ITU meeting - less about Telecom Tax, more about control

A focus of our practice is telecom tax, so we couldn’t help but be intrigued by the events of the International Telecommunications Union, which recently concluded in Dubai.  

The ITU, originally started in 1885 as the International Telegraph Union, is now the international governing body of the telecom industry.  The Dubai meeting was primarily focused on the internet and its governance. 

Going in, many thought the meeting would focus on telecom tax and how governments could increase revenue through new international internet taxes as well as how individual governments could gain more control of the internet, especially fundamental resources like DNS.

It turns out that the meeting was less about telecom tax and more about control.

As predicted, the meeting saw two factions emerge.   Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, Algeria and Sudan wanted more governmental control, positioning their quest as a call for equal rights for all governments to manage “internet numbering, naming, addressing and identification resources”. 

The U.S., the UK, Australia, Canada and others refused to sign the new treaty, preferring to keep governance of the internet as it is now. On December 13, the proposal for more government control was shelved.

So, internet governance remains unchanged for now.

Less than forty years ago, there were fewer than ten sites on the internet and most news could largely be controlled by governments.  Now, there are over a billion websites.  With 40% of the entire world’s population using internet capable smart phones, the internet is now an essential human communications tool. In a relatively short time, the internet has changed the entire dynamic of commerce, government and control…and telecom tax too as the PSTN, once the cornerstone of telecom (and reliable tax revenue), is in the process of being replaced by VoIP and anyone with a blog (like TaxConnex) can publish news distributed around the world. 

For more information on the details of the conference and issues, read:

Forbes ITU Wrap Up and Lexology ITU Wrap Up.