World Telecommunication Day

Paul McCord writes "The International Telecommunication Union is asking everyone to join in for World Telecommunication Day 2003, Saturday, May 17. The ITU suggests that this is 'an excellent opportunity to launch public campaigns and advocacy activities in favour of greater access to [information and communication technology] and how the work of ITU helps all of the world's people to communicate.' It may be a bit late to join in on some of the official activities, but awareness if nothing else will help to serve the day's purpose. See the WTD2003 site or this Google News query for information, links."

Comments

Hmm

[ergonal]

Here in .au, there's a story about plans to add submarine cable protection zones. Do other countries already have similar restrictions in place? I would be interested to know. Thanks. (Submarine cable is related to international telecommunications, so I'm not entirely Off-topic!)

This is great and all

[Anonymous Coward]

But don't forget, infact remind yourself often, that there are more telephones in new york city than there are in the whole of Africa

Long live global capitalism then eh?

ICANN

[pchown]

There are those who would like to see the ITU take over from ICANN. I'm not sure that the ITU is the perfect organisation to do it. It is bureaucratic and is a group of telcos rather than including wider Internet interests. However, I do agree that it would be a lot better than what we have at the moment.

Perhaps World Telecommunications Day would be a good opportunity for the ITU to put this agenda forward.

ITU is anti-democracy, anti-access to technology

[raju1kabir]

There are those who would like to see the ITU take over from ICANN. I'm not sure that the ITU is the perfect organisation to do it. It is bureaucratic and is a group of telcos rather than including wider Internet interests. However, I do agree that it would be a lot better than what we have at the moment.

I for one could not imagine anything worse.

The ITU takes every available opportunity to put itself between enabling technologies and the people who could benefit from them.

Here's what the internet would look like under ITU:

1. Standards documents are copyrighted, redistribution is forbidden, and cost $1,000 and up from the ITU Publications office (go ahead, try to get a protocol definition off their site).

2. No individuals or companies have any representation or even a right to comment except at the request of their government.

3. Decisions are made by a collection of national telecom monopolies who have a strong vested interest in stifling any development that cannibalizes their core revenues (i.e., overpriced landline phone service).

4. Arbitrary complexity will be added to all communications protocols in order to ensure difficulty of reverse-engineering.

5. Absolutely everything will be regulated to death and beyond.

6. New technology adoption will languish several years behind competing environments. In fact, for this reason, I speculate that if the ITU does manage to gain any appreciable control over internet infrastructure, interesting activity on the internet will quietly migrate to a "same but different" network free of their stifling control.

Frustrated by the growth of the internet at the expense of the centralized data network they had been advocating, and livid at the way that techologies like VOIP have decreased the relevance of their constituent monopolies, for the last few years all the ITU has really done is schemed for a hostile takeover of the internet. It's as dangerous as dealing with a herd of angry dinosaurs: While they are rapidly growing technologically irrelevant, their bureaucratic and political skills are well-honed and they are both rich and ruthless.

In sum: ITU = enemy of the people, enemy of the internet, enemy of affordable communications, enemy of democracy. And I say this as a touchy-feely left wing one-worlder. If you're anywhere to the right of me you should be outside their gates with a torch and pitchfork.