The ITU in the Modern World – Fourteen years from the Reconstruction
- Paper number
IAC-07-E6.5.06
- Author
Prof. Dr. Francis Lyall, University of Aberdeen, United Kingdom
- Year
2007
- Abstract
Nigh on fifty years after the reconstitution of the ITU following on the Second World War, the ITU revised its constitutional structures at Geneva and Kyoto in 1992/94. Subsequently its new Constitution and Convention have been amended and further refined at Minneapolis (1998), Marrakesh (2002) and Antalya (2006). The purpose of the ITU is the international regulation of telecommunications whether terrestrial or space-based. Of these space telecommunications have formed an integral and major portion of ITU responsibilities since the opening of space, and, indeed have caused the ITU problems particularly as telecommunications have been privatised in many countries. Notwithstanding, space telecommunications have produced the major benefit of the use of space required by Art. I of the Outer Space Treaty and in this the role of the ITU has been crucial. In its new incarnation the functions of the ITU have been expanded from those of regulation, registration and standardisation. Development has been invented as a major ITU responsibility and, largely entrusted to the new Development Sector, represented a major addition to the purposes of the Union. The decisions of the Antalya plenipotentiary conference have further contributed to that extension of purpose. This paper will review and comment on selected results of the 2006 ITU Plenipotentiary Conference. The elections of officers as well as other decisions relating to the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) indicate that the ITU is to play an active role in telecommunications in the developing countries. Its administrative role remains, but concern must be expressed as to whether its several roles are properly balanced.
- Abstract document
- Manuscript document
IAC-07-E6.5.06.pdf (🔒 authorized access only).
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