[kictanet] World Conference on International Telecommunications - Did Kenya Win or Lose?

[Walubengo J]

Here is the un-edited version. The Editor, stripped off all the technical jargon from the published version - as usual :-). But am sure this forum can soak in the slight tech-jargon. 


walu.

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World Conference on International Telecommunications - Did Kenya Win or Lose?

As
 Kenyans focused locally on political coalitions, marriages and 
divorces, governments convened and concluded a meeting in Dubai known as
 the World Conference on International Telecommunications, 2012 (WCIT, 
pronounced "weakit"). Governments were revising a 1982 Treaty which 
describes how International Telecommunication services will be governed 
over the next one to two decades. Historically, the International 
Telecommunication Union (ITU) was founded in Paris in 1865 as the 
International Telegraph Union and took its present name in 1932, and by
 1947 it had became a specialized agency of the United Nations in charge
 of Telecommunications.

ITUs role was best appreciated in 1970s 
through the 1980s & 1990s when Telco companies were largely 
government owned and by extension, the same governments as members of 
ITU would make binding decisions on how these telecommunication 
companies (e.g. the defunct Kenya Posts & Telecommunication 
Companies, KPTC) would interconnect internationally to others. ITU would
 therefore define the technical standards and protocols for the 
interconnection as well as how the various Telcos would settle the 
international charges arising from the telecommunication traffic 
exchanged.

Basically this meant that when a telephone call was 
made from London to Nairobi, it would mainly be originated by the 
government owned British Telecoms (BT) and would terminate onto the 
government owned KPTC network. The originator of the call, BT would then
 pay KPTC for
 terminating the call according to the widely cited "Sender-Pays" model.
 Needless to say, KPTC and other Telcos in developing countries made 
billions of shillings in this arrangement simply because there were more
 calls originating from abroad and terminating locally as compared to 
those originated locally and terminated abroad. This meant that 
developing countries were the Net beneficiaries of this charging and 
accounting arrangement.

So what has changed? The simple answer is
 the Internet. The Internet has changed the rules of the game. Majority 
of todays telephone calls, Voice over the Internet Protocol (VoIP) are 
carried over the Internet instead of the traditional, ITU defined 
protocols that carried Voice communications. Biggest example ofcourse is
 "Skype", which boasts of close to a billion registered users who make 
international voice calls - without following the "Sender-Pays" model. 
The pay structure for the Internet based applications is
 based on the "Bill and Keep" model whereby the ISPs charge users for 
local Usage while they look for a foreign ISP to terminate their traffic
 preferably for free (Peering Agreement) or at minimum fee (Transit 
Agreement).


The crux of the matter is that these Peering and 
Transit agreements are negotiated and made privately between various 
ISPs and OUTSIDE the realm of ITU and its membership. Since membership 
of ITU is made up of Governments, one can begin to see how the battle 
lines become clear. One one hand, you have Developing 
Countries/Governments largely fronting for their Telecommunication 
Companies who have since lost a huge chunk of their revenues because the
 money they used collect when voice traffic was not Internet based has 
dried up. On the other hand, you have Developed Countries/Governments 
fronting for Internet based companies who are making billions by 
transmitting Voice communication over the Internet without due regard to
 "Sender-pays" arrangements.

Everything was going as planned 
until one of the developing countries, Kenya, declined to sign the 
Telecommunication Treaty. It was immediately lumped together with the US
 and Europeans and celebrated as the beacon of light in an otherwise 
group of developing countries bent on controlling and stifling the 
Internet. In the same breath, African countries demonised Kenya for 
failing to stand up for a chance to restore billions of shillings that 
used to be collected by the Telcos during "Sender-pays" models.

Did
 Kenya win or lose at the WCIT -2012? Only time will tell, but for now, 
one can say that Kenya may have won a battle for the Internet community,
 but may have lost the war - in as far as the regional, geo-political 
dimensions are concerned.
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