At the conclusion of the International Telecommunications Union’s (ITU) plenipotentiary conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota, outgoing secretary-general Pekka Tarjanne was at pains to point out that it was not the ITU’s intention to get directly involved in so-called governance of the internet, referring to the current battle over the control of the internet domain name and numbering systems. At a press conference on Friday, the last day of the four-week conference, Tarjanne said the ITU and its membership has no real desire to grab any turf, or target or control the internet. The ITU membership passed a motion at the conference last week urging the secretary-general to take an active part in the discussions about the DNS. Some of the internet community about government- run telcos trying to influence the course of events, when the very purpose of the current process is to take the management of the DNS out of the hands of the US government. However, Tarjanne portrayed the ITU motion thus: nothing has been resolved…there have been no major decisions by this conference in internet governance. Asked whether he thought that lack of decisiveness weakened the ITU going forward, he said: on the contrary, we are at the disposal of our membership and the internet community, implying that he viewed the ITU as more of a brain trust to be tapped than a body trying to exercise influence over the course of events. Also at the conference, secretary-general-elect Yoshimo Utsumi said the high-cost of internet access outside the US is a very big issue, in the Asia-Pacific region in particular and one on which he campaigned to get elected to the post. He would not be drawn on whether or not he favored ISPs paying the settlement rates, or accounting rates, to land their international calls in the way telcos have to (10/23/98). He said the main problem was not the telephone rates, rather the internet access charges. But according to one of his own campaign articles, which quotes figures from the OECD, the major contributor to the high cost of internet access is the cost of the local phone call to the ISP. In all the countries surveyed bar one (Mexico), the internet access charges are more or less identical, while the phone charges vary greatly (http://www.mpt.go.jp/y-utsumi/speeches2-4- e.html).
