
The consultation, which closes on 3 November, allows for consultation on the draft document [PDF] and any matter relating to the WCIT. Issues outlined in the document include the price of mobile roaming, investment in high speed broadband, security and fraud and a range of other issues including, in effect, the role of ICANN.
The United States has already expressed its displeasure with a House of Representatives resolution that “calls on US government officials to tell the ITU and other international organizations that it is the ‘consistent and unequivocal policy of the United States to promote a global Internet free from government control,’” reported PC World.
At the upcoming conference in Dubai, “U.S. officials expect other countries to push for international Internet traffic taxes and for the ITU to take Internet governance away from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and other organizations.”
“Proposals at the ITU and other U.N. agencies ‘would justify under international law increased government control over the Internet and would reject the current multi-stakeholder model that has enabled the Internet to flourish and under which the private sector, civil society, academia, and individual users play an important role in charting its direction,’ reads the House resolution, sponsored by Representative Mary Bono Mack, a California Republican.”