Czech Yearbook Vol. 4 2013

ANNELIES VRBOVÁ – MARKÉTA NOVÁKOVÁ – MARTIN BULÁNEK

CYIL 4 ȍ2013Ȏ

the Czech Republic,caused quite a discussion, with contrary proposals also being

made to close all the sessions and let the Secretary-General make comments for the

media at the end of each of the Plenary Sessions.

The vivid discussion was cut off by the Secretary-General’s proposal to make

all the Plenary Sessions public, not only with the press and media present but also

by taking and storing video-recordings, together with a transcript of the English

version and, furthermore, audio-recordings in all the six official languages of the

ITU and the WCIT-12: Arabian, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish.

The sessions of the Committees, Working Groups, as well as co-ordinations at the

regional and national level were not open to the public, due to the fact that the

discussions within them could be misleading without explanatory comments. This

proposal was accepted and supported by the Steering Committee.

Challenging issues

In most cases, such a multilateral forum is organized as soon as the text of an

outcome document is in its final stage and with only some outstanding issues to be

finalized. For the WCIT-12 this was not the case.

The first compilation of text prepared by the ITU reflected all proposals coming

from Member States and Sector Members, including amendments to the text

regarding areas not even within the ITU mandate. Being in an uneasy situation, the

Chairman proposed discussing less controversial issues first, then moving towards

more difficult ones. The CEPT countries (without Russia) supported this way

forward. Even though the USA and Canada were in favour of starting with the most

challenging matters, they also agreed in the end. The fundamental disagreements

were about a definition of telecommunications and about stake holders to be bound

by the ITRs.

How to define telecommunications

The preparation process ended with diversified views over the scope of the ITRs.

While the CEPT and other countries believe that the mandate of the ITU is appropriate

and that there is sufficient coverage from other international organizations following

different aspects of today’s means of communication, there aremany countries that think

otherwise. The Arab states proposed an extended definition of telecommunications

adding information and telecommunication technology (ICT):

Any transmission,

emission or reception, including processing, of signs, signals, writing, images and sounds or

intelligence of any nature by wire, radio, optical or other electromagnetic systems.

The difference appears to be very small in wording (adding only two words

“

including processing”

to the original definition), but it is technically rather huge. It

entitles governments and/or its bodies to interfere in content, which was one of our

red lines.

See