Opening Statement by 
Yoshio Utsumi
ITU Secretary-General
Wednesday, 7 March 2001

Your Excellencies,
Honorable guests,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is my pleasure to welcome you here to Geneva and to the ITU for this World Telecommunication Policy Forum, on the topic of IP Telephony.

Back in 1992, when I represented Japan at the Geneva Additional Plenipotentiary Conference of the ITU, I had the opportunity to propose that the ITU create a Policy Forum to enable its members to examine policy issues of high current interest, in a flexible manner. At that time, the ITU was mainly known for dealing with technical matters in telecommunications. Many questioned whether there would be any role for ITU in discussing policy issues. Nine years later, at the start of what will be the third Policy Forum, I believe that the principle is now well-established that ITU can provide a suitable forum for the discussion of policy issues.

The topic of this meeting, as chosen by Council last summer, is IP Telephony. It is very suitable for us to discuss at the ITU, because it is the ITU that made IP Telephony possible by providing the basic platform of telecommunication and by numerous ITU’s standardization activities related to IP network.

IP telephony may be defined as the conveyance of voice, fax and related services, partially or wholly over packet-switched IP-based networks. IP Telephony is largely synonymous with Voice over IP.

The first question we might ask is: "why do we need a new network to carry telephone calls when we already have one – the public switched telephone network – which does the job very well indeed?"

• First of all, the use of IP-based networks promises to reduce prices to consumers, and the costs of market entry for operators, especially for long-distance and international calls. I have recently subscribed to an IP telephony Telephony service. Sorry Swisscom! This has changed completely my wife’s behaviour. She talks to my children in Japan over the telephone for hours and hours now. I am convincing myself that I made a right good decision.

A few examples from the country case studies we have commissioned for this event help to illustrate the significance of IP Telephony:

• In China, for instance, China Telecom rolled out an IP-based network covering 25 cities in just two months, which would normally take 18 months. The IP Telephony services it offered were priced at between 50 – 70 per cent below standard PSTN tariffs.
• In the Republic of Korea, since the launch of the first "free" IP Telephony service a year ago, the number of users has grown to more than seven million.
• In Peru and Hungary, the provision of IP Telephony services has allowed for a quicker introduction of competition than might otherwise have occurred.

A second question that arises is: "why the big fuss over a new technology which provides what is, essentially, an old service?" There are two related reasons for believing that IP Telephony represents something new and something very significant for the ITU membership:

• First, IP-based networks are important because they hold the promise of providing multimedia telecommunications services and new applications, merging voice and data, converging telecommunication and broadcasting. IP may well become the unifying platform for emerging integrated networks. Whether those future networks are local or long-distance, fixed or mobile, satellite or terrestrial, the chances are that they will run over IP. Barely a day passes without one or another of the major public telecommunication operators announcing a new investment in IP-based networks. The migration to IP-based networks is unlikely to be cost-justified by the need to carry voice calls alone, but rather by the requirement to carry voice alongside data, text and video.
• Second, as the world of telecommunications undergoes regulatory change and market liberalization, existing policy frameworks may need to be reviewed and, if necessary, amended in the light of new technologies.

Finally, a third question we should ask ourselves: "what does IP Telephony mean for developing countries?"

For many developing countries, which form the majority of ITU Member States, IP Telephony poses a dilemma:

• On the one hand, it promises to reduce the costs of international calls and therefore bring enormous benefits in terms of closer integration into the world economy and the global information society;
• On the other hand, it may impact the revenue streams of the incumbent public telecommunication operator, particularly if that company is not able to embrace the new technology or to cope with new forms of competition associated with IP-based telephony services.

We hope to achieve a rough consensus, over the next three days, on how to face the challenges posed by IP Telephony and to seize the opportunities presented by it.

The Plenipotentiary Conference, by Resolution 101, called upon the ITU to "fully embrace the opportunities for telecommunication development that arise from the growth of IP-based services". In choosing the topic of IP Telephony, Council has shown that it is ready to do this. But the word "embrace" should not be misunderstood.

The ITU is not looking to "regulate" IP Telephony, nor to place boundaries around its growth, but rather to build a common understanding of the technology and to assess the implications it holds for our membership. In particular, in seeking to draft opinions, we will be trying to identify ways in which the membership of the Union can work together to prepare for the transition to IP-based networks and to meet the human resource development challenges that the transition poses.

The Policy Forum is very different from usual ITU meetings:

• Member States and Sector Members participate in the Forum on a more or less basis;
• There is a single working document on the agenda, which will be presented later;
• The outcome is not a technical recommendation or a Resolution, but rather an "opinion"; a non-binding outcome that might be described as a "rough consensus".

As we start our discussions, I would encourage you to recall the special nature of this meeting, to discuss policy, and to avoid the temptation to revert to an oversized technical study group or a drafting session.

I am looking forward to some stimulating discussions, some innovative thinking and some co-operative actions among our members. The strength of a "union" lies in the sense of unity and common purpose among its membership. Let us show over the next three days that the International Telecommunication community is indeed a "Union".

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Last Modified: 2002-06-14