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To: Peter Sherman who wrote (2197)	10/11/1999 6:42:00 PM
From: Ruffian	Respond to of 13582

Any Take On This? Note the players> (Previous Post) Semiconductors Systems & Software Design Technology People Telecom 99: Industry leaders ready to discuss ITU reform By Peter Clarke EE Times (10/11/99, 5:54 p.m. EDT) GENEVA — Yoshio Itsumi, secretary general of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), will meet this Wednesday (Oct. 13) with a small group of top industry leaders who have pledged to help him reform the organization. Faced by growing criticism that organizations such as the ITU are losing relevance and being short-circuited by ad hoc industry groups, Itsumi is beginning a process of reformation which may be a do or die bid for the ITU, a United Nations organization. For development engineers, the fruits of Wednesday's meeting and subsequent meetings will determine whether the ITU defines the standards that effect the technologies, chips and equipment of future systems, or whether those standards will be set by the new breed of fast-track industry organizations. Although reform of the ITU formally lies in the hands of a working group of the ITU council, Itsumi has asked industry leaders to join his personal special advisory group to help guide his own thinking and to provide input on the needs of industry. That group will have its initial meeting here at the Telecom 99 exhibition and conference. According to the ITU, Itsumi's special advisory group includes: Michael Armstrong, chairman and chief executive officer of AT&T; John Chambers, chief executive officer of Cisco Systems Inc.; Katusji Ebisaura, president of NHK; Nobuyuki Idei, president and chief executive officer of Sony Corp.; John Roth, vice chairman and chief executive officer of Nortel; and Serge Tchuruk, chairman of Alcatel. Other members of the special advisory group include and Robert Varrue, director general of the directorate of Enterprise and Information Society at the European Commission and Robert Dombkowski, chairman of the board of the European Competitive Telecommunications Association. "Itsumi campaigned for election on the need to reform the ITU," an ITU spokeswoman said. "He wants his advisory body to feed in to him what they feel is necessary." But the wheels of reform turn slowly within the ITU. An ITU plenipotentiary meeting set for 2002 must approve or reject recommendations from the ITU council's reform working group, the ITU spokeswoman said. "That is unless the council feels it has the authority to adopt some measures earlier," she said. Speed was not the issue behind the effort to reform the ITU, however. "We can produce standards quickly and other groups such as the IETF [Internet Engineering Task Force] are slowing down as they get larger," the spokeswoman said. "It's more about being able to develop work programs that reflect the industry market place. We have to establish more flexible mechanisms." Other issues faced by Itsumi include the fundamental importance of the Internet and other "soft" standards to communications. Itsumi has pledged that the ITU will get more involved in Internet governance and increasing the transparency of the organization. The reform process will also seek to reduce the significance of member states in favor of industry membership. At the moment, industry provides only 20 percent of the ITU's funding compared with the roughly 80 percent provided by member states. It is believed that industry would be prepared to pay a greater proportion of the ITU's costs as long as member states are prepared to give up various privileges they hold within the ITU structure.