Moderator: Brian Carpenter, CERN
Well, thank you very much Christian. We have a few minutes before the break so I will make use of that time for two things. Firstly I will explain to you who are the two other people sitting up here are, because I didn't introduce them at the beginning since I was a bit worried about the amount of time. It is a convention in the ITU standards process that all groups have a Rapporteur. So this group has a Rapporteur, which is formally Andrew Sundberg who is the Business and Finance Director of Internet ProLink SA which is one of the local Internet service providers in this area. It also happens to be an Internet service provider in New Zealand by the way; so I have a story like Vint's story which is that ten days ago I learned that I have a new young nephew via the Internet because he was born in New Zealand and my family told me about it through the Internet. So that is kind of nice and it was through our Iprolink New Zealand.
The other person here is our expert; because another thing the ITU has is experts. Mike Jensen from South Africa - has experience in 25 African countries assisting with Internet and other communications systems establishment. He's worked as a journalist. In Canada he helped to found a thing called The Web which was nothing to do with the WEB. It was a network called The Web and he has been given instructions to create controversy in the panel discussion. So we have no secrets here !
Now, before we take the break. I have a suspicion from something Vint [Cerf] said to me that he has a comment on something that Christian [Huitema] said. So I thought we might open the shooting before the break. Do you want to go ahead Vint?
Yes. At the terrible risk of destroying any opportunity of extracting a wonderful bottle of wine from my friend Christian, I wanted to react to the claim that there wasn't anything to do in order to support all of this real-time voice and video; that you just poured the bits in and the applications would adapt to the available capacity. I accept that this is possible. I remind you, and in fact I draw upon a term that I think Tony used in his slides about the general Internet Commons.
There is a parable about the tragedy of the commons, where people shared a common pasture and they allowed their sheep to graze there but no one paid much attention to how much grazing was done by each group of sheep. And since no one felt constrained, eventually all the grass was eaten and there was nothing left.
Christian will respond "well with proper flow control, congestion control and adaptation, eventually you will be able to curb the appetite of the sheep!" I accept this is possible but I also suggest that at some point there you must curb your appetite so severely, you may starve to death and the implication of this is that unless we learn how to scale the network up and deal with the proper allocation of capacity inside the Net, we will overwhelm it with demand in such a way that no one will get any service or get adequate service. So Christian, how do you propose to deal with that?
Well, the first thing you have to change in networks - there is actually something you have to change - and that is the network capacity. We have to have bandwidth in the network. Yesterday I had a presentation in a scientific exhibit at the Cienerois in France, where someone presented me with the Arbium doped fibre optic which enables you to pull up a fibre terrestrial cable that has the capacity of 100 Gigabits and so as far as I know you can put through 32 at the same time. So I hope we will see something like that - so that there is actually some bandwidth available. That's the first part. Second part is that indeed there has to be some policing in the network. I mean networks do have the right to be smart. They have the right to make sure that every user gets about the same share. And you can do that with very simple statistical treatment in the switches which does some kind of policing, and gets you away from the problems of the tragedy of the commons that you were mentioning. So, yes you have to do something inside the network. You have to have more capacity and you have to have some policing. But you don't have to change much and you don't have to change all the network at the same time.
Okay, I can hardly wait to see all this work. I accept that you don't have to change all the network at the same time, although if you don't do a fair amount of it, there will be parts that will be overloaded.
OK. For those of you who really want a technical answer. I heard a few days ago that the first interoperability tests of a new protocol called RSVP have already taken place successfully, and that is a resource reservation protocol in the Internet. So, there is already technical work coming. Jim, you have one minute.
I just want to observe that the Internet is a set of leased lines that are leased from telecommunications companies and in some cases operated by those telecommunications companies. The capacity of the telecommunications system is much greater than the capacity that is currently being used in the Internet. If the telecommunications companies operate these networks in the backbone and the local branches of the Internet, then they have, in real-time, the ability to switch in and allocate more bandwidth.
Lets face it, the Internet itself is derived by capturing just small fractions of the bandwidth of the telecommunications infrastructure in any given location. So I think the prospect of having the telecommunications companies operate these networks means that they can allocate bandwidth as needed. That may require changes of the protocols, it may not. It may be quite possible that Internet protocols running on top of the ATM system enable the use of the Internet protocols to establish the connections and one might actually get an allocated piece of bandwidth or an allocated circuit, a provision circuit as it is called in the teleco business, that has all the bandwidth you need to deliver whatever it is that you are doing.
Could I just make one comment. Some of my best friends are telephone companies and I even work for one. [Laughter]. The issue here is not necessarily absolute transmission capacity but switching capacity as well. And I only want to remind you that you have to get the packets through the system fast enough in order to do everything and that is probably the bigger barrier than getting the actual transmission capacity.
We have got an enormous number of questions, thank you very much and I do apologise because we can't possibly attack all of them in the time available. We do have to stop at 6.00 p.m. pretty precisely because several people here have other appointments involving the World Bank and things like that, which I don't fully understand, but there it is.
The distinguished speakers and panel that you have assembled clearly demonstrate the vitality and global productivity of the Internet.
I firmly believe that the Internet will help us achieve Vice President Gore's vision the Global Information Infrastructure. The Internet allows us to connect children to classrooms, citizens to their representatives, and countries to each other. The people here on the panel are the ones who are making this happen.
I come here as a user of the Internet as well as a Commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission. The FCC is an independent U.S. agency, established in 1934, and charged with regulating interstate and international communications by radio, television, wire. satellite and cable. The FCC has five commissioners, appointed by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate. We serve five year staggered terms. And to insure our independence, no more than three members can be of the same political party.
When people hear ..."Government-Regulator", ... they think we think:
"If it moves, regulate it;
If it doesn't move,
kick it until it does move,
and then regulate it."
I am here to suggest that regulation is NOT the mindset of this Commission. Instead. our mind is set on competition.
Our goal is to ensure that the user has the best service and the most options at the lowest cost. To meet this goal, we strive for open and fair competition.
Only with real competition can consumers truly benefit fully from the Information Superhighway. Internet service is relatively inexpensive in the U. S. in part because there is robust competition between service providers and carriers. Lower prices from the carriers directly translates into lower prices for consumers.
