Re: WCIT outcome?

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

I'v been hesitating to join in here because this seems distinctly OT
to me, but there are some basics that need to be understood:

On 31/12/2012 21:08, John Day wrote:
> At 1:05 PM -0500 12/31/12, Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:
>> On Mon, Dec 31, 2012 at 9:51 AM, John Day
>> <<mailto:[e-mail]>[e-mail]> wrote:

...
>> MPs and Congressmen are elected decision makers. ITU participants can
>> make decisions but they are not binding on anyone and only have effect
>> if people like me choose to implement them.
> 
> This was my point. The standards part of ITU is just like any other
> standards organization. But there are other things it does which are not
> like this, e.g. spectrum allocation.  There are other aspects with
> respect to tariffs that are binding on signatories.

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**. 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.

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.

** CCITT document D.1. The 1988 version includes the restrictions on
use of leased lines:
http://www.itu.int/rec/dologin_pub.asp?lang=e&id=T-REC-D.1-198811-S!!PDF-E&type=items

The 1991 version is much less restrictive, but it remains the case that
interconnections are all "subject to national laws" and that is the basis
for all national limitations on the Internet today. Nevertheless, the 1991
revision of D.1 was absolutely essential for the Internet to grow
internationally.

It would be foolish to imagine that the Internet is in some way immune
to ITU-T regulations, which is why the effort to defeat the more radical
WCIT proposals was so important.

   Brian