[159548] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: De-funding the ITU
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Bill Woodcock)
Mon Jan 14 14:23:26 2013
From: Bill Woodcock <woody@pch.net>
In-Reply-To: <0952ABF8-5254-4900-9B74-0669D693AA28@delong.com>
Date: Mon, 14 Jan 2013 11:23:12 -0800
To: "nanog@nanog.org list" <nanog@nanog.org>
Errors-To: nanog-bounces+nanog.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@nanog.org
On Jan 14, 2013, at 11:12 AM, Owen DeLong <owen@delong.com> wrote:
> On Jan 14, 2013, at 7:27 AM, John Levine <johnl@iecc.com> wrote:
>> The solution is not to cut off the poor countries.
>=20
> I have no reason whatsoever to believe that defunding the ITU would
> cut off the poor countries.
>=20
> 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.
Exactly. The ITU bleeds poor countries dry, by keeping communications =
costs exorbitantly high, while appeasing them with settlements. The =
Internet doesn't need to bribe destitute people with settlements, =
because it's five orders of magnitude less expensive: affordable enough =
that they can get online in the first place.
=
http://oecdinsights.org/2012/10/22/internet-traffic-exchange-2-billion-use=
rs-and-its-done-on-a-handshake/
The ITU has $181M/year. It'll do just fine without our money. No sense =
in throwing good money after bad.
-Bill
