Thus spake Dan Kolis: > The general idea surely of the ITU came about exactly in the context of > limited frequencies and power, etc. So, fine. Coordination of this is > reasonable. Well, when a nation makes laws and treaties obliging both its citizens and itself to follow certain rules and standards, the nation expects a certain degree of control over the development of said rules and standards. The structure of the ITU (and ISO) is a reasonable design for that scenario. By and large, compliance with Internet standards is voluntary and self-motivated; this requires (allows?) a very different organizational structure. However, in passing S. 877, the US Congress has for the first time referenced "Internet Engineering Task Force Standards" (Sec 11.2) in a law. For now, it is only as a suggestion to the FTC for rulemaking, not directly mandating compliance, but if this is a sign of things to come... Thus spake Franck Martin > Well to come back to my original comment, is that IETF, IANA and > ICANN by being "individual members" organisations do not have the > front of ITU, which is unfortunate as the Internet is not being done in ITU. > Governments have to understand that and for that dissociate themselves > from the old telco concept... If the Internet _were_ done in the ITU, it would look like the phone system, and we'd still be stuck in the 1970's. S Stephen Sprunk "God does not play dice." --Albert Einstein CCIE #3723 "God is an inveterate gambler, and He throws the K5SSS dice at every possible opportunity." --Stephen Hawking