ITU: Internet policy still on agenda

IDG News Service - Public policy formulation in all domains, including the Internet, is the sovereign right of member states, said ITU Secretary General Hamadoun Toure on Wednesday, suggesting that a debate over control of the Internet is far from over at the telecommunications body.

Toure was quoting from the Internet governance section of the Tunis Agenda in 2005 of the World Summit on the Information Society.

The Tunis Agenda also acknowledged the crucial facilitating role intergovernmental organizations, such as the International Telecommunication Union, have and should continue to have in the coordination of Internet-related public policy issues, Toure said.

The issue of the control and regulation of the Internet divided the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) in December, hosted by the ITU in Dubai.

"It was disappointing in Dubai to see attempts to derail the conference by those who were persuaded that Internet control was an issue for discussion, when it was not," Toure said on Wednesday to the Council Working Group on International Internet-Related Public Policy, according to a transcript on the ITU website. He said he was meeting some of the members for the first time after the WCIT.

The Internet cannot and does not work without telecommunications infrastructure, Toure said.

"And that's what WCIT-12 was really all about -- creating the right environment for telecommunications infrastructure investment and rollout," he added.

The final treaty of the WCIT, which comes into effect in 2015, did not refer to the management of the Internet, but a non-binding proposal in the appendix stated that all governments should have an equal role and responsibility for international Internet governance, the security and stability of the Internet, and its future development.

Issues of Internet policy and governance are expected to come up during the current meeting as well as at the World Telecommunication/Information and Communication Technology Policy Forum (WTPF) to be held in Geneva in May, which is focused on "international Internet-related public policy matters."

The draft of the ITU's secretary general's report, which when finalized will be the background paper for the WTPF, has indicated that the forum will discuss a variety of issues relating to the Internet, though these will not result in prescriptive decisions but only non-binding opinions. The draft was posted on the ITU website and is open for comments till Feb. 1.

Among the issues to be discussed are earlier resolutions relating to Internet Protocol based networks, ITU's role with regard to international public policy issues pertaining to the Internet and the management of Internet resources, including domain names and addresses, and roles of administrations of member states in the management of internationalized (multilingual) domain names.