For example, users in one European country pay almost four times the price for access that U.S. users pay. In fact, U.S. prices are so much lower that users in some countries are putting their home pages on U.S. service providers. To browsers, it looks as though the home page is located in their country, but in fact, it is based thousands of miles away in the U.S. Why? Because competition has dramatically reduced the leased line costs. In some countries, dominant carriers are free to charge monopoly prices.
Competition is critical for the Internet to achieve its global potential; regulators can help make that happen.
How else can governments assist the Internet? For one, we can review our rules to make sure that they are not obstructive. So I would welcome hearing about any concerns that you might have on that score.
A second role for Government is to be more proactive. We can demonstrate how the Internet's capabilities can address important social needs. Governments can work with the market and social institutions to tap the Internet's potential.
For example, President Clinton recently announced a new private-sector initiative in California to connect one fifth, of California's schools to the Internet by the end of this year That means almost 1.5 million children could be online by December. By the end of the decade. We want to have every classroom in America connected. Connecting the classrooms is a first step in providing our children with a world class education.
Making it easier for citizens to be active participants in our government is another place where I believe the Internet can play an important role. The FCC has set up home pages for our bureaus and commissioners. You will see these remarks posted on my home page. Browsers can find out about the latest FCC rules, decisions and public notices. Most importantly, this provides another avenue for people to submit comments to the FCC and to have a voice in our decision making process.
Agencies across the government are experimenting with the Internet as a low cost way to provide services and information to the public.
The global reach of the Internet connects people across countries. Access could benefit students in Latin America and Africa as well as kids in California.
In short, the Internet is a fundamental building block for the realization of a Global Information Society. Governments should embrace its promise; not become obstacles to its fulfilment.
Thank you.
Thank you Commissioner Ness. I think the anarchists in the Internet will certainly agree with everything you said.
Thank you Brian for this introduction and as you have mentioned I am speaking here for Dr. El Sherif, the Chairman of IDSC and the Chairman of the Application Task Force at the ICC.
When we connected the Internet to our country, Egypt, about two years ago, nobody expected the tremendous growth and the tremendous effect which the Internet is really having. For the first time we can notice that higher officials and higher executives from the Government and business community become members in user groups and in new applications that are emerging every day. New opportunities are created for the business community and we have now really a gateway to the world that has been opened in the educational sector and the commercial sector and in the Governmental sector as well.
Nevertheless, as a developing country, we still have a lot of challenges that we have to face in order to really track the Internet to the wealth of the community and to the society. These changes can be classified as technical changes, cultural changes, as well as financial changes.
If we start with the cultural changes, then it is the openness to the world. Are we really ready for this new era? Can we really process this large amount of information and use it for the wealth of our society? Are there really conflicts with our cultures and our traditions? How can we present ourselves to the rest of society in a competitive way in order not to create a society of haves and have nots? Is the infrastructure which is there capable of carrying the new amounts of traffic and of satisfying the user needs? And when it comes to further technical challenges - are we able to utilise the Internet and make new interfaces with our natural languages or should completely adapt ourselves to the international norms which are used English, French and maybe German? And who should lead this? Should the lead come from developing countries themselves or should we wait for solutions from outside the region? And last, but not least, the financial challenges that we are facing with the Internet - who should start financing and co-financing the infrastructure and the different needs for the service provider? Should the Governments step in heavily or should we leave it completely to the private sector? Is the private sector mature enough to take over this from day one in the commercial sector or should we think about regulation and deregulation for the Internet service provision?
A lot of challenges that we are meeting and facing and I believe not only in Egypt but in the rest of the developing countries as well. I hope that every time we meet with colleagues of INET we try to learn from other people's experiences and we try to contribute to this new era of information to be a part of the global information infrastructure at the right time. And again, not to create further societies of haves and have nots.
Thank you very much
Thank you very much Dr. Kammel. A few words from Henri Gouraud.
Thank you. Digital Equipment has been a very active developer of the Internet and is a heavy user of the Internet for its own development. Digital is connected to the Internet as of 1982 and in spite of that, we find that changing our way of doing things is difficult for a large organisation like a company the size of Digital.
As we try to evolve our way of doing things with full understanding and full knowledge of what Internet is and what our computers are and so on, we see small organisations spring in the market place of the Internet and become within one year, a leader in this market like Netscape. I believe that we have to look at this situation and try to expand the analyses to the rest of the society.
As was said earlier by the main speakers, the Internet is moving very fast and is going to have impact all over - on government, on social bodies, on legal institutions. And they have not had the knowledge that we at Digital had about computers so they are starting a little bit behind. Still they have to evolve, they have to absorb this new technology as fast as we had to do it. It's going to be hard.
If that doesn't happen one is going to see new small organisations spring up and take a leadership position next to the institution and legal bodies. So I am really looking forward to this challenge of seeing new bodies spring up on the Internet and helping existing institutions to learn about this new frontier.
Okay thank you Henri. Wim, a few words.
Thanks Brian. I will try to keep it short. Many things have already been said which I agree with. Although I would like to add one comment to the involvement of Governments in the Internet service provision. But maybe we will take that up on the panel of discussion.
What I would like to do is just to paint you a little scenario. The Internet is, I would say, rapidly becoming a paradox of conflicting forces. The users have come to expect Internet access at minimal cost or at cheaper and cheaper cost. But at the same time, they are demanding ever increasing rates, rates of value-added services. Many Internet service providers need to sink in more investment in order to live up to the customer requirements and investments taking place into the infrastructure and into the development and introduction of new applications and services.
I think its interesting to reflect on whether such a development is sustainable in the long term; and to question how and when investors will see a return of their investment?
Thank you. Ms. Benjamin from the point of view of a carrier.
Thank you Brian.
If the phenomenon of communications known as the Internet is to flourish as we wish it to, we must strike a balance between rights and responsibilities, and between the possible and the practical. Take for example the dilemma of free access to content versus protection of intellectual property. Issues of copyright protection are hot topics today and range from simple duplication and distribution of copyrighted text, to distribution of free copies of copyright-protected software to the distribution of new photo art or characters or images created by clipping images from several different copyrighted sources. Copyright protection granted by the US congress can be extended to any tangible medium "now known or later developed" including computers and computer media such as punch cards and magnetic tapes". So for an example, a live concert cannot be copyrighted although a recording of the same concert can. Some controversial cases hold that things recorded on computer RAM can be copyrighted even though there only stable when the computer is on. So sysops can be liable for copyright infringement. However, the ultimate aim of copyright law is not to enhance the author or creators compensation but to increase the public good by making available stimulating artistic activity for the general public good and by making works widely available.
