[Chapter-delegates] IETF and ITU

[Olivier MJ Crepin-Leblond]

This week, I have spent a great amount of time remotely listening to
the discussions taking place in various IETF working groups & meetings
in Minneapolis, and have found the experience very rewarding indeed.
Thanks to ISOC, I managed to get a first-hand peek inside IETF at the
previous meeting in Dublin & I realised how much work is currently
taking place on the RFC front. Aside from there being a lot of very
devoted people, there's genius about in those places and the synergy
behind some of the most cutting-edge working groups is palpable.

In parallel, Alejandro Pisanty alerted me to the October 2008 issue of
IEEE Communications Magazine which contains a whole sub-section about
ITU-T International Standards in Information and Communication
Technologies. So this issue ended up being my bedtime reading.

Of course, the way IEEE Comms Mag works is that a series editorial
team is appointed specifically for the subject, a call for papers is
made by the editorial team, papers reviewed & then published.

What struck me in this issue is that the series reads like a huge
advertising and promotion for ITU processes and the ITU itself.
It is made up of:
- ITU-T in 2008: Empowering Global ICT Development
- The Working Methods and Basic Rules of Standardization in the
Standardization Sector of the International Telecommunications Union:
ITU-T
- ITU-T initiatives on Climate Change
- a technical paper, namely one on ITU-T G.722.1 Annex C Superwideband
Audio Codec
- a paper on Optical Transport Network evolution
- Bridging the standardization gap to provide Quality of Service (QoS)
in current Next Generation Network (NGN) architectures

My feeling is that this constitutes another pawn put in place by ITU
to regain some ground in telecom standards and the future of
telecommunications. IMHO, it is fair game, since TCP-IP has virtually
shot down its involvement in the subject of computer networking by
making many of its CCITT/ITU X-series standards completely obsolete.
In view of the fact that ITU Secretary General Toure's intervention at
the ICANN Cairo meeting raised many eyebrows (I am being diplomatic
here), it is not an isolated case of self-promotion but seems to fall
in a well thought-out strategy, and I currently admire the way it is
being played out.

However, I do have one small problem with ITU standards processes,
that is, the lack of possibility for users to get involved - you need
to be part of a company or government and you need to pay a hefty sum
of money prior to taking part. This, in my opinion, kills innovation.
In fact, my experience with the ITU process (which I followed in the
CCITT times in the early nineties) was that is was overly slow and
bureaucratic and if you did not belong to some huge organisation, you
could just shut up. Let's pass on all the other reasons I feel uneasy
about ITU...
On the other hand IETF has been a jumpboard for innovation. I know
that some people do not agree with me, but let's not get into petty
arguments - my point is that whilst IETF has given rise to the
Internet we all know and use and love (and sometimes love to hate)
today, very little is known about it outside of those circles. Indeed,
even the Tao of IETF paper (http://www.ietf.org/tao.html )
acknowledges this to some extent.

So here's my question, bearing in mind the next week-end is the ISOC
Board of Trustees meeting and I hope that trustees discuss this
formally or informally, on-record or off-record: "Can ISOC do anything
inline with ITU's current strategy?"

For example: contacting the IEEE, but also ACM and other industry
organisations (I am thinking consumer electronic, for example) in
order to publish a set of papers in their journals along the likes of
"IETF: designing tomorrow's Internet, today", "Empowerment of users
through a bottom-up consensus design process at IETF", "ISOC thinking
global, acting local to promote Internet for Everyone" etc. etc. These
are just titles off the top of my head.

It's great to publish papers on the ISOC & IETF Web sites, but today,
outreach in other communities looks like the key to survival in the
future. Can we win the hearts of minds of users, corporations,
governments and stakeholders alike by showing each decider that
ultimately, the current model on which the Internet has been built is
the best and fairest one out there for everyone? Can we do this in
their house rather than preaching in our own temples?

Well done if you've reached this point. I was meaning to write only 10
lines. :-)

Warm regards,

Olivier

-- 
Olivier MJ Crepin-Leblond, Ph.D
Global Information Highway Ltd
http://www.gih.com/ocl.html