The 50th meeting of the Committee for Information, Computer and Communications Policies (ICCP) was held on 9-10 March at OECD headquarters in Paris.
A number of relevant documents were made public at the meeting, whose participants also considered issues particularly important for the activity of the national regulatory authorities, namely:
- the question of universal service, bearing in mind currently existing networks;
- the economic impact of the voice over internet protocol (VoIP), about which a document was drawn up which indicates several VoIP service policies;
- in-depth analysis of the market for multi-play services (also known as triple-play services) in the OECD member States, including the Portuguese market;
- examination of the latest developments in the internet traffic interchange market and measures to assess its growth;
- investigation of the most recent progress in the markets for internet domain names, namely the so-called secondary market for domain names (whose development is largely due to online advertising on the so-called search engines).
Also approved was a proposed Council Recommendation on cross-border co-operation on spam (unsolicited communications). This proposal will be forwarded for Council approval.
Once its duties are completed the task force in charge of issues concerning the fight against spam (TF SPAM) will be disbanded. Plans nevertheless call for related issues to continue to be dealt with at committee level, in order to react whenever deemed necessary.
The meeting participants also revised the terms of reference (ToR) of the groups reporting to the ICCP and, in particular, changed the designation of the working group on Telecommunication and Information Services Policies (WG TISP) to the WG on Telecommunications Infrastructures and Services Policy (WG CISP).
Substantial support was also given to the idea of holding a ministerial meeting to discuss the future of the internet, although it remains to be seen whether same will be held in the spring of 2008 or only in the autumn of the same year. France and Italy indicated their interest in hosting the event, at a site yet to be determined.
The next ICCP meeting will be held on 4-5 October in Hungary, along with the Technology Foresight Forum (specifically focusing on the issue of next generation networks - NGN) and the meeting of the working group on Information Security and Privacy - ISP), on 2-3 October.
