With technology advancing at lightning speed and telecommunications becoming a powerful engine of the global economy, the International Telecommunication Union has found itself learning to cope in a brave new world where private-sector politics are replacing nation-state diplomacy as the driving force in worldwide wireless policy making.
At the same time, the United States has taken on the role of pariah as resentment grows in the international telecom community over America’s technological superiority in the post-Cold War era that begrudgingly recognizes Uncle Sam as undisputed world superpower.
With a one-country, one-vote system in the ITU, combined with the resistance to competition from abroad, laments one Clinton administration telecom official, “We’ll lose. We do not have the leverage we had 10 years ago when the Soviet Union was our enemy.”
Given that, the United States has discovered that being the world’s telecom technology leader is not good enough. In the new ITU environment, the United States has to be just as good a salesman.
From its earliest days in the mid-1800s when it was known as the International Telegraph Union, the latter-day ITU remains an important United Nations organization dedicated to mapping out the future path of global and domestic telecommunications.
ITU divides the world into three regions. The United States, Canada, South America and everything in between are in Region 2.
Based in Geneva, ITU has 188 member nations and more than 450 private-sector members. ITU decisions are not felt in the telecom industry until years after they are made.
Still heavily bureaucratic, with 800 to 1,000 employees, ITU is attempting to reinvent itself in the digital age of free telecom trade. Bilateralism has given way to multilateralism. Satellites are being launched for global satellite voice and data systems. The foundation is being laid for 3G, or third-generation, wireless networks. The ITU has a hand in them all.
“There’s a level of bureaucracy,” said Sarah Parkes, an ITU spokeswoman. “I think that’s the case with all large organizations.”
It’s not so much the size of ITU as it is its agility.
“I think the big challenge is how the ITU makes the transition to modern telecommunications requirements and operations. Things are moving so fast,” said Leonard Raish, a communications attorney and veteran of many ITU conferences.
Take, for instance, ITU dues. For formerly state-run telecommunications, money was no object. Now, with privatization, coming up with large dues payments is not automatic.
Moreover, Raish said the private sector is playing a bigger role in ITU negotiations. And with that has come more politics.
Indeed, U.S. delegations to ITU conferences increasingly include big contingents of telecom industry officials and lobbyists.
Attendees at the 1995 World Radiocommunication Conference in Geneva could not easily escape the presence of Teledesic Corp., the global broadband satellite project of cellular mogul Craig McCaw and Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates. The two high-tech businessmen needed global frequencies at the time.
Teledesic ended up getting what it needed, just as Motorola Inc. did for its Iridium satellite phone system three years earlier. Thus, the 1992 and 1995 WRCs marked a crucial turning point in the geopolitics of international telecommunications.
Last year, the tables turned. It was payback time; Europe and others managed to extract an agreement to enable the French Alcatel SkyBridge satellite system to battle Teledesic in the heavens.
But all the new satellite competition begs the question: Just what are the limits of spectrum sharing on the 11 GHz, 12 GHz and 17 GHz-18 GHz bands between satellite and terrestrial licensees?
Little low-earth-orbit satellite proponents have not convinced ITU members so far that they can share frequencies below 1 GHz with private wireless and other users. More studies will be conducted. That has left little LEOs out in the cold as a result of the United States’ failure to secure additional spectrum at the past two WRCs. U.S. officials will try again in two years in Geneva.
WRCs, which produce far-reaching decisions on global spectrum use after a month of negotiations, have been held every two years since 1993 in recognition of the fast-moving pace of telecommunications.
Officials at the Federal Communications Commission, National Telecommunications and Information Administration and State Department, which crafted the U.S. strategy for securing additional big LEO satellite spectrum at last fall’s WRC, have already begun preparing for WRC ’99.
“That means it is practically a full-time job,” said Thomas Keller, a communications attorney who has represented terrestrial private wireless and satellite interests. ITU study groups are everywhere and working all the time.
Antoinette Cook Bush, a former Senate Commerce communications attorney and candidate for FCC chairman, has been named by FCC Chairman Bill Kennard to oversee the FCC’s advisory committee for the 1999 WRC.
Thomas Tycz, chief of the satellite and radio division of the FCC’s International Bureau, agrees the ITU pace has become nonstop and the policy decisions no easier.
“Globalization and privatization are putting more pressure on the ITU standardization process,” Tycz observed.
In carrying out its charter, ITU is helping to bring emerging economies and democracies into the 21st century. Many of those countries were not parties to the World Trade Organization agreement on basic telecom services. And many will depend on wireless technology to satisfy their communications requirements.
As such, Dr. Pekka Tarjanne, secretary general of the ITU, believes the organization “can act as a bridge between the WTO and the wider telecommunications community.”
For sure, some of the anti-American telecom sentiment in Europe and elsewhere has been tempered by the fact that developed and developing countries have become business partners with U.S. global satellite firms whose technologies contribute to modernization and infrastructure development.
“The whole question of how countries manage spectrum and other scarce communications resources is a very important element of trade liberalization and the prevention of discrimination between domestic and foreign suppliers,” said Tarjanne last month in Seoul.
Spectrum management, in fact, is the key. And it’s getting more complex all the time. As more commercial applications are developed for remaining usable spectrum, there is a greater push for frequency sharing and, with it, a greater potential for interference.
“Given the major focus on the satellite-to-satellite sharing, it is possible that an equally important issue might be overlooked,” said Keller.
