De-funding the ITU

Mon Jan 14 16:14:56 UTC 2013

On 14/01/2013 15:27, John Levine wrote:
> The Internet does what it does surprisingly well, but it's not the
> same kind of network as the phone system.  We all know of the abuses
> that can come with mandatory interconnection and settlements, but the
> solution is not to cut off the poor countries.

less well developed countries often have their telecoms requirements
serviced by an incumbent monopoly, often involving government ownership and
usually involving little or no functional regulation.  20 years ago, the
ISP that I worked for was paying about $20,000/meg/month for IP transit.
It didn't drop to where it is now because of ITU regulations,
interconnection settlements or by maintaining the government-owned monopoly
of the time.  I'm struggling to understand why people view these things as
solutions to a problem, rather than the root cause.

Nick