U.S. Continuing Preparations for 2014 ITU Communications Forums

U.S. officials are continuing to plan for the upcoming World Telecommunication Development Conference, although the ITU hasn’t announced a new locale for the conference. The WTDC, held every four years, sets the agenda and guidelines for the ITU’s Development Sector for the following four years. The WTDC had been set for March 31-April 11 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, but the ITU decided to move the conference because of continuing political instability in the country, an industry observer told us.

The conference will now be in one of two cities in the United Arab Emirates -- Dubai or Abu Dhabi, said Julie Zoller, senior deputy coordinator-Office of Multilateral Affairs in the State Department’s Communications and Information Policy Directorate. Dubai hosted the controversial World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) last year (CD Dec 17/12 p1). The ITU still intends to hold the WTDC March 31-April 11 and will announce the new location soon, Zoller said at an International Telecommunication Advisory Committee (ITAC) meeting Thursday. ITAC was meeting in part to review U.S. preparations for the WTDC and other upcoming ITU forums.

Once the ITU provides more clarity on the WTDC’s location, State will make a decision about forming the U.S. delegation, Zoller said. Although the delegation’s formation has remained on hold, policy preparations for the conference have continued. ITAC began meeting in March to prepare for the conference (CD March 13 p11). ITAC ad-hoc meetings in the months since have helped the U.S. formulate its priorities for the WTDC on broadband, cybersecurity, spam, emergency disaster relief, telecom access for persons with disabilities and gender equality, Zoller said. The Organization of American States’ Inter-American Telecommunication Commission (CITEL) has designated 14 of the U.S.’s WTDC proposals as draft Inter-American Proposals (IAPs), said Cecily Holiday, a foreign affairs officer in State’s Office of International Communications & Information Policy. CITEL’s Permanent Executive Committee has approved three U.S. WTDC proposals as IAPs, Zoller said. The ITU set March 16 as the deadline for WTDC participants to submit proposals.

ITAC is continuing to prepare for the ITU Plenipotentiary Conference Oct. 20-Nov. 7, in Busan, South Korea. That conference, seen as the most important post-WCIT ITU meeting, will result in the election of a new ITU secretary-general to take over from current Secretary-General Hamadoun Touré and could result in changes to the ITU’s constitution. The Plenipotentiary Conference may also help determine the extent to which a fractious revised version of the International Telecommunication Regulations, adopted at WCIT, will be implemented, observers told us. U.S. Coordinator for International Communications and Information Policy Daniel Sepulveda will head the U.S. delegation for the Plenipotentiary Conference, Zoller said.

The U.S. is currently working on its “first tranche” proposal for amendments to the ITU Constitution and Convention for consideration at the Plenipotentiary Conference, Zoller said. The proposal will lay out the U.S.’s vision for the ITU over the next four years and will contain more specific proposals on individual issues, she said. The U.S. proposal should be ready well before the Feb. 20 deadline for ITU members to submit their first proposals, Zoller said. Communications sector members have expressed interest in the U.S. addressing the issue of transparency and openness in its first proposal, she said. Information transparency proved to be a major point of contention during the lead-up to WCIT.

ITAC is also preparing for the next World Radiocommunication Conference, which will be Nov. 2-27, 2015, in Geneva. The FCC’s WRC Advisory Committee and NTIA’s Interdepartment Radio Advisory Committee Radio Conference Subcommittee are still working on consensus opinions on multiple WRC agenda items, Zoller said. State will then submit consensus proposals to CITEL, she said. The U.S. has proposals on three agenda items, including opposing additional spectrum allocations for the mobile-satellite service in the 22-26 GHz band, Zoller said.

The NSA surveillance scandal will likely be a topic for debate at all upcoming ITU forums, said former FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell, who was involved in preparations for WCIT and other past forums. McDowell is also a member of a new multistakeholder panel on Internet governance formed last month by the Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers. Sepulveda and others have publicly acknowledged that the NSA issue has caused a “perception issue” in the international Internet governance debate (CD Nov 8 p5). The NSA revelations are still “fueling a lot of pro-ITU regulatory talk” and are “being used as a pretext to recommend the ITU get more Internet regulatory power,” McDowell said. “The biggest concern I have about the Plenipotentiary Conference is that allies of Internet freedom will be caught flat-footed and will not be able to garner votes from the developing world nations,” even though the developing world would most benefit from a “free and open Internet.”