Please consider signing this petition:
Please learn a little more about the ITU before doing so. There is
more to the ITU than the dysfunctional ITU-T, and the political
fallout from the US being seen as a big rich bully taking its wallet
and going home is likely not worth the trivial amount of money
involved.
On that I would agree. ITU-D and ITU-R do a lot of good work. ITU-T does reasonable work, for the most part, in regulatory matters, which neither the IGF nor the IETF address. Frankly, if the ITU gets shut down, ITU-R, ITU-D, and the regulatory component of ITU-T will have to be re-created to accomplish those roles. Where we have travelled in circles with the ITU is in conflicting technical standardization and in the desire of ITU-T staff to take over certain functions from ICANN and the NRO. Shutting down the ITU would be in effect discarding the baby with the bathwater.
http://www.itu.int/en/ITU-R/pages/default.aspx
http://www.itu.int/en/ITU-D/Pages/default.aspx
ITU-D and ITU-R do a lot of good work.
Care to try to cite an example? R we can't pull out of because NRO needs its slots. I'm not sure that constitutes "good work." It's minor ledger-keeping, and that's why it's excluded from the petition.
Shutting down the ITU would be in effect discarding the baby with the bathwater.
You're being awfully naive, Fred. It's a 147-year-old, $180M/year baby with a serious corruption problem, that wants to shut the Internet down so that it can go back to doing things the way it was before we all showed up. I expect you think you're being sophisticated and taking a nuanced view or some such, but you aren't. Note that the _entire_ congress disagrees with you. Not a single vote in favor of the ITU in S. Con. Res. 50 or H. Con. Res. 127. And if you think that any of the Internet agrees with you, you should take a look at Reddit sometime.
-Bill
Trivial to whom? Is $11M/year trivial relative to the $181M/year ITU budget? Relative to the $2M/year IETF budget? Relative to the $600K/year budget of NANOG? The petition does not suggest "taking its wallet and going home," it suggests reallocating money from an organization that's fighting against the Internet, to organizations that are fighting for the Internet, and doing so much more efficiently. This is as much about funding NANOG and the IETF as it is about removing 7.7% of the ITU's budget. You really think the ITU can make better use of that money than NANOG and the IETF?
-Bill
Purely for accuracy:
Current IETF expenditures are around US$ 5M - 5.5M.
The ISOC "Direct Contribution Excluding Development" is just over US$ 2M:
http://iaoc.ietf.org/documents/YEF-2012-2015.pdf
d/
> ITU-D and ITU-R do a lot of good work.
Care to try to cite an example? R we can't pull out of because NRO needs its slots. I'm not sure that constitutes "good work." It's minor ledger-keeping, and that's why it's excluded from the petition.
beside the NRO (the real one), DoD and the FCC and NTIA are all invested in a working ITU-R - there is
something to be said for products that work outside the US borders as well as within.
> Shutting down the ITU would be in effect discarding the baby with the bathwater.
You're being awfully naive, Fred. It's a 147-year-old, $180M/year baby with a serious corruption problem, that wants to shut the Internet down so that it can go back to doing things the way it was before we all showed up. I expect you think you're being sophisticated and taking a nuanced view or some such, but you aren't. Note that the _entire_ congress disagrees with you. Not a single vote in favor of the ITU in S. Con. Res. 50 or H. Con. Res. 127. And if you think that any of the Internet agrees with you, you should take a look at Reddit sometime.
it is true that among the public, congress has a lower approval rating than cockroaches (at least according
to NPR). I understand a little of your vitriol, but since it is possible to fund -by sector-, there is
no good reason to tar the entire Union with the same brush.
-Bill
/bill
and going home is likely not worth the trivial amount of money involved.
Trivial to whom? Is $11M/year trivial relative to the $181M/year ITU budget? Relative to the $2M/year IETF budget? Relative to the $600K/year budget of NANOG?
Trivial to the US government, who's appropriating the money, of course.
Not trivial to the ITU-R and ITU-D. You know what they are, right?
This is as much about funding NANOG and the IETF as it is about removing 7.7% of the ITU's budget.
If I were trying to think of a way to totally destroy the effectiveness of the IETF, loading it up with millions of dollars that come with political strings attached would be about the best one I could imagine. Congrats.
R's,
John
Bill, please read the petition before attempting to comment on it.
Again, the petition specifically excludes ITU-R, for exactly the reasons that you and I have both just cited.
And if you think it's possible to fund by sector, you're not paying close enough attention, and haven't read the ITU budget documents I provided with the petition.
- It's only possible for sector members to fund by sector.
- This petition does not address sector members.
- It's not possible for governments to fund by sector.
- Money is fungible.
So, here, have some rope: how would you fund by sector?
-Bill
-R is excluded from the petition. (From a number of postings, it appears that many folk haven't noticed that.)
I don't know anything about -D.
In the interest of adding some core information to the thread, could you provide a brief summary of its job and benefits (with any concerns that are broadly held)?
I'm not asking you to defend your views but to provide a most basic tutorial on -D. The more objective the better.
Thanks.
d/
If I were trying to think of a way to totally destroy the effectiveness of
the IETF, loading it up with millions of dollars that come with political
strings attached would be about the best one I could imagine. Congrats.
