International Telecommunication Union

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The International Telecommunication Union (ITU; French: Union internationale des télécommunications, German: Internationale Fernmeldeunion, Spanish: Unión Internacional de Telecomunicaciones, simplified Chinese: 国际电信联盟^[1]; 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.

[edit] Composition

The ITU is made up of three sectors:

• The Telecommunication Standardization Sector, ITU-T, 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, ITU-R, 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, ITU-D, 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.

[edit] 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.^[2]

[edit] Directors and Secretaries-generals of ITU

Secretaries-general of ITU
Name	Beginning of Term	End of Term	Country
Louis Curchod	1 January 1869	24 May 1872	Switzerland
Karl Lendi	24 May 1872	12 January 1873	Switzerland
Louis Curchod	23 February 1873	18 October 1889	Switzerland
August Frey	25 February 1890	28 June 1890	Switzerland
Timotheus Rothen	25 November 1890	11 February 1897	Switzerland
Emil Frey	11 March 1897	1 August 1921	Switzerland
Henri Étienne	2 August 1921	16 December 1927	Switzerland
Joseph Räder	1 February 1928	30 October 1934	Switzerland
Franz von Ernst	1 January 1935	1 January 1949	Switzerland
Secretaries generals
Léon Mulatier	1 January 1950	1 January 1953	France
Marco Aurelio Andrada	1 January 1954	18 June 1958	Argentina
Gerald C. Cross	1 January 1964	29 October 1965	United States
Manohar Balaji Sarwate	30 October 1965	19 February 1967	India
Mohamed Ezzedine Mili	20 October 1967	31 December 1982	Tunisia
Richard E. Butler	1 January 1983	31 October 1989	Australia
Pekka Tarjanne	1 November 1989	31 January 1999	Finland
Yoshio Utsumi	1 February 1999	31 December 2006	Japan
Hamadoun Touré	1 January 2006	present	Mali

[edit] Standards

Monument in Berne, Switzerland. The text reads: "Union Télégraphique Internationale fondée à Paris en 1865 sur l'initiative du gouvernement français. Érigé par décision de l'Union Télégraphique prise à la conférence internationale de Lisbonne en 1908." (In English: "International Telegraph Union founded at Paris in 1865 on the initiative of the French government. [This monument] erected by a decision of the Telegraph Union made at the international conference at Lisbon in 1908.")

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.

[edit] 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)^[3] The DOI was endorsed by the World Summit on the Information Society ^[4] 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^[5], 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.^[6]

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.^[7]

The DOI is not at this point an ITU Recommendation (what the ITU calls its standards)^[8]. The DOI will continue to be developed as a multi-stakeholder project involving multiple partners as an integrated element of the Digital Opportunity Platform.^[9]

[edit] Members

ITU member states

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. ^[10]

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 almost all of the UN members plus the Vatican City State. 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 ^[11].

[edit] Meetings

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

[edit] Examples

Stamp

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

[edit] 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)^[12], 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.

[edit] See also

ITU headquarters, Geneva

• ITU defines the future of mobile communications
• 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)

[edit] Notes

ITU headquarters, Geneva

[edit] 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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