At the International Telecommunication Union's (ITU's) 18th Plenipotentiary Conference, in Guadalajara, Mexico, which drew to a close last week, many of the discussions revolved around bridging the digital divide.
However, Dobek Pater, partner at Africa Analysis, says that, while the issues addressed are pertinent, the ITU would need the ear of governments and multinational companies in order to make a difference.
Among the key decisions taken at the Plenipotentiary Conference, the ITU outlined the following:
* The need for special measures to assist small island developing states and landlocked developing countries, in keeping with the Hyderabad Action Plan agreed by the World Telecommunication Development Conference, in June 2010.
* A new role for the ITU as a global centre for technical conformance and interoperability assessment, testing, promotion and training, designed particularly to assist developing countries.
* New rules on admission of sector members from developing countries, including a reduction of fees.
* The need to put in place concrete strategies to stimulate deployment of broadband networks, particularly in developing countries.
* Efforts to bridge the standardisation gap between developed and developing countries, to help technical experts from the developing world play a more active role in ITU standards development activities.
* Activities to promote digital inclusion for indigenous people.
* The need to assist developing nations with migration to IPv6 addressing.
Pater says the issues addressed are all pertinent, but he notes it is one thing to make a statement and another to actually make a difference.
Who makes the call?
According to Pater, the ITU's greatest power is standardisation. Creating standards for the world to follow allows for the production of a greater quantity of technology units, which leads to greater economies of scale. Operators and users benefit from cheaper prices and people in markets across the globe can cross-invest in technology.
However, governments have the ultimate say over what does or does not happen in their countries, and they will decide how to proceed. Pater says that unfortunately these decisions are not always made for pragmatic economic or social reasons.
“The building blocks are in place, but they now need to be used to a greater extent as a vehicle going forward, and perhaps the ITU could come in there at an international level.”
Share
