De-funding the ITU

Mon Jan 14 19:23:12 UTC 2013

On Jan 14, 2013, at 11:12 AM, Owen DeLong <owen at delong.com> wrote:
> On Jan 14, 2013, at 7:27 AM, John Levine <johnl at iecc.com> wrote:
>> The solution is not to cut off the poor countries.
> 
> I have no reason whatsoever to believe that defunding the ITU would
> cut off the poor countries.
> 
> Quite the contrary, actually. I believe that the combination of the ITU
> and the back-pocket distribution of settlement checks has held back the
> improvement of digital connections to poorer countries.

Exactly.  The ITU bleeds poor countries dry, by keeping communications costs exorbitantly high, while appeasing them with settlements.  The Internet doesn't need to bribe destitute people with settlements, because it's five orders of magnitude less expensive: affordable enough that they can get online in the first place.

http://oecdinsights.org/2012/10/22/internet-traffic-exchange-2-billion-users-and-its-done-on-a-handshake/

The ITU has $181M/year.  It'll do just fine without our money.  No sense in throwing good money after bad.

                                -Bill