WCIT Delegations Begin Discussing Changes to ITRs at Meeting
The close to 2,000 delegates at the World Conference on International Telecom dug into the hard work to find compromises on some of the controversial issues at WCIT on the future International Telecommunication Regulations (ITR). A core issue at the meeting in Dubai is how the future ITRs deal with pricing and accounting, participants and observers said. If the U.S. has it its way, the relevant article in the 1988 ITRs could disappear.
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FCC International Bureau Chief Mindel De La Torre told WCIT Committee 5’s meeting that reports issued by her office illustrated that settlements based on the old ITR Article 6 were dwindling. “In the most recent report that came out this past summer, only 2 percent of U.S. traffic that is international traffic is settled according to accounting rates,” she said. This was a general trend, she said. “If you look at it by region, there is no region in the world where it’s more than 9 percent. And so it’s very, very small."
The U.S. promotes a proposal to replace Article 6, suppress a related appendix and put in a provision instead that calls for commercial agreements. “That is were we see the trend,” De La Torre said.
Russia’s representative argued that the current ITR provisions already provide for both commercial agreements and settlements, and so different national situations were addressed. “For us,” he said, “it’s 20 percent, where the norms of Article 6 are applied, including settlement of balances of accounts in appendix 1. And that is why we think that there is more opportunity for compromise."
Beside the vastly growing number of commercial arrangements, there are “still many of the old administration types who need to negotiate with each other using the charging and accounting regime,” said Bob Horton, consultant at Australia’s Department Of Broadband, Communication and the Digital Economy. There were “hybrid situations” in which such old administration types had to negotiate with more modern agencies, he said.
Australia will chair a group that tries to find a compromise and address the different types, underlining that its own position was that charging and accounting arrangements between operators were “a commercial matter in the current international telecommunications market” and it’s “inappropriate to mandate matters subject to commercial arrangements in a binding multi-lateral treaty,” said Keith Besgrove, First Assistant Secretary of the Australian Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy. When revising Article 6, provisions had to “reflect high-level and flexible principles” only, that commercial or special arrangements should be allowed to supersede the charging and accounting provisions, said Besgrove.
The ad hoc group on Article 6 will work alongside other ad hoc groups on environmental issues and energy efficiency, on special measures for better connectivity for landlocked countries and on the proposal by the U.S. and others to keep the scope of the treaty limited by not replacing recognized operating agencies with operating agencies. There are more administrative ad-hoc groups like one working on details about ratification of the treaty. Friday, ad hoc and informal groups will bring back the results to the plenary, and some issues like Russia’s Internet chapter will only be discussed on that highest level. The U.S. House voted 397-0 in support of the U.S. WCIT delegation’s efforts. (See separate report below in this issue.) The continuing resolution is nearly the same as one that passed the Senate unanimously in September (CD Aug 3 p10).