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