Yes, please redirect from ITU-T to ICANN instead <G>
Even if there were no ITU we'd have to invent one, to paraphrase
Voltaire's quip about God.
There'd have to be some organization to negotiate and oversee
international settlements and other, similar, regulations.
And it would probably end up being about the same because who'd be
involved but about the same people and organizations (particularly the
PTTs et al)?
If you sincerely wanted to get rid of the ITU or pieces thereof the
only way would be to form some alternative organization, perhaps with
different policy and process rules, and use it to supplant them.
Actually, no matter how you got rid of the ITU that's what you'd end
up with because much of what they do would happen somehow, but without
a real plan probably by even worse means like shadowy inter-PTT
organizations arising without any accountability or transparency.
Bill,
I don't accept the premise that (a) the settlement free peering model
as modernly practiced can not also be characterized as problematic,
and that (b) the intents (note the plural) of the states authors of
the several policy proposals advanced at wcit are reasonably, or
usefully so characterized.
Eric
Some people have asked about the ITU-D. The -D stands for
"Development", but it could also stand for "Discuss". This is the arm
of the ITU that does capacity building and outreach of various sorts.
There are four programs in D, including one that focuses on operational
aspects and another on training material. There are also study groups
in D where regulators and the sort show up to discuss societal aspects
of technology. This is an important dialog. It provides us all an
opportunity to listen in on where various countries need help, where
they have misunderstandings, and what experiences they are having. D
does not make standards or regulations.
Of course the -D sector is not without its challenges. For one, it
tends to take what happens in -T as gospel. That, I believe, is
correctable in several different ways. One of those ways would be for
them to collaborate more with organizations like this one.
Eliot
The regulatory side of ITU-T is responsible for much of the damaging legacy Telecom attitude of revenue entitlement.
I think defunding that and seeing what is developed in its place might well be a good thing.
Owen
Even if there were no ITU we'd have to invent one, to paraphrase
Voltaire's quip about God.There'd have to be some organization to negotiate and oversee
international settlements and other, similar, regulations.
Why? The internet has operated just fine without such for quite some time
now.
And it would probably end up being about the same because who'd be
involved but about the same people and organizations (particularly the
PTTs et al)?
Which is a good argument that such an organization has, in fact, become
an anachronism.
If you sincerely wanted to get rid of the ITU or pieces thereof the
only way would be to form some alternative organization, perhaps with
different policy and process rules, and use it to supplant them.
If you don't believe that the internet is in the process of supplanting
traditional telephony, you aren't paying attention.
The internet has had such organizations for some time now.
The petition specifically focuses on moving US funding from the ITU to
those organizations (which does give me pause… I think I prefer the
organizations in question not being purchased by the USG).
Actually, no matter how you got rid of the ITU that's what you'd end
up with because much of what they do would happen somehow, but without
a real plan probably by even worse means like shadowy inter-PTT
organizations arising without any accountability or transparency.
Such organizations would be scattered and far less effective. I would
rather take my chances against them than the current ITU structure.
Owen
There'd have to be some organization to negotiate and oversee
international settlements and other, similar, regulations.Why? The internet has operated just fine without such for quite some time
now.
The Internet is held together with spit and duct tape, and sucks for
connections that need a stable low-jitter channel, we've all noticed.
It has no principle of universal service.
The Internet does what it does surprisingly well, but it's not the
same kind of network as the phone system. We all know of the abuses
that can come with mandatory interconnection and settlements, but the
solution is not to cut off the poor countries.
less well developed countries often have their telecoms requirements
serviced by an incumbent monopoly, often involving government ownership and
usually involving little or no functional regulation. 20 years ago, the
ISP that I worked for was paying about $20,000/meg/month for IP transit.
It didn't drop to where it is now because of ITU regulations,
interconnection settlements or by maintaining the government-owned monopoly
of the time. I'm struggling to understand why people view these things as
solutions to a problem, rather than the root cause.
Nick
I'm of the camp that says that, in large measure, the only beneficial
elements of international telecommunications agreements have been to
define an international band plan for the radio spectrum. That was,
afterall, the principal reason these treaties were signed, to prevent
chaos within the spectrum. (That was also the genesis of the FCC. Too
bad it didn't confine itself to that.)
I'm sure there have been other useful things to come about but the
have been abd continue to be considerably overshadowed by the
detrimental effects of excessive meddling.
-Wayne
A point of clarification:
I'm of the camp that says that, in large measure, the only beneficial
elements of international telecommunications agreements have been to
define an international band plan for the radio spectrum. That was,
afterall, the principal reason these treaties were signed, to prevent
chaos within the spectrum. (That was also the genesis of the FCC. Too
bad it didn't confine itself to that.)
There are at least three sets of treaty texts. The first is the output
of the ITU Plenipotentiary conference, which consists of its
Constitution and Convention and a number of resolutions, the second are
the ITRs (over which we just had the fractious affair in Dubai), and the
third are the Radio Regulations. You refer to the 3rd set of text and
you clearly are not alone in terms of your thoughts about the ITRs since
55 countries did not sign them.
Eliot
I have no reason whatsoever to believe that defunding the ITU would
cut off the poor countries.
Quite the contrary, actually. I believe that the combination of the ITU
and the back-pocket distribution of settlement checks has held back the
improvement of digital connections to poorer countries.
Owen