The U.S. government “unequivocally” opposes a European Telecommunications...
The U.S. government “unequivocally” opposes a European Telecommunications Network Operators’ Association proposal to amend the International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs), Assistant Secretary of Commerce Lawrence Strickling said Monday during a speech in New York. ETNO’s proposal would be among those considered…
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when delegates meet at the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT), set to begin Dec. 3 in Dubai. The proposal would, among other things, establish a “sender-party-pays” principle for Internet data traffic compensation, which could require the sender of any Internet content to pay for its transmission (CD Sept 12 p5) . The U.S. opposes the proposal for two reasons, Strickling said, according to a transcript (http://xrl.us/bnroy8). “First, a treaty conference where only member states have a vote is the wrong place to debate a change of this magnitude,” he said. “Second, the proposal is a bad idea. It is a solution in search of a problem and it most likely would disadvantage the developing world which has the most to gain from continued growth and expansion of the Internet.” ETNO is introducing the proposal to help alleviate what its members feel is an imbalance between collected revenue and the amount of traffic being transmitted over European infrastructure, Chairman Luigi Gambardella told us in an interview earlier this month. “It may be the case that the regulatory framework the European incumbent carriers live under constrains their returns in a manner that reduces their incentive to invest -- I have not studied the matter and have no opinion on that,” Strickling said Monday. “But even if that is the case, that is no justification for upsetting the well-settled Internet interconnection regime with a proposal to raise revenues from other providers in the communications pathways as opposed to addressing the problem at its source.” Terry Kramer, the head of the U.S.’s WCIT delegation, has been similarly critical of the ETNO proposal, telling reporters Friday that while ETNO has been actively selling its proposal, the U.S. still believes it would be harmful (CD Sept 24 p3).