Sound Like The Boys Club Might Be Changing!>
Focus on Telecom 99: Face to Face - Utsumi means business
By David Molony
04 October 1999
If the players change, then why not the club, asks Yoshio Utsumi - the man who is quietly
determined to create a fast-moving, Internet-savvy, business-friendly organization.
When Yoshio Utsumi, secretary general of the International Telecommunication Union,
takes the podium at the forum accompanying the Telecom 99 exhibition in Geneva, he will
have been in office just 12 months. Not long enough, perhaps, for members to take him to
task over the ITU's place [or lack of it] in an Internet-dominated world, but certainly long
enough for him to have formulated some policies designed to tackle the problem.
So in case observers thought the quiet approach so far adopted by Japan's former minister
of international communications meant "business as usual" at the ITU, they should think
again.
In an exclusive interview with CommunicationsWeek International as he prepares for
Telecom 99, Utsumi outlines his thoughts:
That the ITU cannot continue much longer as it is, even after a much-hailed reform
program;
That the ITU is no longer the preserve of governments and public telecoms operators, but
is ready to respond to industry chief executives, if they want to get involved;
That he will move the ITU's showcase Telecom exhibition to Berlin in 2003, if Geneva's city
fathers don't come up with an improved package;
That he would like to see a new generation of Internet-savvy staffers succeed the older
generation at the ITU - and quickly.
As the end of his first year approaches, Utsumi can look back with quiet satisfaction, if not
relief, that lingering issues such as international accounting rates have remained beneath
the surface, allowing him to focus on taking the ITU in a new direction in the next century.
But Utsumi is worried that the ITU's authority and influence could be diminished to a point
where the organization ceased to serve its function as the consensus-making body for the
telecommunications world.
"I am very, very serious," he says. "Even though I believe the ITU [at its best] is the place
to watch global trends, there is a time lag between the real world and the ITU."
The organization, says Utsumi, has been in business for 135 years, but it has been in the
same business - allocating spectrum and agreeing international standards for network
interoperability and technologies - and is now suffering from inertia.
The real world is changing every day, says Utsumi. And the ITU's tradition is unfortunately
based upon a simple world of the past. In the past the telecoms world was simply a
government monopoly. Today, it is about competition and regulators and developing
regulations for competition. "It is a very, very complicated world. And most players in
telecoms are in private industry."
"If the players change, why not the club?" asks Utsumi, "I am being serious here. If the ITU
cannot find a means to cope with the present situation, it will disappear."
Utsumi concedes that internal reforms are helping, but says they need to go further.
"Reform from the inside is slow," he says, "Everybody here wants the ITU to adapt to the
real world. But there is always a time lag. Reducing the time lag is the important thing."
Utsumi proposes to accelerate reform by engaging the chief executives of telecoms
companies in a new initiative to reform and redirect the ITU.
However, he is under no illusions. He has to carry a huge and unwieldy institution, and it
won't be easy. "The ITU is a club," he says, "The SecGen is the servant for the members of
the club. Members generally expect silence from the SecGen. They want to decide."
But still, Utsumi sees grounds for optimism in his term of office.
On his election in Minneapolis last year, he called for a more business-friendly ITU,
responsive to the demands of the private sector. That is a message he has been repeating
throughout this year, and it seems to have had some effect.
"First of all, about 100 companies have joined the ITU this year," says Utsumi. "That is an
increase of about about one-fifth, a huge increase.
So companies ... are joining the ITU, and that must mean they expect [things] to happen at
the ITU ... and that the ITU can do something for them."
Utsumi points out that the ITU now has 570 sector members, compared with 480 at the end
of last year, and some of those have been lost in mergers and acquisitions.
Utsumi also plans a series of new workshops and projects that will differ from, but not
replace, the ambitious world policy forums on accounting rates and global mobile networks.
Instead, Utsumi would like the ITU to host working groups of the industry's expert
engineers and policy-makers and act more quickly on their recommendations.
Rather than try to get 189 governments to reach a multilateral consensus, these groups
would make proposals for networking and communications issues that have yet to be dealt
with, rather than handling the legacy problems of the monopolistic, incumbent carrier world.
"The ITU alone cannot do everything; telecoms experts alone cannot do everything," he
said, "But ... the ITU [can] mobilize people [acros] the telecoms field."
Utsumi says the ITU has been too slow to address such issues as e-commerce, and he
wants to change this.
He plans a meeting of such sherpas - an expert group drawn from industry, he says - for
December.
The group will make recommendations for a global arrangement for digital certification
authorities, which do not work together at present.
Whereas previously ITU meetings would be organized a year in advance and discussion
would wait until the meeting itself, Utsumi wants the main discussion to have been held in
the expert and ITU working groups beforehand, so that decision-making forums can act
promptly.
"It is not enough to take on a new subject," Utsumi acknowledges. "Our procedures and
decision-making must be new, and much quicker."
Geneva: On the rack for 2003
The ITU is taking the Geneva city authorities to the wire over the venue for Telecom 2003.
According to ITU secretary general, Yoshio Utsumi, it's possible that the event will move to
Berlin because of uncertainty over the lack of additional floor space at the Geneva exhibition
site, Palexpo.
"[The] provisional decision is that ... Geneva can have the show on condition [of a new] hall
6 at the Palexpo exhibition center." As at 13 September, he said, the Geneva authorities had
submitted a draft budget plan for year 2000 that includes provision for the building. "The
president of the Grande Conseil [Geneva] has promised us that they will make every effort to
[build the hall] ... but it's not 100% guaranteed, because it is still a draft budget," he says.
Waiting in the wings is Berliner Messe AG, keen to stage the 2003 show in the resurgent
capital of Germany, the fast-emerging telecoms powerhouse of Europe. "Berlin is the only
competitor to Geneva at this moment," says Utsumi. "I still have to make the comparison.
The final decision will be made before Telecom 99."
In fact, despite its success in winning new industry sector members this year, the secretary
general has been disappointed by the string of companies dropping out of Telecom 99.
These include IBM, MCI WorldCom Inc., BT and Equant NV. Although BT and IBM will be
funding some activities at the show, the new carriers will not be represented at all.
However, Utsumi is also sanguine. He argues that if the ITU wants to be part of the
competitive telecoms world, it has to let go of its monopoly and it is unrealistic to think one
show can interest everybody.
"As an organizer I have to say I am disappointed [that these companies won't be at
Telecom]," says Utsumi. "Otherwise I would be scolded by ITU staff! When Telecom
started 20 years ago, [the industry] was a monoculture.
But today we have different companies, going in different directions and with different
target markets and companies are changing policies on Telecom. It would be strange if
everybody continued to do just the same thing."
Instead, Utsumi wants the ITU to think beyond add-ons to its commercial activities and
mobilize communications users in other sectors.
"In the past, Telecom was the event for the expert in telecoms," says Utsumi. "But today
telecoms is not only for experts but for all people. What I am trying to do is to make
telecoms more open to policy-makers ... from international organizations besides telecoms;
in human resources and education, for example." |
