[159547] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: De-funding the ITU
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Owen DeLong)
Mon Jan 14 14:17:39 2013
From: Owen DeLong <owen@delong.com>
In-Reply-To: <20130114152747.28078.qmail@joyce.lan>
Date: Mon, 14 Jan 2013 11:12:56 -0800
To: John Levine <johnl@iecc.com>
Cc: nanog@nanog.org
Errors-To: nanog-bounces+nanog.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@nanog.org
On Jan 14, 2013, at 7:27 AM, John Levine <johnl@iecc.com> wrote:
>>> There'd have to be some organization to negotiate and oversee
>>> international settlements and other, similar, regulations.
>>
>> Why? The internet has operated just fine without such for quite some time
>> now.
>
> The Internet is held together with spit and duct tape, and sucks for
> connections that need a stable low-jitter channel, we've all noticed.
> It has no principle of universal service.
>
> The Internet does what it does surprisingly well, but it's not the
> same kind of network as the phone system. We all know of the abuses
> that can come with mandatory interconnection and settlements, but 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.
Owen
