ITU calls on governments and domain name operators

November 29th, 2002
By Demys News Service

In what some have seen as an attempt to organise governments and country code top level domain operators independently of ICANN, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) has announced a 'Workshop on Member States' Experiences with ccTLDs' to take place in Geneva on 3-4 March 2003. Although the Agenda is somewhat vague at the moment, one item, 'ccTLD experiences and expectations' makes an intriguing title.

The Workshop website goes on to say that "contributions describing legal systems, the role of governments, relations between governments and ccTLD operators, and relations with other relevant private sector entities are particularly welcome". Could 'other relevant private sector entities' mean ICANN?

The Workshop follows on from the ITU's resolution 102 concluded at their Plenipotentiary Conference (Marrakesh 2002) which makes it clear that the UN agency is seeking a leading role in domain name and address policy development. In furtherance of this agenda, the ITU has recently commented on the ICANN reform process in a paper - 'ITU and ICANN Reform', and a remark on their 'clarifications' web page which supplements and explains the paper provides a further clue:-

"It has been stated that ITU's membership does not include many of the key players in the Internet. The full list of ITU Sector Members is available at itu.int/members. It can be seen that this includes most of the large equipment manufacturers and Internet Service Providers (ISPs).

"It is, however, correct that small ISPs and the ccTLD operators are not currently ITU members. If ITU were to cooperate more closely with ICANN, these organizations could consider becoming ITU-T Sector Members or Associate Members 2, if that were considered appropriate."

What would membership of the ITU give the ccTLD operators? Perhaps a say in the Marrakesh-mandated ITU policy development process? It is not known whether this would direct the focus of policy-making for ccTLDs away from ICANN but in light of Nominet's statement (see: ccTLD's stike back?) it is clear that many different avenues are being explored by the principal players in the current global environment. This seems more akin to the pre-ICANN world of 1998 when control of global policy-making for the Internet was originally under consideration.

The Workshop is to be co-chaired by Willie Black, Chairman of both Nominet UK, and CENTR, a group of more than 30 cc's. In addition to the critical statement on ICANN from Nominet, CENTR has recently described ICANN as needing 'to demonstrate its legitimacy and improve its working relationship with a skeptical ccTLD community'. It has also commented on a technical dispute between ICANN and some of the country code operators reported previously.