ITU

 

(ITU), specialized agency of the United Nations, with headquarters at Geneva. It was created in 1934 as a result of the merging of the International Telegraph Union (est. 1865; the first international governmental organization) and the International Radiotelegraph Union (est. 1906); there are now 191 member nations. The union functions under the International Telecommunication Convention, which was adopted in 1947 and revised in 1967. The goal of the organization is to extend and improve all forms of international telecommunication by allotting radio frequencies, by encouraging the establishment of low rates, and by perfecting communications in rescue operations. The ITU is governed by the plenipotentiary conference at which all members are represented; it normally meets once every four or five years. The conference elects an administrative council of 29 members. Conferences for the regulation of telecommunication in space have been among ITU's more recent activities.

International Telecommunication Union
International Telecommunication Union emblem
Formation	May 17 1865
Headquarters	Geneva, Switzerland
Membership	United Nations
Official languages	French, English, Spanish, Russian, Arabic, Chinese
Secretary General	Hamadoun Touré
Website	http://www.itu.int/

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU; French: Union internationale des télécommunications, Spanish: Unión Internacional de Telecomunicaciones, Chinese: 國際電信聯盟; Russian:Международный союз электросвязи; Arabic:الاتحاد الدولي للاتصالات) is an international organization established to standardize and regulate international radio and telecommunications. It was founded as the International Telegraph Union in Paris on May 17, 1865. Its main tasks include standardization, allocation of the radio spectrum, and organizing interconnection arrangements between different countries to allow international phone calls — in which regard it performs for telecommunications a similar function to what the UPU performs for postal services. It is one of the specialized agencies of the United Nations, and has its headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, next to the main United Nations campus.

Composition

The ITU is made up of three sectors:

• The Telecommunication Standardization Sector, whose secretariat is the Telecommunication Standardization Bureau or TSB, known prior to 1992 as the International Telephone and Telegraph Consultative Committee or CCITT (from its French name "Comité consultatif international téléphonique et télégraphique");
• The Radiocommunication Sector, whose secretariat is the Radiocommunication Bureau or BR, known prior to 1992 as the International Radio Consultative Committee or CCIR (from its French name "Comité consultatif international des radiocommunications");
• The Telecommunication Development Sector, whose secretariat is the Telecommunication Development Bureau or BDT, created in 1992.

A permanent General Secretariat, headed by the Secretary General, manages the day-to-day work of the Union and its sectors.

Leadership

The ITU is headed by a Secretary-General, who is elected to a four-year term by the member states at the plenipotentiary conference.

At the 17th Plenipotentiary Conference (2006) in Antalya, Turkey, the ITU's Member States elected Dr. Hamadoun Touré of Mali as Secretary-General of the Union.^[1]

Standards

The international standards that are produced by the ITU are referred to as "Recommendations" (with the word ordinarily capitalized to distinguish its meaning from the ordinary sense of the word). Due to its longevity as an international organization and its status as a specialized agency of the United Nations, standards promulgated by the ITU carry a higher degree of formal international recognition than those of most other organizations that publish technical specifications of a similar form.

Digital Opportunity Index

The ITU has developed, under the Digital Opportunity Platform, the Digital Opportunity Index (or DOI) as a tool to measure the Information Society. DOI is a composite index based on 11 core ICT indicators. The structure of the index is sequential, which makes it more flexible and allows to use it in combination with other existing indices (such as the UNDP Human Development Index)^[2] The DOI was endorsed by the World Summit on the Information Society ^[3] in the Tunis Agenda for the Information Society (para 117) as a tool for mapping of digital opportunity worldwide.

The DOI, which was compiled for 180 economies for 2005, is at present the most extensive ICT index providing an internationally-agreed benchmark of the status of ICTs around the world at the conclusion of the Tunis Summit, and can be used to track progress made in infrastructure, opportunity and utilization of ICTs by the target year 2015. The measurement of the digital divide and the analysis based on scientifically-significant evidence make it possible to inform policy-making processes and optimize the benefits of ICTs, in particular in the developing countries.

