VoIP Toolkit

Should the UN administer the Internet?

Tags:
VoIP,
Icann,
UN,
ITU

Declan McCullagh CNET News

Published: 30 Mar 2005 16:05 BST

What do you think? Should the ITU be involved in Internet governance?
Yes, for sure. ITU should be part of Internet governance. But ITU cannot cover everything.

Does that mean an inevitable conflict with ICANN?
I don't think so. Whether we have a conflict with ICANN depends on (many things).

I do not consider ICANN an enemy. We are founding members of ICANN's Protocol Supporting Organisation. I myself signed that paper on behalf of the ITU. We tried to support ICANN as far as we could, but on the other hand you see that ICANN's mandate seems to be a little bit unclear... The UN working group on Internet governance provides us with a very good opportunity to look at this issue.

You mentioned a lot of topics — perhaps spam and content could be in there as well. Which ones should the ITU be directly involved in?
You can say that the ITU should address those, including spam and security. We have a different concept of security. As far as the [legwork] of security, ITU has worked on this for many, many years.

On privacy, I think that a lot of things are not related to technology only; those are policy matters. Those can be done by the national authorities, regional cooperation and international cooperation. On freedom of speech, I don't see it as a pure technical issue. In my opinion, freedom of speech seems to be a politically sensitive issue. A lot of policy matters are behind it. It's not in ITU's competence, but of course we can make some contributions.

Should ITU run or manage any top-level root servers?
That is a question discussed by a lot of people. Today the management by ICANN [is something that] people consider to be management by the United States, by one government. People definitely want to see some changes. I think everyone would agree that a better arrangement is something that we're looking for.

The ITU is trying to ensure its value. Any public network of communications is naturally of interest to ITU. ITU has a lot of expertise and a lot of experience. (Editor's note: An ITU lawyer said in a follow-up conversation that though the organisation may wish to oversee the operation of root servers, it would not run them itself.)

We assign country codes. Some people consider that the top-down approach. I made a proposal for IPv6, that we could look for a new approach based on the experience we have in top-down approaches. Can we find something different? Nobody seems to be confident that ITU's top-down approach is best for IPv6. But nobody is sure that IPv4 bottom-up is best. Can we find something in between? I'm paying attention to that. I have a lot of opinions from ITU members.

Does that mean the ITU would be in the IPv6 allocation business, saying, for instance, that Norway gets 10 trillion addresses and Sweden receives 20 trillion?
Yes. I raised that possibility. [I discussed it] not only with government bodies but with industry experts. I did not see them deny that we [could] do that.

But I know this would affect a lot of things. For stability of Internet service, for effective development in the future, we need good cooperation. Right now IPv6 is still not that known to many people in the world. If we have a good understanding of this system, a good management of this, we can avoid problems in the future.

If more and more phone calls move to VoIP, do you see the ITU becoming irrelevant?
I don't have that worry at all. ITU was created in 1865. It has 140 years of history. I don't know if you noted recent news that a very respected academy in the United States said ITU is among the world's most enduring institutions. (Editor's note: This is a reference to a December 2004 report by consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton.)