EU Nixes Final WCIT Text, Vows to Continue Fighting for a Free Internet
The EU, joining many other delegations in refusing to sign the new International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs) at the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT), remains “100 percent committed to an open Internet,” the European Commission said Friday. The EU worked hard to make constructive updates and revisions to the treaty to bring it up to date while keeping it within appropriate boundaries, it said. There was agreement in several important areas such as price transparency for roaming, global emergency numbers and the updating of charging and accounting arrangements for international telecom traffic, it said. But the proposal to extend the ITRs to cover Internet issues “ruptured the possible fragile compromise,” it said. The final text risked jeopardizing the Internet’s future as well as economic growth, it said. European ISPs slammed some nations for using the conference to try to advance authoritarian controls.
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Nevertheless, the EC doesn’t see the conference as a failure, said Ryan Heath, spokesman for Digital Agenda Commissioner Neelie Kroes. “The talks collapsed, yes, but the real failure would have been if the open internet was put in jeopardy,” he said in an email. “We will continue to push, with the US and others, for a free and open Internet.” During the talks, Heath tweeted that “some countries annoyed they used to be able to pick the EU apart one country at a time -- this time we stuck like glue."
The European Internet Services Providers’ Association strongly backed the decision of EU governments to reject an expanded scope for ITRs. WCIT was a chance to promote the benefits of competitive and liberalized telecom markets, which are achieving so much in the EU and other developed nations and could offer so much to the developing world, it said. But ITU members chose instead to broaden the scope of the ITRs, risking harm to innovation and growth and watering down international human rights standards, it said. “Europe was left with no choice but to reject this approach."
ISPs blasted the “blatant attempts ... by some of the world’s most authoritarian regimes to use concerns about spam and security to legitimise their repressive controls on Internet content,” and to use U.N. agencies to extend the reach of their power. “[T]he blame lies with those non-European governments that insisted on creating new rights for governments instead of focusing on what’s good for end users,” said EuroISPA President Malcolm Hutty. EuroISPA board member Innocenzo Genna went further, writing on his blog (http://bit.ly/ZpJY3P) that failure lies with ITU Secretary General Hamadoun Touré, “who has been trying manipulating [sic] the negotiations with the scope to increase their power and too late realized that also others could manipulate."
The European Telecommunications Network Operators’ Association, whose proposal for a sending-party-pays revision to the ITRs stirred up controversy, said it regretted that “despite the will of all member states to reach a consensus, agreement could not finally be reached on all points.” ETNO Executive Board Chair Luigi Gambardella acknowledged the complexity of the issues, including the scope of the ITRs and related matters. Nevertheless, he said, ETNO still believes there’s a need for “constructive debate and international cooperation” to encourage future growth and sustainability of the international telecom markets, while respecting the principles that led to the success of the Internet: private sector leadership, independent multistakeholder dialogue for Internet governance and commercial agreements.
So what happens now? Genna said that in the absence of a common understanding, the multistakeholder Internet model will continue. However, he told us, “there is an increasing risk of fragmentation,” as countries such as Iran, China, Saudi Arabia and other non-liberal nations are tempted to establish national data networks to run parallel with the Internet, as Cuba already does. Spam, cybercrime and security might also spur controversial national initiatives, he said.
The discussions that ended in Dubai have “greatly advanced our common vision of global cooperative governance of the networks in our new Millennium,” the EC said. The EU will continue to support, with technical assistance, best-practice exchanges and capacity-building, many of the concerns raised by some developing countries, it said.