As you have heard earlier, several different schemes have been proposed to handle the copyright question. One way, for example, is to charge the user as information comes into the PC. Others have proposed other solutions such as computer tracking of usage and usage rights and digital water marking. Still another proposal is to set up a centralised warehouse for licensed properties and licensing information that would allow users and distributors of copyrighted information to easily and quickly learn how to obtain licences from the copyright holders.
As commercial use of the Internet evolves and develops, none of these fixes or any/or all of these fixes may actually be adopted. But as we weigh these different concepts we need to keep in mind the need for balance, in how we treat the information that is made available over the Internet and not expect technology to resolve issues of human rights and responsibilities. We need therefore to be careful that in our zeal to protect content creators, we don't go overboard and stifle the very openness of the Internet as an information highway open to all and carrying all types of information.
So, Dr. Irmer, any thing to add from the ITU's view point?
Thank you. Brian, in your introduction you mentioned that I am here representing the ITU and more precisely the ITU Standardization Sector better known under our former name of CCITT. I must confess, this is very old and long standing organisation. I feel kind of feather-run under these youngsters here of the Internet you know !
Anyway, despite this feeling, I think we have brushed up our system recently and will do that of course in the future. We produce standards for telecommunications in the widest sense except radiocommunication standards which is done in our sister organisation - the Radiocommunication Sector. Our membership consists of what we call administrations, network operators, service providers, manufacturers and other international organisations. I am glad to welcome you here all officially, now that the Internet Society has become a member of the ITU. This membership was long discussion because one of the problems is that the ITU is an intergovernmental organisation and as such it has a lot of provisions and we also have our Conventions. So while we would like to be more liberal, even more democratic than we are, there are rules, procedures which stem from the character of our organisation which of course we cannot remove overnight.
We are working by consensus, which of course, takes time. We have the UN principle - one man, one vote. The biggest country has exactly the same, one vote, as the smallest one. We operate in three or six languages. Translation costs money and time, so these are a few of the, shall I say problems that we have. I don't complain but I think it's important to mention them here to show the environment in which we are operating and why there are say limitations or restrictions which are not in our power to remove at least not overnight.
Nevertheless, we have been quite active to accelerate, streamline and to make our standardization work more efficient. When I came to Geneva in 1985 it took about four to five years to have the standards ready. We are now down to 15 months and even that is too long. We are co-operating with all other standardization organisations regardless of their nature world-wide like ISOC, regional ones ETSI, T1 etc. because standardization today is a global activity and we cannot afford to spend time and money in useless discussion. There is place and work for everybody. Now I am looking forward, as I said already, to welcoming the Internet Society as a member of our sector to a fruitful and mutually beneficial corporation.
Ms. Benjamin has just talked about IPR, about copyright, these are all famous issues which we are dealing with and I look forward to sharing our experience with yours. As I said already, we are not afraid of competition, we are not afraid of unorthodox ideas because we know that this is what brings the world forward, so lets see, and lets look forward to working together.
Thank you.
Well thank you, and I regret actually that Scott Bradner, who is the vice-president of the Internet Society responsible for standards is not here, because he is the official liaison with the ITU. But I think he was saturated by Interop and from various other Conferences so couldn't get here. Okay so that's given our experts some time to analyse the questions so would you like to fire off the first question, Mike?
Yes we received over 150 questions so we don't have a hope at all of answering them all. I have attempted to group the ones which seem to most important together and I apologise if your particular question was missed.
I would like to appeal to the panel to try and get as many questions in as possible or as many answers in and to keep your responses as brief as possible.
I'd like to pick up on one particular area that is clearly of concern to many of the audience and of particular interest to me in Africa, which is the issue of Internet penetration in developing countries. Given what the Secretary-General of the ITU mentioned earlier that 97% of Internet users are in the high income countries where there is only 15% of the population and vast numbers of people around the world have no experience of cheap and easy accessible telephone calls even, what possibility does Internet hold in these areas? We have an incredibly poor infrastructure in many places. I have just come from the capital of Tanzania, Dar-es-Salaam, where it is virtually impossible to make a call from one exchange in the capital city to another. There are very restrictive regulations about allowing third party services, but the PTTs themselves have extremely little experience in running Internet services. This brings on the third area; there is an extreme lack of human resources in the developing countries. There is virtually no experience of TCP/IP networking in many countries, little UNIX experience and even little computer experience in general.
So my question is: Does the developed world have a responsibility to make special efforts to assist the developing world, improve its access to the Internet and if so what should the wealthy countries do ?
I don't know if we have anyone fully qualified to tackle that question here but Tony certainly has opinions on this.
Indeed I would point out actually that this is a problem for the ITU itself and has been for decades, with respect just to telecommunications services. If you simply plot things like number of central office lines verses GNP/GDP it maps very closely to available capital. So that's just a critical factor of life that unfortunately is probably slightly exacerbated in the Internet world because you don't have simple end instruments - you have relatively complex and somewhat more costly computers.
The training factor is an important one and I think that is an area where special initiatives can indeed be taken. But the most, in a sense damaging factor, may well be things that Commissioner Ness raised, which has to do with the anti-competitive monopoly situations in practices that result in devastating effects on the computer networking.
Thanks. I noticed indeed that Dr. Kammel pointed out that his department, a government department is responsible for providing commercial Internet services in his country. Now it is not for us to prescribe the economic and social systems in other countries but this is rather different from the current situation in the lively bits of the Internet as you will realise, so do we have any free marketers on the panel? Vim is probably a free marketer.
Yes, I would like to make a comment here. We do provide Internet services to some developing countries. We have UUCP with Sri Lanka, Jordan, and also are in contact with a number of other countries in Africa. One of the problems we face is, again, the regulatory bodies because when we have found people and organisations who are able and interested to provide Internet services they do not get a licence. So I think again it comes back to the Government to free up because they are holding back the development in their own countries.
Doctor Kammel you had a direct comment?
