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

[Henry Maina]

It is clear to me that Kenya won. This is because after most developing countries raised critical issues they ended up signing. It is perhaps out of not having clear positions that most of the African states (37 ) ended up being among the 89 states that signed. Kenya was among the 55 that did not sign. In Africa, it had an unlikely friend in the Gambia. However, it is clear that we have joined the developed countries in terms of ability to rally ourselves around clear national interest positions. Hongera to the team that represented us.

Regards

HENRY O. MAINA
DIRECTOR
ARTICLE 19 KENYA/EASTERN AFRICA
P O BOX 2653,00100
NAIROBI
TEL:+254 (20) 3862230/2
FAX:+254 (20) 3862231
EMAIL: henry at article19.org

________________________________________
From: kictanet [kictanet-bounces+henry=article19.org at lists.kictanet.or.ke] on behalf of Ali Hussein [ali at hussein.me.ke]
Sent: 19 December 2012 12:13 PM
To: Henry Maina
Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions
Subject: Re: [kictanet] World Conference on International Telecommunications    - Did Kenya Win or Lose?

Walu

Interesting background information. Well written.

What may be you should add/clarify is that the old dispensation of Government owned Telcos which 'justified' the Sender-Pay model has gone the way of the Dinosaur. Lets look at the Kenyan  scenario:-

1. Safaricom - Kenya Govt:25%; Vodafone:35% institutional and retail investors 40%
2. Orange - Kenya Govt: 49%; Orange: 51%
3. Yu mobile : Essar Holdings majority stake
4. Airtel - 95% Bharti Airtel; 5% Sameer Investments

The trend of ownership (Read Private Sector, Foreign) is replicated more or less across Africa. So my question then would be to whose benefit would the AfCPs (Africa Common Position) at the WCIT have been for? Because this intended to replicate the old regime to include the Internet.

It is particularly telling that the AfCPs were a knock off of the ETNO (European Telecommunications Network Operators) which were more or less rejected by the vast majority of the European countries who declined to sign off on the ITRs at WCIT12. So whose fooling who here?

Geopolitical considerations also allude to self preservation as a nation which precludes a nation state having an agenda to protect hence looking for allies within the geopolitical arena. So the question that still remains to be answered is?

What was Kenya's position precluding the agreement to support the AfCP?

Kenya has become the poster child of the Multi-stakeholder governance structures that has seen the Internet blossom into the mass communication tool it is today. It is my humble opinion that if we had signed the ITRs as currently written it would have been a betrayal of the highest order to mostly ourselves. We are at the cusp of great things and we must continue to balance the needs of the business environment, human rights and policy making in matters that affect the current status of governance of the Internet.

Has Kenya lost in this case by not signing the ITRs? My answer to that is another question.

Is the majority always right? Would we jump to our deaths because our neighbors have done so and justify it by saying it is right because everybody else has jumped?

As the late George Saitoti once famously said ' There comes a time when the nation is much more important..'

I am proud to be a Kenyan at this juncture of the History of the Internet and I'm particularly proud of Dr.Ndemo for showing the kind of leadership and strength of purpose under immense pressure from a number of powerful forces across the continent.


Ali Hussein
CEO | 3mice interactive media Ltd
Principal | Telemedia Africa Ltd

+254 773/713 601113

"The future belongs to him who knows how to wait." - Russian Proverb

Sent from my iPad

On Dec 19, 2012, at 8:53 AM, Walubengo J <jwalu at yahoo.com<mailto:jwalu at yahoo.com>> wrote:

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.

#######

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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