US, UK and Canada refuse to sign UN's internet treaty

[Avri Doria]

On 19 Dec 2012, at 08:38, Jorge Amodio wrote:

> To a certain degree I agree with the "ITU-phobia" Milton wrote about on the IGP site, but what is certain is that as the Internet keeps advancing ITU becomes more and more obsolete, then if we want to save whatever is positive from their potential contributions we need to have a more open and frank dialog, but sooner or later the other side needs to admit that no longer plays the role it use to play when telecom was a obscure market dominated by government run monopolies.
> 

I don't think the ITU is obsolete.

Certainly ITU-D still has a very important mission.  A lot of what they do is critical for developing areas and for bridging the divide.

I don't understand a lot about what ITU-R does, but it seems they still have a reason to exist as they are doing work that isn't done elsewhere.

ITU-T needs to be looked at.  I get the impression form the WTSA that they do some work that is not being done elsewhere and may be worth continuing.  A lot is duplicative of work being done, I beleive, better in the IETF and IEEE etc, but there may be a niche that the ITU-T can occupy, for example it can take protocols with lots of options and coming up with pro-forma descriptions that would allow greater interoperability of a standard developed elsewhere.

What I think is more important is that the ITU focus on what it does well and keep its fingers out of the stuff it has no business in.

How is that for ITU phobia.


avri