Yes, I have actually a small comment on what you have rightly realised in the service in Egypt. The Government of Egypt two years ago realised that actually nobody in the commercial sector was ready to pump in money for the first two years to serve the commercial community and at least to raise the awareness. It is a similar revolution that happened in the United States with the National Science Foundation. So somebody had to do it, otherwise the Internet would have stayed in the islands of the educational domain and in the university. So we have opened the service, the government has opened the service and believe it or not for free, even for private companies. We now have 1500 private companies who are taking Internet services for free and completely subsidised by the government of Egypt. I was just talking today in the morning to Vint Cerf. We have realised that this model cannot continue and we have to open the delivery arms and extend the outreach of the service via commercial service providers. So very soon, we will have commercial service providers to provide the services. But at least in the first stage for awareness it had to be done by the Government. Thank you
That's a very interesting approach I must say. I think Christian has something to say on this too.
Yes, I would add on this question and outline the benefits that developing countries can develop on the Internet. Just yesterday, I received a message from a student in Indonesia who had read my book on "Routing in the Internet" and who was asking questions on specific details and because he was on the Internet I could send him the detailed responses. That means that those students in the developing countries which connect to the Internet get access to exactly the same, well almost, documentation and professors as students in developed countries.
That's a great possibility for the Third World. That means we can help those students, they will get the same knowledge, they will get the same sources and that will be a great help for developing these countries.
Just add one more and I will toss it back to Mike for the next question. Even in the standardization processes of the Internet it is very clear that the model we have where any body can join the discussion lists as long as they have email and nobody has a vote, so we don't have one man and one vote, we have no voting we just have consensus. This model means that anybody in the Third World who is on the Internet can join the Internet standards process and never has to come to a meeting. I think this is actually a very important thing because there are just as clever people in the Third World as there are in the West and there is no reason why they shouldn't contribute to the standards process in all sorts of ways. So I think Mike has probably got to get on the second of the 150 questions !
I would like to make one additional comment which in fact goes back to the birth of the Internet itself when it was called ARPANET. One of the purposes of building the Arpanet was to allow students from various universities in the States to continue work together across the network beyond the times when they would meet face-to-face. I think this extends very well to the developing countries where a student that has come to the States for one or two years of education can go back to his country and continue to collaborate and work with his former US, French or German colleagues through the Internet. This was not possible before, now it is possible and it will entice those people to come back to their countries and continue their work.
One final point. As the largest backbone carrier on the Internet and as a service provider to 1200 service providers including a number of non-US countries licence holders, we found that there are several elements that really make Internetworking in lesser developed countries possible and several of them have been mentioned. Education, awareness building and knowledge transfer need to precede any sort of infrastructure build up. But, then we have also seen even if people in the country do not have widespread access to computers, Internetworking can be done through public kiosks and other facilities and devices that take advantage of what is available within the country.
A nice easy one here for Mr. Rutkowski - could you repeat your URL for your presentation people who couldn't get it?
FTP://FTP.WIA.ORG/PUB/TELECOM.PPT.
These are questions for Commissioner Ness. You stressed how competition can contribute to the growth of the Internet. Some countries, especially those developing nations with networks requiring extensive new infrastructure, think that competition will slow down the creation of a universal sophisticated network and the services that it can provide like the Internet. What is your view?
We believe that competition can, in fact, provide faster and better opportunities to build out an infrastructure particularly where there is low teledensity. The competition improves incentives for innovative network solutions on an efficient construction. Obviously Vint and Tony have experience on how competitive networks can respond. One general point that we have had, all countries are looking at their universal service, it's evolutionary and it depends on the circumstances in each country. In the US, not very long ago, our goal was the party line, a couple of households sharing a line. Obviously today that is not the case. But elsewhere maybe the goal is a telephone in every village or as Robba [Benjamin] was saying a kiosk where you can have access to the Internet. Access to the Internet should be a goal of universal service not for each home, but perhaps a community resource like a school, and that's what we are working towards.
I would have the comment that the developing countries have had monopoly providers for a long time and it has not worked yet. Maybe it is time to try something new.
I would like to add a little bit to this part of the discussion, competition is terribly important. MCI is the company I work for and we were sort of born in competition so we certainly believe in it. But I think you have to have a kind of minimum market in order to sustain competition. I would like to remind everyone here that even in the United States, as Henri Gouraud has already mentioned, the Internet started as a Government funded project. In fact its objectives were not quite the same as what happens on the Internet today. This is the law of unintended consequences I think. What is important though, is that a certain minimum set of requirements had to come together before it could become a commercially competitive enterprise and it took some years for that to happen. We did not see competitive Internet services coming into the US until around 1990 or 1991 remembering that the Internet research started in 1973.
In the developing countries, similar kinds of difficulties could arise. In addition to which, you need to have some minimum reliable power sources, you have to have trained staff, you have to have available equipment and communications to make effective use of Internet. So I think, as Tony and others have mentioned, investment in those various pieces of infrastructure is absolutely vital, in order to ignite the Internet infection and I would invite the Governments of these countries to consider that their economic livelihood may very well depend on their wise investment in infrastructures that help Internet technologies grow.
Thanks Vint. Jim, I wonder, as a business man who started up two companies very successfully whether you have any reaction to this question of: How you start up from zero in a developing country?
I think the start ups that I did, both of them are much easier that starting up a telecommunications infrastructure build. To some degree it seems that perhaps the monopolies that exist achieved that status because they had to make such huge investments, they had to have somewhat of a monopoly status in order to justify making those investments. Now, the infrastructure exists, and I think that the evidence of the number of small Internet service providers who exist around the world is proof that it is a modest undertaking to become an Internet service provider. Countries that don't have good Internet service provision don't, in general, because monopolies and the Governments are preventing it. I think that is where European countries are somewhat at a disadvantage in the sense that you have substantially fewer competitors than what seem to be emerging in the US. In the US we have the cable companies who are going to be providing Internet services and I think that it provides a rich and fertile environment for better services to exist. So I am a big believer in competition.
Just to point out it, it's hard to believe there is any place in the world now with a population over ten that doesn't have a significant Internet demand, particularly obvious here, and its almost a nobrainer if the price is right to get an IPL, a router, a terminal server and a bunch of modems and go into business.
But, I would remind you that there are many villages in India where the number of telephones is either zero or one. So it's not so easy in that village ! I know that Dr. Irmer is not in the development part of the ITU but he might utter some response from the ITU on this topic.
The ITU is of course aware of this problem. Many years ago there was the well publicised "Maitland Report" or "Missing link Report" as it was called. Without going through all the details at the Kyoto Plenipotentiary Conference, a huge program which was called the "Buenos Aires Action Program", was confirmed. Part of that plan is exactly what we are talking about, supporting the implementation. It's called electronic networks but behind this phrase is exactly what we are talking about - Internet and other electronic means.
