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[Commentary] At the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) in Dubai, delegates will consider proposals to amend the International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs,) binding rules that govern telecommunications network practices around the world.

While ITRs are currently limited to the telephone network, several WCIT proposals would expand their scope, making them apply broadly across the entire Internet ecosystem. The ITRs were last amended in 1988, before the Internet was a public system and before many of the most important telecommunications systems and networks we use today were even invented. ITRs have not historically applied to the Internet, which has developed its own international governance institutions, so it’s peculiar that some nations want to extend them so radically at this stage. In the new world of mobile networks and the Internet, the commercial sector is the network operator and each nation makes its own regulations governing networks. Shifting control of regulatory policy to a global body of regulators pressed by nations with parochial and often mercantilist Interests is not an improvement. If any change needs to be made at all in the ITRs with respect to the Internet, it should be limited to creating a firewall between the authority of ITU and the operation of the Internet. The Internet’s organic governance system has proved to be quite effective, in no small part due to its close proximity to the Internet’s technical standards and business practices. Technologies that enable rapid rates of change need the ability to adapt to changing conditions quickly; an international treaty organization that convenes once every fifteen years does not fit the bill. The ITU is facing obsolescence as we begin to retire the telephone networks that have been its sole focus since the phase-out of the telegraph, but this existential crisis does not justify a wholesale restructuring of Internet governance.

The US telephone network the Bell System built and ran for almost a century is dying, replaced by technology that propels Internet messages. Rules underpinning that old order should expire with it, AT&T says.

Its argument has skipped from state capital to state capital and could arrive in force at the Federal Communications Commission, which is considering a request from the modern-day AT&T to establish test zones where rules of the Ma Bell era wouldn’t apply. “We have to be able to start this transition from the old to the new,” Jim Cicconi, AT&T senior executive vice president, said Nov. 27 during a discussion at the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based policy group. “The underlying statutes really aren’t designed for the current situation.” The debate over whether rules of the copper-line era should apply to today’s fiber-optic and Internet-based networks centers on the changes in an industry whose service for decades was guaranteed by government rules, rather than driven by competition.

Speaking at the Phoenix Center, Federal Communications Commission member Ajit Pai said if a federal appeals court upholds the FCC's network neutrality rules, he expects the Democrat-led commission to expand regulation of the Internet, including into the mobile wireless space and usage-based pricing. Commissioner Pai said the biggest action on the telecom front would likely be that court decision, rather than actions out of the commission or Congress, though he suggested an FCC defeat was more likely. While Commissioner Pai said the FCC has received few network neutrality complaints, and has "done little" with any that have been filed, that could change with a court victory.

Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Maria Cantwell (D-WA) blasted a Federal Communications Commission proposal to relax media ownership restrictions at a press conference.

"We cannot live in a vibrant democracy unless people get divergent sources of information," Sen Sanders said. FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski circulated a proposal with his fellow commissioners last month that would relax regulations that prohibit a single company from owning a TV broadcast station and a newspaper in the same market. The order would eliminate bans on newspaper-radio and TV-radio cross-ownership. "I intend to do everything I can to prevent this proposal from going forward," Sen Sanders said. Sen Cantwell said the proposal would "strengthen media consolidation and strip newspapers and TV and radio stations of diverse voices." She threatened that if the FCC moves ahead with the planned changes, Congress could pass a resolution of disapproval, which would repeal the order. Sens Sanders and Cantwell both expressed concern that the move would reduce the few number of women and minorities who own media outlets.