IP: An old ITU dinosaur -- Comm Week Int'l Article

[Dave Farber <farber@cis.upenn.edu>]

>
>From: "A.M.Rutkowski" <amr@NGI.ORG>
>Subject:      relevant Comm Week Int'l Article
>To: CYBERTELECOM-L@LISTSERV.AOL.COM
>
>BOTTOM LINE by A. M. Rutkowski
>
>An old ITU dinosaur that became extinct in the
>early 1990s has once again reared its head.
>
>Operating under the simple moniker of SG3, this
>group and its predecessors controlled for over
>150 years not only the rates charged for
>international telecoms services, but also the
>ability of competitors to enter the market. Now
>10 years later, like some Creature from the
>Black Lagoon, SG3 has been electrified into
>existence, ready to take on the Internet world.
>Part of the "electrification" has come from
>mischievous prodding by the ITU general
>secretariat staff over the past couple of years
>on the perceived inequities of a global free
>market in Internet connectivity. In other
>words, if you are an ISP and want your customer
>traffic hauled everywhere in the world, you
>find another ISP capable of doing that and cut
>a deal. It's called the market.
>
>Several months ago, the prodding of the SG3
>beast paid off. Australia introduced a proposal
>in the ITU's Asia-Pacific TAS group calling for
>SG3 to begin regulating Internet settlements.
>The idea was to garner a large bloc of
>developing country votes by evangelizing the
>proposal as the way to achieve "Universal
>Internet Access"-an amusing twist of the
>Digital Divide theme.
>
>Sure enough, the juggernaut began to roll. In
>February, the TAS group approved an Internet
>settlements norm; and with the bloc votes
>secured, energized SG3 into action and rammed
>through formal approval last month over the
>strong objections of the United States, Canada,
>the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Russia.
>It is now headed to the ITU's World
>Telecommunications Standardization Assembly in
>September for likely approval.
>
>This new infamous D-Series norm-called
>"International Internet Connection"-is as
>ignorant as it is simple. It requires that any
>ISP that gets an international circuit for
>Internet traffic can demand compensation from
>every ISP that "generates" the traffic over the
>circuit. Scraping off the veneer, it is of
>course the old ITU telephony settlements scheme
>that glued the global cartel together and drove
>up end user costs tenfold. What this would
>require is essentially impossible except on a
>very limited scale. At up to gigabit or even
>terabit-per-second transmission rates, the
>source address of every IP packet would need to
>be read, an inverse lookup done, an attribution
>to a source ISP made, an aggregation of traffic
>accumulated, and billings effected on a global
>base.
>
>Ludicrous or not, this hoax has been enacted,
>subject only to the imprimatur of the ITU WTSA.
>
>It's tempting for pundits to laugh and view
>this as more thrashing about of a legacy
>creature from Jurassic Park. It is certain that
>the major Net user countries and ISPs will
>refuse to abide by these provisions. But what
>often occurs in these circumstances is that
>developing countries unfamiliar with the
>Internet and seeing a mirage of instant cash
>sign up to the scheme. Developed countries that
>attempt to impose the scheme will be relegating
>themselves to the status of Internet developing
>countries. But the real victims of this hoax,
>as usual, will be those who can least afford
>it. The solution: Just Say No in September.
>
>Copyright (c) 2000, Communications Week International