We are very aware, in the developing countries that without telecommunications even in say, rudimentary form, there is no growth in the economy. That has been proven I don't know how many times and this lesson we have no longer to teach everyday anew.
Just before we go back to Mike, I wanted to ask Dr. Kammel if he has any reaction to all that as you come from one of the interested countries.
My opinion is that the big need is for human resource development and for awareness. It is not only a problem of infrastructure and telephony. Infrastructure can be created using a router and VSAT terminal and getting connected, even as you mentioned, taking the example of any village in India. It is a problem of training people, educating people, making them aware what's in it for them; and how to utilise it for the benefit of the society. I believe that developed countries can contribute a lot to that. We have a successful story every year which repeats during the INET which is organised by the Internet society and which has a developing countries workshop. This was mentioned by Vint and by Tony Rutkowski. The nice thing is that contribution in the training of staff itself is coming from within the developing countries. To show and to let everyone see that it is not only a matter of the developed countries but it is also for the developing. Definitely we need more and more regional workshops in a lot of regions to be developed by the region itself for the wealth of the region. So again its a problem of human resource development and awareness more than cable link and infrastructure. Thank you.
Two quick points. Everybody is quoting India and in fact there are several internetworks in India, including several commercial networks and they are going into the villages. That's the first point.
The second point is, we should be aware that technology has evolved to the point that you can deploy infrastructure much more easily that we could a 100 years ago.
Brian, if I could just note. One potential for Internet delivery that has a lot of value in the developing countries is going to be the satellite systems, particularly the low earth orbiting satellite systems that are on the planning stage right now. They will be available in a few years for service, but today, decisions have to be made particularly at the upcoming World Radio Conference to allocate sufficient spectrum so that they can get off the ground and provide the services to the Third World Countries.
If I can step out of the Chair and give my opinion. I think it is much more important to give the spectrum to developing countries than to the rich countries because we have enough money to put fibres under the ocean - to put it bluntly. So, I personally, would think this is something to be explored very aggressively for the developing countries. The service might not be quite as nice on a satellite link as on a fibre but its certainly better than no service at all.
Okay Mike what's next?
Next. Moving on to another question for Commissioner Ness. Aside from general competition policies, can you identify any lessons concerning regulatory policy, based on FCC experience, that would be helpful to the growth of the Internet.
In the United States we had two successes I think. One was decided a number of years ago and Tony was very instrumental on that, and that is that the Commission not regulate enhanced services, i.e. the value added services, the data services. We do not regulate the prices, we do not license these services, they are free market. And that was vital to the growth of data networking including the Internet. Many countries still maintain restrictions on enhanced services and I am hoping that there will be programs for liberalising these value added services through APEC and CTEL that these programs would advance.
The second thing that we did was that we allowed the freedom to connect equipment to the network as long as it did no harm to the network. And this encouraged experimentation, it lead to new equipment, it facilitated desk top enterprise and wide area networking. So right now we require simple certification of computers but we are even moving there to a less regulatory mechanism. We have a role to make outstanding, which I hope we will complete this year, which will save computer manufacturers many hundred of millions of dollars in certification.
The next question is one proposed to the panel as a whole. "With dominant or monopoly local carriers entering the Internet service provisioning business world-wide, how can an open and level playing field be maintained for all Internet service providers. At the global level, does this not inevitably implicate the WTO/GATT's role and be commensurate of activities by the regional bodies like the EU, DG4, XIII, and national ministries?"
Well that's a question that we could all have a go at I think. Robba's hand went up first.
Well I just wanted to add something to what Susan said that I think relates to this at least as within the United States. I think something that is needed is that care has got to be taken to ensure that regulated operations do not cross-subsidise enhanced unregulated businesses. Fortunately the FCC and the States have developed cost models that are going to minimise this activity and that's a very good thing from our stand point.
Yes there is one point there which is specific. If we want to allow competition on the Internet provision, just to deregulate value added service does not help. We have to also allow people to put up say their own infrastructure. We have to deregulate the infrastructure.
I was looking for example specifically in France at what I would call the underdeveloped quarters and French cities where people, well are occasionally rioting and things like that. Those people, the young persons in those quarters, they should be allowed to draw their own fibres instead of burning cars! They should be allowed to go and install a high-speed Internet and do something positive.
[Applause]
Well, that's an interesting solution to a social problem! Yes, Vint, do you want to add to that.
Yes, two comments, first of all, at MCI one of the things I have discovered is that simultaneously we compete with some people at one level of service - particularly application level while at other levels of service in the Internet we find ourselves helping customers.
For example, a number of our competitors buy dedicated circuits services from us, or some of them even attach to our network and then resell the service on a competitive basis. What we are learning is that that's okay, that the market place is growing quickly and the scope of the market is so broad in the sense of vertical scope that having that kind of interplay of competition and co-operation is actually healthy and good business.
The second point that I would make is that we have discovered, at least in the States, that things that look like monopolies really aren't and as a result we are seeing an amazing amount of investment in alternate communications media ranging from digital broadcast satellite to alternate fibre and cable plant as well as various kinds of radiocommunication, all of which contribute to the options for building Internet services and of course other applications as well.
Okay, I would like to ask Vim to pick this up, because he does actually work for a service provider which is not one of the big Telecoms carriers and I wonder if it is not only the level playing field question. There is this terrible word settlements, which is a word we do not like in the Internet.
That's a different story. I would like to Come back to the developing countries because Europe is pretty close to being a developing country in relation to the United States. We pay ten times or more than ten times as much for the same transport in Europe vis-à-vis the United States. We do not have commercially available 34 M/bits links within Europe. It is starting off to be provided to the academic networks, but if we are talking about multimedia and other applications which we want in Europe, in order to be able to compete with our American friends, we are at a very large advantage vis-à-vis our American competitors.
So, basically it is what we said earlier. There is no free competition in Europe. It is heavily regulated by the PTT's. Especially the prices. Austria seems to be the most expensive Telecom operation in Europe. They reduced the price by about 40-50% and it is still the most expensive one in Europe ! But what we also see, and I hope that Mr. Vermeeds office in DG IV, is going to help us in that, (DG IV is the anti-competitive directorate), is that some of the start-ups in the TELCOS help their Internet partnerships. And that, I think, is not healthy for an economy. It is not healthy because they can squeeze out every service provider if they wish to do so because they have very deep pockets. That is like, to put it rather crudely, peeing in your trousers. It's nice and warm to begin with but afterwards it gets very cold !
