus-driven revisions to a report from ITU Secretary-General Hamadoun Touré and a series of six attached opinions from the ITU-convened multistakeholder Informal Experts Group (IEG). Unlike WCIT, this year’s WTPF has long been planned to exclusively focus on Internet-related issues, said Eli Dourado, a research fellow at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center and a member of the U.S.’s WTPF delegation. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Sepulveda, head of the U.S. delegation to the WTPF, did not respond to an interview request.

Touré’s report focuses on themes WTPF delegates will discuss, including the ITU’s role in Internet governance issues, the definitions of “multistakeholderism” and “enhanced cooperation” within the governance debate, quality of service issues, human rights within the ICT debate, development of affordable Internet access and civil society’s role in ITU discussions. The IEG opinions promote Internet exchange points (IXPs) as a “long term solution to advance connectivity,” support the transition from IPv4 to IPv6, encourage capacity-building for IPv6 deployment, support an “enabling environment” for broadband connectivity growth, support multistakeholderism in Internet governance and support the Enhanced Cooperation Process (http://bit.ly/10AwX8J). Since WTPF will only last two and a half days, much of the debate will center on the IEG opinions; there may not be enough time for delegates to make any significant changes to Touré’s report, Dourado said. WCIT lasted nearly two weeks.

The U.S. has officially expressed support for the IEG draft opinions and is optimistic it can build off them. But the delegation said in its own preparatory WTPF contribution that it has concerns about the IEG’s language on multistakeholderism and enhanced cooperation. Despite those concerns, “we recognize, as we hope all participants do, that to attempt to renegotiate the text or introduce new topics or opinions during this meeting would cause significant difficulties and upset the consensus already achieved,” the delegation said in its contribution (http://bit.ly/16mvZiX). The U.S. remains committed to its position that current multistakeholder organizations, including the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers and the World Wide Web Consortium, are best equipped to govern the Internet. Sepulveda and NTIA Administrator Larry Strickling said in a statement they believe it’s those groups’ ability “to adapt to the needs of stakeholders that makes them so well positioned to carry out their governance responsibilities” (http://1.usa.gov/10L6PC8).

The U.S. communications sector agrees with the government’s position headed into the WTPF, said a source familiar with the matter. Industry players were a major influence on the U.S. delegation to WCIT, but did not have speaking or voting rights at the conference; the ITU is allowing sector members, including corporations, to speak during the WTPF. Industry players see WTPF as a way to discuss global Internet policy developments in a more flexible way, the source said, saying conversations outside of the formal meeting proceedings will be particularly important. The point is to ensure the WTPF debate doesn’t result in an implicit extension of the ITU’s role in Internet governance issues, the source said. U.S. industry also views the conference as an opportunity to create momentum on issues like broadband deployment, which can be examined without diluting views on Internet governance, the source said.

Five other nations had also sent contributions to the WTPF as of our deadline -- Australia, Brazil, Mexico, the Russian Federation and Turkey. Dourado said he didn’t want to speculate on how hard some nations may push their positions at the conference, though he said Russia’s contribution is “very aggressive.” Russia proposes editing the IEG opinion on multistakeholderism to expand national governments’ role in Internet governance. Russia proposes adding language that would, among other things, invite states to “exercise their rights on Internet Governance to control distribution, appropriation and development of Internet numbering, naming, addressing and identification resources and support the operation and development of the basic information and communication infrastructure, include the Internet, at the national level” (http://bit.ly/10LuiTK). Russia proposed adding similar language to the ITRs during WCIT, but failed to get it into the final document. The U.S. does not agree with that type of language as a matter of policy, but recognizes it is a matter for ongoing discussion, particularly given Russia’s desire to join the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The OECD requires member states to develop Internet policy principles that promote the free flow of information online. The U.S. also views the debate over multistakeholderism as an opportunity to engage with countries in the developing world that remain in the middle ground between the U.S. and other pro-multistakeholder nations, and authoritarian nations that prefer more national control of Internet governance.

WTPF has not generated the same level of public attention as WCIT did, in part, because its results are non-binding, Dourado said. There’s “not as much at stake” in a WTPF-style policy discussion as there is when a treaty is being revised, said a source familiar with the matter. Some consider the WTPF a “fluff event with zero force and effect, and therefore the machinations make little difference,” said Tony Rutkowski, a senior research fellow at the Georgia Institute of Technology who previously worked in the ITU secretariat. While Rutkowski said he believes that is true to an extent, the results of WTPF “can produce collateral damage at events that make a difference,” such as the ITU Plenipotentiary Conference. That conference, set for Oct. 20-Nov. 7, 2014, in Busan, South Korea, will determine the ITU’s governance and agenda for the next four years.

The ITU has made the entire WTPF process much more transparent than WCIT, which has also reduced the amount of attention to the conference, said Dourado, who collaborated with fellow Mercatus Center research fellow Jerry Brito in the lead-up to WCIT to release WCIT documents through the site WCITLeaks.org. The ITU’s decision to limit public access to WCIT documents was seen as damaging to the process, leading sites like WCITLeaks and .Nxt to publish leaked documents related to the conference (CD Nov 26 p3). In the lead-up to WTPF, “all documents associated with the meeting and the preparatory process are publicly available, so there hasn’t been as much of a need for WCITLeaks to get involved,” Dourado said. “I expect that there will be more grassroots activism and media coverage of the Plenipotentiary Conference in 2014, both because of the legal status of that meeting and because it’s not clear that the process will be open to public scrutiny,” he said.