Why is everyone talking about WCIT?

The first ever World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) will convene 3-14 December 2012 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Here the 193 member states of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) will review and likely make modifications to the International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs), which define the general principles for the provision and operation of international telecommunications. The ITRs are a global treaty, agreed upon in 1988 and have not been updated since.

Ongoing preparations for the WCIT meeting include both edits to current text and proposals for new treaty text, and are conducted by the ITU Council Working Group on WCIT(CWG-WCIT) and through Regional Prepatory Meetings. A report identifying possible modifications, additions and deletions will be submitted to the conference following the last CWG-WCIT meeting. All the documents will then be discussed during the WCIT in December. The documents under discussion are only available to ITU Members.
Participation at the WCIT in Dubai is restricted to Member States of the ITU, ITU Sector Members, and invited international organizations. It is only the Member States who will vote throughout the two-week session on suggested edits and additions to the ITR text. The outcome of the conference will be a new ITR treaty.
On 15 August, the ITU issued a press release announcing a Public Consultation on WCIT. It includes links to a WCIT FAQ and the current ITRs, as well as other important information.

What is Internet Governance?

Internet Governance can be defined as the evolving policies and mechanisms under which the Internet community’s many stakeholders make decisions about the development and use of the Internet.

The term “Internet governance” embraces the key objectives of the 2005 World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS).

Internet governance covers a wide range of issues, from day-to-day technical and operational workings of the Internet to public policy issues such as combating crime on the Internet. Internet governance discussions occur in many forums. Technical and operational Internet governance discussions have long been discussed in multi-stakeholder bodies developed for these purposes. The NRO has taken an active role in many of these discussions, engaging with forums and organizations such as:

Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) (link to ICANN site?)
Internet Society (ISOC)
International Telecommunication Union (ITU)
Internet Governance Forum (IGF)
Internet Technical Advisory Committee (ITAC) to the OECD
World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS)
Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs)
and many regional organizations

We encourage all stakeholders to communicate with their Regional Internet Registry to learn more about opportunities to become engaged in Internet Governance dialogue.

The NRO and Internet Governance

Since the early stages of the Internet, the NRO and each individual Regional Internet Registry (RIR) have actively cooperated with a wide range of stakeholders to ensure the future growth and continued stability of the Internet. The NRO is committed to continuing this cooperation, and engages with many governments and related global institutions with an interest in the development of the Internet.

NRO efforts in the area of Internet Governance are focused on a number of goals:

Make sure the interests of the Internet community are represented in key forums
Educate governments and international organizations on the Regional Internet Registry (RIR) structure and bottom-up community driven number resource management model
Work within various organizations to remove barriers that result in misunderstanding
Facilitate opportunities to exchange meaningful insight that will impact Internet number resource distribution and management not only today, but in the future as well

The NRO has been active in, and continues to participate in the following Internet Governance related forums and committees: