GENEVA-Despite the best efforts of International Telecommunication Union (ITU) Secretary General Yoshio Utsumi, the reform process designed to drag the 135-year-old telecommunications standardization body into the 21st century has once again bogged down. Delegates to the Working Group on ITU Reform’s (WGR) April meeting quickly found themselves caught up in lengthy disputes over the minutia of the agenda, rather than the constructive debate on key issues needed to push forward concrete organizational restructuring.
Efforts to reform the union, which manages the world’s radiocommunication spectrum and produces more than 200 telecommunications standards each year, has been ongoing since the ITU’s Nice, France, Plenipotentiary Conference in 1989 recognized the need for more flexible working methods to keep pace with an increasingly dynamic market. But despite the establishment of a high-level committee and a number of subsequent reform-oriented working groups, including the ITU-2000 Group and its successor, WGR, observers say the process remains blocked by an intransigent attitude on the part of certain delegations.
Cynics say it is not surprising the WGR is getting nowhere fast. “Look around, and it is the same old faces-the same people who have singularly failed to implement any real change for more than 10 years,” said one insider. Wyn Lucas, manager, international organizations with British Telecom and an ITU regular through his participation in a number of key ITU study groups and committees, agreed. “Hearing some of the voices in the reform group meeting, it’s understandable why those pushing for reform are disheartened,” he said. “We badly need some quantum changes in the way we approach reform issues.”
To his credit, Secretary-General Utsumi continues to try new tactics designed to force change against a steady tide of inertia. In June 1999, he actively solicited opinions on reform priorities from the union’s 189 member states and 500-plus sector members (private-sector organizations), and in October of last year, took the unprecedented step of involving the private sector in the reform process through a hand-picked Reform Advisory Panel (RAP).
The RAP’s 36-member all-star cast, which included industry heavies like AT&T’s Michael Armstrong, Alcatel’s Serge Tchuruk, Cisco’s John Chambers, Nortel Networks’ John Roth and Telecom Italia chief Roberto Colannino, met twice in Geneva to discuss their vision of the ITU’s future, before delivering a final report directly to Utsumi after the close of the second meeting in March.
While the RAP report supports the ITU’s current role as manager of the world’s radiocommunication resources and satellite orbital slots, it recommends a stronger role in dispute resolution and a crackdown on the problem of “paper satellites”-systems notified by administrations merely to secure de facto rights to orbital positions which, in reality, will never be launched.
More radically, it outlines an enhanced role for the private sector, which would see telecom companies trade enhanced financial contributions for the right to participate at a decision-making level at key ITU conferences-a right currently reserved exclusively for the union’s member states.
But with the RAP now officially complete and Utsumi due to present its eight-point plan to ITU Council in July, the reform torch has been passed back to the WGR, which has quickly become embroiled in the internal bickering that has characterized previous efforts to restructure. Brokering agreement on simple terms of reference proved such a lengthy process that it occupied most of the available time at WGR’s first meeting in December 1999.
Now reports from those who attended the group’s second meeting in Geneva in April said discussion on the three targeted reform areas-ITU activities, structure and financing-was dominated by national grandstanding by a few conservative countries, resulting in little real progress.
In the face of such hard-line resistance to change, some have begun to characterize the ITU as a telecom dinosaur doomed by a new global business climate that demands “Web-time” levels of responsiveness. If this gloomy forecast is eventually borne out, it won’t be for want of effort on the part of Utsumi, who says he still remains optimistic about the potential for change.
“The commitment to restructuring is now shared by all ITU members. If we can succeed in implementing the reforms needed to position our organization to meet the challenges of this new century, I believe our future is very rosy,” Utsumi said.
