[At-Large] WCIT Talks not about Internet Governance - Interview with ITU Secretary General

Carlton Samuels carlton.samuels at gmail.com
Thu Sep 13 01:20:39 UTC 2012


Sala:
I don't believe that settlement issue - ala upgrade of the settlement
regime floated by the European operator group is a 'distraction'. Come to
think, Toure may be onto something.  It could be a proxy war, a reprise of
the old net neutrality issue but on a different front.  So the feints and
deceptions he alludes might be in play.

Big telecoms - read infrastructure companies who own wire and/or spectrum
that transit packets - are all for an upgrade to the settlement regime; not
just the Europeans with their name on the ticket.  Big content providers
are on record as against.

In the days of the old settlement formula and plain old telephone service,
the traffic pattern made it inevitable for positive flows from North to
South; we in the South made money. In fact given our large immigrant
populations up North, most Caribbean countries saw positive revenue inflows
from the arrangement.

The operators up North never liked that one little bit.   It was the hey
day of national telecoms administrations, when governments in the South
typically were owners of the telephone monopoly.  Most succumbed to
pressure from the multilateral agencies to privatize state enterprises or
lose credit privileges.  So after they privatized - really just handed the
monopoly to a private company - most of the private companies simply upped
the game.  The big monopoly operator in our region - and whaddya know, in
your corner of the Pacific as well! - milked this fact for all it was
worth, principally to justify and maintain their monopoly status. Everybody
made money.  That is, everybody except the consumer who paid artificially
high prices for telecom services.

Times and politics changed it all. The political shift up North in the 80's
gave an opening to operators there to influence FCC rule making. They
succeeded to the extent that certain advantageous unilateral declarations
on settlement charges were made; fixed reductions in bands over time.  Most
countries simply went along with the program. And here we are today.

The jury is still out on what might emerge from the 'stalking horse'
offering at WCIT-12. Maybe it's a pig in lipstick. Remains to be seen.

- Carlton

==============================
Carlton A Samuels
Mobile: 876-818-1799
*Strategy, Planning, Governance, Assessment & Turnaround*
=============================


On Wed, Sep 12, 2012 at 4:41 PM, Salanieta T. Tamanikaiwaimaro <
salanieta.tamanikaiwaimaro at gmail.com> wrote:

>    - Excessive mobile roaming charges stemming from interconnection
>    Agreements between  Network Providers
>    - Taxation issues etc
>
> Interesting article, thanks Carlton :)
>
> On Thu, Sep 13, 2012 at 9:18 AM, Carlton Samuels
> <carlton.samuels at gmail.com>wrote:
>
> > ....and is a distraction from more important issues..... says a
> 'irritated'
> > Secty-General Hamadoun Toure........
> >
> > http://www.bna.com/itus-toure-wcit-b17179869586/
> >
> >
> > - Carlton
> >
> > ==============================
> > Carlton A Samuels
> > Mobile: 876-818-1799
> > *Strategy, Planning, Governance, Assessment & Turnaround*
> > =============================
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