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ANNELIES VRBOVÁ – MARKÉTA NOVÁKOVÁ – MARTIN BULÁNEK
CYIL 4 ȍ2013Ȏ
revision intended to prevent unnecessarily high costs. Countries supporting this
provision belonged mainly to the African and Arab region. However, there are no
fixed routes these days, and even the operators are not informed about the exact
routing. Simply, no one needs to know.
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Thus, this proposal could be considered as
rather irrelevant. Nevertheless, it was extensively discussed, and it took major efforts
before it was completely rejected.
Resolutions
In the course of the Conference, many provisions were drafted and included
into the ITRs as good will on the part of developed countries while also being useful
for states that need special arrangements such as accounting systems (Article 6, and
Appendix 1 and 2), or the provision of Article 8A on Energy efficiency/e-waste.
The Czech Republic also gladly supported the resolution entitled
“Special measures
for landlocked developing countries and small island developing states for access to
international optical fibre networks
”, which proves that there were not just battles, but
also a great sense of good will and willingness to help.
The closer the end of the Conference was, more and more stress appeared during
intensive negotiations.
A real breakthrough in the negotiations was on the evening of 11 December 2012,
when the resolutions were on agenda. In total, five resolutions were adopted. The first
one was quite easy, as already mentioned, because the aim of this Resolution PLEN/1
was clear.
Many more complications occurred regarding Resolution PLEN/3. This
Resolution was adopted with the following title:
“To foster an enabling environment
for the greater growth of the Internet”
. This resolution was strongly supported by the
African and Arab states. The Czech Republic, together with other European countries,
Canada and the United States, were not in favour of accepting such a resolution as
it was focused on internet governance, which does not fit within the ITU’s mandate.
Besides, such an issue has no place in a technical treaty like the ITRs. Despite endless
negotiations, a consensual solution was not emerging. In the stalemate, the Chairman
decided to assess the feeling in the room by requesting delegates for an indication
on who supported the text and who did not. Counting the country flags in favour
and against, he concluded that a clear majority was in favour of the resolution. After
that, he stated that the resolution was adopted. This procedure was very unusual,
and many states felt sort of deceived, as the process actually had a voting character
but calling it “a vote” was clearly rejected by the Chairman, this being no voting
according to the ITU Constitution and Convention provisions.
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Routing of traffic had been used in so called analogue networks, where this was essential. Nowadays,
digital transmission using so called smart networks (or New Generation Networks) works with content
consisting of small parts (packets) that seek their way through the network individually and only at the
end are they gathered into a single unit again.