Paul Wilson and Geoff Huston of APNIC on IP address allocation ITU v/s ICANN

Thu Apr 28 09:00:10 UTC 2005

--On 28 April 2005 10:47 +0200 Stephane Bortzmeyer <bortzmeyer at nic.fr> 
wrote:

> This is no longer true (for several years). Corporations ("Sector
> members") can now join (ITU is the only UN organization which does
> that). See
> http://www.itu.int/cgi-bin/htsh/mm/scripts/mm.list?_search=SEC

I think Bill is actually correct. ITU is a treaty organization. Only
members of the UN (i.e. countries). ITU-T (and ITU-R, ITU-D) are sector
organizations that telcos can join (AIUI the difference having arisen
when a meaningful difference arose between telco and state monopoly).
However, given the entire organization is run by the ITU, it's fair
to say it is essentially a governmental organization run with some
private sector involvement. Whereas ...

> So, like ICANN, governements and big corporations are represented at
> the ITU. Like ICANN, ordinary users are excluded.

... ICANN is billed as a private sector organization with government
involvement.

Obviously the extent of the involvement of the private sector (and
non-commercial sectors), and the extent to which one likes the ICANN
model are all up for extensive debate, preferably on somewhere other
than this mailing list.

Alex