In 2005, the Asian economies of the Republic of Korea and Japan continue to lead in digital opportunity, due to their pioneering take-up of broadband and 3G mobile services. Dramatic progress has been achieved by developing countries, however, which made the greatest progress in digital opportunity - notably India, where digital opportunity nearly doubled between 2001 and 2005, and China, which experienced remarkably strong gains in infrastructure. Different countries are following their own paths in telecommunication development, with some countries leveraging their investments in infrastructure more successfully than others.

A collaborative report, the World Information Society Report^[4], reviews the key trends in ICT development crystallized by the DOI and frame the ICT development debate, providing an annual contribution to the WSIS implementation. Highlights from the report as well as the chapters, different statistics and maps based on the DOI are publicly available.^[5]

The policy toolkit being developed under DOP will contribute furthering the knowledge of the digital divide and allow tailoring recommendations to address the specific challenges in digital opportunity faced by individual countries or regions based on facts about what worked and what did not in a particular context. In that sense, the insights of the different stakeholders involved are valuable in developing adapted and appropriate policy support. A DOI Users’ guide is available for all those willing to calculate the DOI themselves: regulators, development professionals, academics and larger audience.^[6]

The DOI is not at this point an ITU Recommendation (what the ITU calls its standards)^[7]. The DOI will continue to be developed as a multi-stakeholder project involving multiple partners as an integrated element of the Digital Opportunity Platform.^[8]

Members

The work of the ITU is conducted by its members. As part of the United Nations structure, a country can be a member, in which case it is referred to as a Member State. Companies and other such organizations can hold other classes of membership referred to as Sector Member or Associate status. As of September 2007 there were 191 Member States and more than 700 Sector Members and Associates. ^[9]

Sector and Associate memberships enable direct participation by a company in the development of standards (something not allowed in some other standards bodies such as ISO, where formal ballots are processed by a single entity per country and companies participate only indirectly through national delegations). Various parts of the ITU also maintain liaison relationships with other organizations.

Members are the Vatican City and almost all of the UN members. Only Palau and East Timor are not participating. Other entities not represented are the Palestinian Authority and Taiwan, although the Palestinian Authority is granted non-voting observer status ^[10].

Meetings

The ITU decides matters between states and private organizations through an extensive series of working parties, study groups, regional meetings, and world meetings.

Examples

• World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC)
• World administrative radio conferences (WARC)
• Regional Radiocommunication Conferences (RRC)

World Summit on the Information Society

Main article: World Summit on the Information Society

The ITU was the lead organizing agency of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS)^[11], a United Nations summit aiming at bridging the digital divide and turning it into digital opportunity for all. WSIS provided a global forum on the theme of ICTs (Information and Communication Technologies) for development, involving for the first time all stakeholders - governments, international organizations, civil society and business. WSIS was a pledge for building a people-centered development-oriented Information Society. Other big themes of the Summit were Internet governance and Financial mechanisms for meeting the challenges of ICTs for development.

The idea of holding WSIS came from the Tunisian President Ben Ali on the ITU Plenipotentiary Conference in Minneapolis in 1998. The process was launched late in 2002 on the initiative of Kofi Annan. The first phase of the WSIS summit took place in December 2003 in Geneva and the second and final phase took place in Tunis in November 2005.

See also

• ITU Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T)
• ITU Radiocommunication Sector (ITU-R)
• ITU Telecommunication Development Sector (ITU-D)
• ITU-T Recommendations
• ITU-R Recommendations
• UIT X.509
• Inter-American Telecommunication Commission (CITEL)
• Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG)

Notes

1. ^ Report on election of Toure
2. ^ ITU Digital Opportunity Index
3. ^ World Summit on the Information Society
4. ^ World Information Society Report
5. ^ [1]
6. ^ [2]
7. ^ The available definition of the DOI is a methodological paper first presented at the WSIS Thematic Meeting “Building Digital Bridges” in Bussan, Korea in June 2005: [3]
8. ^ [4]
9. ^ http://www.itu.int/net/home/index.aspx ITU Membership Information and access to membership list
10. ^ Resolution 99, "Status of Palestine in ITU", ITU Plenipotentiary Conference, Minneapolis, 1998
11. ^ [5]

External links

• ITU official site
• ITU history from the official site
• U.N. Summit to Focus on Internet - Washington Post article about ICANN and the United Nations' ITU relationship

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