Okay Vim, I see you do not want to talk about settlements. My personal view is that settlements are part of the level playing field issue and we've always avoided it so far in the Internet.
We do not pay settlements. Zero settlement arrangement in exchange for information although I see some, unhealthy development taking place in the United States where you also see some cartel movements of the larger Internet service providers.
Okay, well the FCC is listening to you ! Okay, Jim you've not said too much but, I heard you say something on exactly this topic for PTTs yesterday, do you have anything to add ?
I think I eluded to it a moment ago. I do believe the European Community is at a fairly significant disadvantage. There is going to be a dramatic growth, I believe in information oriented commerce and it's going to occur on the Internet. The competitive environment and a number of access providers and the cost of access to the net in the States is dramatically declining.
Now, I would be curious to know who are the least expensive countries in Europe perhaps Wim can tell us ?
It's Finland because they have had an open market for years, and there you have a really true competitive situation and they are also further ahead with services etc.
The Scandinavian countries generally. I know we've had the most business with them but it is interesting to note that they have the least expensive access. I think throughout Scandinavia it is a more open system up there.
Henri is a business man who has got experience on both side of the Atlantic, what do you think?
I want to make a comment derived from some observation that I've heard being made in France fairly often. Many people in France still believe that one of the reasons why the Internet is cheap in the United States is that it is subsidised by the United States government. The story about the free Internet still exists today. I think it would be a service to the community as a large, if some international body, independent from the United States, probably, could make a business analysis of the Internet model and its economics today, showing where the money is coming from - you know subscription and how it feeds investment and so on and devising a reservation sheet between the functioning of the Internet as an economic body and so on.
I want to inject this comment about this so called free aspect of the Internet, which it might have been at one time but it is not now. Our friend Vint Cerf here is from MCI. MCI happens to be the company that we get our Internet access from and we have two to three lines that we buy.
We buy our service from MCI, we pay for them, and I would be very surprised if the government is subsiding it.
[tape break]
If you do the analysis you will find out that for all practical purposes 99% of the Internet is paid for by people who use it. Sometimes that's the government, but that's fine - it is a consumer, and it is paid for by dial-up users and by customers like Netscape and others. I would value such an analysis and I bet a lot of companies who are interested in the Internet and its economics would value such a study as well.
Okay, I would like to provoke the ITU again, if I can succeed. Do you think, Dr. Irmer, that if we are going to have to regulate to produce a level playing field internationally - I said if , because it is not obvious that we have to - do you think the regulators should be the ITU or the World Trade Organisation?
Well, ask this question to the Secretary-General ! No, let's be courageous, you know I'm, of course in this case not able to give you the authoritative view of the ITU because even in the ITU we have different opinions and different means.
Obviously, there is a need, or there is seen to be a need for a kind of world-wide regulation. It is not only for this, but we see also other things coming up - for example the famous mobile-satellite systems which we soon will have. Who is looking after them, you know, they are not positions, they are whirling around in space, so somebody should look after these things.
Now, obviously, we in the ITU, and I am talking about our headquarters staff, not about membership, because the membership is a very much different means and different ways - we would think that the ITU is positioned for this kind of regulatory rule because we have done this in the past. Of course, under certain conditions and so on. It could be well be done together with the WTO. We are not monopolists in the ITU - not at all. Co-operation is our most important work, which we use all the time. We are not really using that only, we are living up to this work. So, without at this point and time giving you a formal and definitive reply, the first answer to your question would be yes, we believe there is a need for a kind of global regulation.
Also for another reason because we see that sometimes developing countries are not, or not yet, in a position to establish a solid regulatory regime. They ask the ITU, to advise them and to help.
I do not think this can be done by the ITU alone. I think it must be done together with the WTO because it touches other issues which exceed the ITU's role and mandate, as I see it. So, that's my somewhat philosophical reply to your question. But, please accept my apologies - at the moment there is no clear cut yes or no answer possible on this issue. Thank you.
Okay, thanks. Mike, shall we move onto the next one?
Yes, going on from that, this a question for Dr. Cerf. Do you think that in the future the present structure of Internet tariffs (insensitive to time and distance) can be maintained?
The short answer to that is yes. Should I elaborate? I actually believe that with sufficient capacity going into the system everywhere that sensitivity to distance may be maintainable. So far it has not been raised as an issue in the business models that we use. I would be interested to hear from others who are information service providers, who may be detecting the need for something else.
The only two factors that I see right now - that may require adjustment, have to do with the nature of services that are obtained and I talked about that earlier in terms of real-time services versus non-real-time services. If Dr. Huitema is correct we may not even have to be sensitive to that. The other thing which arises has to do with some complex cases, where traffic is being carried in a transit fashion across a backbone network, where we might otherwise get no revenue for that. There might have to be some kind of arrangement for transit fees if you didn't have traffic starting or ending on a customer. But other than that, I do not see any need for distance sensitive metric.
There is one thing in Europe which I noticed very specifically. Even if distance sensitive tariffs were economically reasonable, which they probably aren't, there is absolutely zero cost in sending a bit across a national frontier. I know this because I happen, in my other life, to be responsible for an FDDI ring which crosses the French/Swiss border many times on its way round. We send millions of bits a second across the frontier and it does not cost us anything extra. But, when you lease a line in Europe, whether it crosses a frontier or not, has a dramatic effect on the cost without any respect to distance and this is economic nonsense. [Applause]
I agree entirely with what Vint is saying and also your remark about when you have to go across a third country, because that is what we suffer from very badly.
Okay, so does the other mainstream carrier on the panel want to come in, Robba do you feel yourself attacked here?
No, I absolutely agree with what Vint was saying and also, I think we need to really talk about application layers as much as we talk about infrastructure tariffing, because I think that's where the interesting issues are going to arise. In going back to the settlements question, that may be a mute point at the byte level because there really does not seem to be any way to account for settlements, but there may arise a new paradigm which would be to tag the page or to count file transfers. When we get into the area of electronic commerce, we then get into cross-border issues as it relates to taxation and revenue collection, and how is all of that going to work? Is that going to have to give rise to the telephony world equivalent of the national exchange carriers association on a global basis to manage the money flow ? So, sort of wrapping up - wrapping in together a lot of our comments, I would be very interested, we at Sprint would be very interested in this economic model as well because we do not believe that anybody is making a vast amount of money at the transport and access layer and we all seem to be counting on the bundling of value added services farther up the food chain to really enable that to be a very serious profitable commercial venture for us.
