8th meeting of the World Conference on International Telecommunications working group - Geneva

Geneva hosted last 20-22 June the eighth and last meeting of the Council working group preparing for the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WG WCIT-12).

A total of 24 contributions were presented (two from Portugal), based on consensus positions in the European Conference of Postal and Telecommunications Administrations (CEPT), namely the disclosure of new CEPT proposals in various controversial areas such as international roaming, tariff transparency, taxing international telecoms services, caller line identification and cyber-security.

This last group meeting was able to finish the report to submit to WCIT-12 and the respective appendices (Annex I – Anticipated Draft of the Revised ITRs, and Annex II – Compilation of Proposals).

The public release of all contributions examined by this WG and the respective output (i.e. report for WCIT and Annexes) were debated at length at this meeting. Access to these documents is subject to a password assigned to member states and sector members of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). There is nevertheless strong pressure from other stakeholders interested in WCIT outcomes to have relevant documents made freely available. The WG decided to pass the decision on to the 2012 session of the ITU Council.

Note that WCIT-12 is scheduled for 3-14 December 2012 in Dubai, with the aim of finishing the International Telecommunication Regulations (ITR) review process.