The debate about the control of the internet is intensifying, with one example including the interesting discussions occurring in 2012 at the World Conference on International Telecommunications WCIT conference organised by the ITU in Dubai.
The conference reviewed the International Telecommunication Regulations (the ITRs).
Proposed changes or additions to the ITRs can be summarised under the following headings:
· Human right of access to communications;
· Security in the use of ICTs;
· Protection of critical national resources;
· International frameworks;
· Charging and accounting, including taxation;
· Interconnection and interoperability;
· Quality of service;
· Convergence.
Over the last 25 years the industry has moved from being mainly telephony-based to being mainly IP-based. Many say that what is now at stake is the future of the internet as we know it, at this point in time. At least this conference clearly shifted the ITR’s focus from traditional telecoms to IP/internet.
For further information on the WCIT, see [http://www.itu.int/en/wcit-12/].
On the one hand, we were lucky that the internet in its current format was invented by academics and innovative independent entrepreneurs rather than by governments and the vested commercial interests. Furthermore, the various elements of the internet are built by private companies and as such are also owned by them – very little ‘internet ownership’ is in the hands of governments. The internet would never have been developed if it had been left to governments, telcos or the international institutions around them.
On the other hand, the explosion of the internet has also produced a range of issues that, whether we like it or not, has reached a level that goes beyond the more community-based developments.
In 2015 there are around 3.1 billion Internet users and a quarter of these will have access to fixed broadband. With more and more video applications being used in ever increasing broader markets; there is a widespread interest in upgrading to higher-speed services. However the market is maturing, resulting in a slight decrease in the subscriber growth rate.
When the internet explosion happened in the mid-1990s it took the telcos by surprise. They immediately resorted to their customary Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt (FUD) campaign and warned of the meltdown of their networks (AT&T in the USA and Telstra in Australia).
Politicians claimed it was a fad that would quickly disappear.
By the time the telcos had recovered from the initial shock the internet had already slipped out of their hands. Politicians are only now catching up as it has become clear that the internet, and access to it, is not only extremely important to the economy and society but is of great national importance in a number of other areas, such as opinion-making, policy decisions, propaganda, cyber warfare and so on.
Sadly, the Internet is, at this point in time, also used as a platform for enhanced social control. The two largest governments on earth, that of the United States of America and the People’s Republic of China have adopted essentially identical points of view. They have set up elaborate intelligence information systems used for exhaustive data mining of their societies with the aim to secure national stability. Of course they have different theories of how to maintain stability and for whom and why, but the technology of ‘stability maintenance’ is essentially identical.
However, the reality now is that the political stakes of the internet have risen significantly. On the one side there are the community forces that would like to keep it free, as in free of (excessive) government interference; while on the other side there are the conservative and less democratic forces who want to see more control over the internet – with the clear undercurrent that they want to limit the (perceived or real) control of the internet held by the USA.
In this politically charged environment there are several forces at work in and around the internet:
· Vested interests want greater regulation on content and copyright (SOPA, PIPA, CISPA, ACTA, TPP);
· Technologically-advanced nations are now also using it for cyber warfare;
· Several developing economies and in particular non-democratic countries want to assert greater control over it;
· Other countries want greater protection for children and other vulnerable people in their societies;
· The internet community wants to keep it as free as possible from national or international interference.
· Commercial interests in this trillion-dollar industry.