What is interesting is the people who are trying to make money out of, say, the WEB are doing it on the basis of making a little bit of money out of a lot of transactions, not a lot of money out of a few transactions.
That's correct.
And that's a very different model and you must have extremely efficient collection mechanisms.
Absolutely.
Yes, actually a small comment from the [perspective of a ] developing country. I do not know whether the people of the ITU can help. The prices of the international links in a lot of developing countries are really prohibitive, and they are fixed by the PTT's who have monopoly status. Technically, there are no problems. The links are there, especially with the new optical fibre cables. So, I do not know whether the ITU can give any recommendation to lower this and reduce these prohibitive prices and to show how economically this would help in the promotion of data communication services and information services.
Well, we are of course aware of the problems. What you are talking refers not only to the famous, or infamous, accounting rate, but to the tariff problems in general. It is striking that while we have seen so much dramatic increase at once in the last 10/15 years, with the tariff system where we are still back to the stone age.
Now, what can the ITU can do ? First of all, who is the ITU? The ITU is made up by its membership, there is no such body called the ITU, it is a Union made up of countries, organisations and so on.
Now, what we can do is, we can put the tools in the hands of our administrations, network operators etc., and say, look you should do it in this way. Whether they do it, that is another question. The issue of accounting rates is a complex issue because there are losers, and there are winners. Developing countries to a large extent have seen the accounting rate system, this mechanism as a source of income, of hard currency. [tape break]
In my mind, and please take it as a personal remark, this system is not going to survive. We need a new international settlement system. There are different proposals in the academic world and this has to come as soon as possible. We have cured a dead corpse, to put it a little bit dramatically, which we call accounting rates system. Now, for I do not know 15 years or so, no major progress has been achieved and we now see the consequences.
I just refer here to call-back. The call-back is the child of this distorted system which we have and there might be other things coming up. So again, what we can do is, we can help our member countries, our member organisations. We can tell them what they should do, what means are available - and there are plenty of them. Whether they do it, is another question. And sometimes the reasons, which one has to accept in the political field, has nothing to do with the cost of equipment and services and so on. Thank you.
I do not know if Commissioner Ness would or would not be able to comment. I heard the Chairman of the FCC in this room a couple of days ago discussing, the European Unions proposal at the WTO discussion on these issues and the United States position, but, I didn't hear him say anything about developing countries positions. Is there any prospect of changing the mindset of the politicians of the developing countries.
I would not presume to know what that mindset might be and how we can go about changing it. I know when people come and visit us - and we are regularly visited by regulators around the world who ask us questions about our system and we give them the pros and cons. But, one thing that would be helpful would be for example to have the accounting rates be published. I believe that Great Britain just announced that it is going to be publishing the accounting rates. That helps to lower those and puts pressure on them, a downward pressure. Also, from our perspective, to separate the regulator from the regulated. In many countries still, the regulator and the telephone company are either one and the same, or they report to the same ministry. It is essential to liberalise that system so that they are in fact separate, so that you'll be able to see a little bit more pressure brought to bear on the telephone company and also competitors will feel that they will have a better shot at having a level playing field if the two are not reporting to the same source.
So, those are issues that we have been certainly pushing on the international scale. We have our offer out at the GATTs, we are hopeful that a multilateral agreement can be reached which will open up each others markets and we are certainly pressing very hard for that and hopefully we will see some movement before the deadline next April.
Okay thanks. In case anyone thinks we have gone off the subject, we haven't because the Internet suffers directly from this situation in the tariffs. Christian has a micro point on this.
Oh, yes there is a very simple summary of what we have said which is - "Regulators of the world - DON'T! "
Following on from that another question directed to Dr. Cerf. The introduction of commercial voice traffic in the Internet could take away a significant revenue share from telephone companies and pass it to the ISP's, [Internet Service Providers]. What do you think would be the reaction of traditional telephone companies against this?
I was waiting for this question because it always comes up. The first time that the IP telephone or other related voice or sound applications were publicly visible I got an email message from the Chairman of my company, Bert Roberts, saying "Cerf, what have you done?". [Laughter]
Of course, I could not take any credit for these wonderful new ideas, they were other people who came up with them. In the first order, I do not see these as major threats and the reason I don't yet, anyway, is that the Internet can not carry a great deal of this traffic yet. We have had this discussion before so, in the outset anyway, I think that these are important technologies and that we must in fact track them and learn how to use them and operate them. In the long run all those bits fall through a great many of the circuits that the carriers offer and sell. So, to first order, we will get revenue from that traffic. We might stand to make less revenue from it than we do today under the current tariffing arrangements but I am often fond of pointing out that if someone else is going to eat your lunch, it might as well be you! [Laughter]
Let us take another version of the same question and address it to Henri Gouraud. You will see very clear evidence here at Telecom that a computer company can become an electronic mail company or an information company, because that is what your company happens to provide at the Telecom 95 site. Do you think a computer company can become a telephone company as well in the future?
No, I do not believe so. I think there is a major cultural difference between the telephone companies and the computer companies and after having lived both within the telephone domain and the computer domain for 25 years, I can still see that there is a difference of mentality between the two.
Digital has explicitly decided not to become an Internet operator because we prefer selling our machines to all of the other Internet operators than to be one. This was a very explicit corporate decision of Digital equipment. We provided messaging system to Telecom 95 as a way of demonstrating to the crowd what could be done, as a way of making sure that our name was visible everywhere, not as an indication that we would become a mail operator.
It might be an easier revolution, but I think the distinction is between really a product focus and a service focus and basically we are talking about any company converging on product and services. That is a very tough order, and, I agree that whether we are going one way or the other it would create a severe cultural dislocation and reassessment. But the fact of the matter is that the reason the Internet is a phenomenon is because people want to connect and people want to communicate and that that's the revolution and that is what really people want. We see lots of evidence that they want it in the richest most dynamic sensory environment that they can possibly obtain. So the next area of convergence really is going to be all manner of communications, video, voice, text base converging and being carried over a variety of networks, both public networks and intraprise and enterprise networks. I think that, in a short run, as Vint says, the quality of it and the capacity on the Internet does not allow for a lot of telephony but in the long run that is not going to be a constraint and we all need to be thinking about it because it is really what people want.
