Re: WCIT outcome?

[Brian E Carpenter <[e-mail]>]

On 01/01/2013 18:32, John Day wrote:
...

>> Not only tariffs. Historically, it was national enforcement of
>> international
>> regulations set by CCITT (now known as ITU-T) that prevented
>> interconnection
>> of leased lines**.
> 
> But creating a VPN with in an international carrier that crossed
> national boundaries would not fall under that rule?  Actually neither
> would a VPN operating over a couple of carriers that crossed national
> boundaries, would it?

That depended on how the various national monopolists chose to
interpret the rules. In Switzerland we were particularly affected
by the fact that the PTT monopoly was a specific line item in the
federal Constitution. In the US, you had the benefit of Judge Greene.

>> This is an arcane point today, but if CERN hadn't been
>> able to use its status as an international organization to bypass that
>> restriction in the 1980s, it's unlikely that TBL and Robert Cailliau
>> would
>> ever have been able to propagate the web. It's even unlikely that Phill
>> would have been able to access Usenet newsgroups while on shift as a grad
>> student on a CERN experiment.
> 
> ;-) Actually what they don't know won't hurt them.  ;-) We were moving
> files from CERN to Argonne in the 70s through the 360/95 at Rutherford
> over the ARPANET.   Not exactly the way you want to do it but 15 years
> later I am sure it was upgraded a bit.

This would probably have counted as a store-and-forward network,
which was exempted in many countries.

>> Also, it is exactly because ITU was in charge of resource allocations
>> such as radio spectrum and top-level POTS dialling codes that it was
>> a very plausible potential home for IANA in 1997-8, before ICANN was
>> created. Some of the ITU people who were active in that debate were just
>> as active in the preparation for WCIT in 2012.
> 
> Yea, this one is more dicey.  Although I think there is an argument that
> says that you need ccoperation among providers about assignment, but I
> don't see why governments need to be involved.  When phone companies
> were owned by governments, then it made sense.  But phone companies are
> owned by governments any more.
> 
> That doesn't leave much does it?  (Not a facetious question, I am asking!)

Indeed. But I think you'll find that in general, the countries that signed
the WCIT treaty are those that still have some semblance of a government-
controlled PTT monopoly.

On 01/01/2013 18:36, Alessandro Vesely wrote:

> Was D.1 to ease wire tapping?

No. It was all about preserving the lucrative PTT monopolies.

On 01/01/2013 22:13, Jaap Akkerhuis wrote:

> In the early eigthies, after consulting with the telecom authorithy
> in the Netherlands we got the green light to move data for third
> parties, and thus the (then uucp based) EUnet was born.

Exactly, and EARN (European BITNET) was just the same.

> The green
> light was given in the anticipation of the libiralization of the
> EU telcom market. 

Exactly, and the 1988 revision of regulation D.1 was closely related
to the general move toward telecom liberalization.

As I said - this stuff *matters* for the Internet (both historically
and for the future).

    Brian