We are doing some test on IP phone and other services of the Internet. One of our problems is that in many European countries you are not allowed to have telephony over the Internet.
Does that stop you?
No comment ! [Laughter]
I would also make the comment that one of the interesting things in the history of computing, not just of networking, is that it is being dominated by single representation of characters inside the computers which happened to be invented in America. It is actually called the American Standard Code for Information Interchange, which does not have accented characters and clearly cannot support Arabic because it goes from left to right, so has the fairly fundamental problem in supporting Arabic even if you could translate the letters. So this is actually a fundamental problem in the way computers have been designed from a very early stage. There is standard in this area, it is an ISO standard, not an ITU standard, called ISO 10646, if I am not mistaken, which covers most of the character sets in the world including han. I think it does not cover all the more unusual Asian characters, but I do not know if it covers Nepalese script or Butan script or some of these.
We are very much aware in the Internet that this an issue in internationalisation of the Internet and that it is actually technically a very, very difficult problem to solve in a clean and simple way. And we are in a very difficult situation now where several software vendors, including one in Seattle have developed essentially propriety solutions to handling non-english character sets. We have a standard coming up, and it is well known migrating the industry from proprietary solutions to standard solutions is a very, very challenging excerise. I see this actually, as a technical challenge which we know we have to solve but which is going to take many years to solve properly.
Okay, the next one is relating to the cable television industry and how its potential is to provide high-speed access to the Internet. Can someone from the panel respond to that?
Actually, one of the means that Digital has used locally here at the Convention to provide high-speed network connection into the Swiss backbone is by using cable TV plant and mechanism. Indeed this is a very interesting idea and a set of products. As a cable TV plants in the United States and Europe are allowed - are equipped to provide high bandwidth channels into the homes, (bi-directional, which is a very important issue - some plants today are unidirectional unfortunately the older ones) but as those plants are capable of delivering high bandwidth data into the homes this is going to open a new way of using the Internet, much beyond video on demand. The access to the Internet with a very snappy and effective interfaces will be possible. And of course, as soon as you have high bandwidths into the home with the Internet capabilities such as putting IP telephone over such things become the next obvious step.
And that is one of the reasons why some people in the regulatory agencies in some countries are trying to slow down as much as possible the deployment of Internet over cable TV or are asking for this to be done in asymmetrical fashion so that it will make voice harder and so on. I think that is unfortunate.
Let us see, first of all, I am very excited about doing bi-directional data on cable channels, indeed I think the idea of being able to go into a hotel and plug my Ethernet connection into the cable is very attractive, until I realise that the 15 year old next door is watching all of my packets going on that same Ethernet, in which case I get very interested again in cryptography! Assuming I am not in France I guess! Anyway, I do want to point out one other thing. We sometimes fall into the habit of worrying about the transmission bandwidths available to us. My experience in moving from 28.8 kbit/s to 10 Mbit/s is sometimes that it does not get any better because the server on the far end is thoroughly overloaded by demand. One of the scaling effects of growing Internet is to have your computer, which was fine for a hundred person department, be hopelessly outclassed by a hundred million people who want to access it. So as the scale of the Internet increases and as the ease with which many, many people can reach your computer increases, we may find ourselves struggling on the scaling side for the servers in addition to everything else.
Commissioner Ness, do you think there is any alternative to the regulators in this area, except to give up regulating the use of cable?
Certainly, cable provides a wonderful opportunity for the Internet to flourish. We are talking about telephone access and I would not be surprised if we see this. It is still an issue that people are just beginning to wake up to and I would not be surprised if we see this Christmas in the stores all over the place, at reasonably low prices, at price points that are attractive to the consumer, these units that they can suddenly access telephony via the computer. So, I suspect that it is going to be on everyone's horizon very, very soon, within the next month or two. But, in terms of how regulators ought to address this, I think it is way to early to come in and propose any type of regulation. I think it is still an nascent industry, It is still providing competition which hopefully will lower the prices of telephone services.
Outside of this question, at least in the United States, we are looking at revision of doing access reform, because that is an important no matter, what direction one goes in, so that prices are cost-based and I think once we start to do that, that this will provide a good opportunity for folks.
Just to point out that on the second level of the Motorola stand, you will see a device that plugs into the cable system on one side and your computer on the other side. I think it is called a cybersurfing modem, and it is intended specifically for this purpose and encrypted, so you can even use it wherever you can do encryption. I am proud to say that at least in the United States, bidirectionally is not a problem, least it should not be. When I came to the FCC in 1974 that was one of the first rules I wrote and as a result virtually every cable system in the United States now has at least the capacity of two-way.
What I heard asked, seemed like, how is it going to happen on the cable systems and Vint mentioned something about the quality of service or the fact that given that I have higher bandwidth, I am going to have a higher bandwidth server, and that is certainly true. But, what is happening is the cable industry is coming together in the United States to make a kind of a common bid for modems - modems that put data on the analogue cable and the plant or the installed cable systems are being changed so that the amplifiers work in both directions, split the spectrum and part of it works in one direction and part of it works in another, and then coming out of these modems on the other side is the Ethernet interface, 10 Mbit Ethernet interface, and you can get very inexpensive Ethernet interfaces to PCs these days. So, I think it is quite exciting and I think that we are going to - if in fact the services do roll out over the next 6 months to a year, you will find a vast majority of people using the Internet will go to that mechanism because of the so much higher bandwidth and the cable companies will make a lot more money of course, because they will offer more services and they will run cashing servers, proxy-servers, in their head-ins and I am quite excited about it. I am sure they are going to make a lot of money, it does not bother me, I am going to get a lot better service.
I am sorry, we have been asked to stop on time, and in any case it is Saturday evening, before I do the usual thank you's, there is actually a very important thank you , I think we have given ourselves to know an extremely difficult job to the simultaneous translators and I think from what I have sampled at least on the French channel, they have done an excellent job.
I would like to thank the distinguished panellists. I could have gone on asking questions to this panel for about another four or five hours without any problem and not everybody has had a chance to talk as many times as I would have liked. I could tell you who was the winner, but I think I won't in terms of speaking more often than anyone else. So, ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much, thank you very much to the audience and see you tomorrow morning at 0900 hours
| Back to the TELECOM 95 Home Page |
TELECOM 95 at a Glance
| Practical Information
| Exhibition 95 | Forum 95
| Bookfair | Press
| Special Projects
| ITU Home Page