{"id":1573,"date":"2012-12-06T16:29:14","date_gmt":"2012-12-06T15:29:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ofcourseimright.com\/?p=1573"},"modified":"2012-12-06T16:38:13","modified_gmt":"2012-12-06T15:38:13","slug":"whats-wcit-about-it-depends-on-who-you-ask","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/?p=1573","title":{"rendered":"What&#8217;s WCIT about?  It depends on who you ask."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This week the World Conference on International Telecommunication (WCIT) began with a remarkable and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.itu.int\/en\/wcit-12\/Documents\/dec3plenary1.docx\">important declaration<\/a> from the Secretary General, Dr. Hamadoun Tour\u00e9:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>And WCIT is not about Internet governance.\u00a0 WCIT is about making sure that we connect the billion people without access to mobile telephony, and that we connect the 4.5 billion people who are still off line.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a class=\"image\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/File:Internet_users_per_100_inhabitants_ITU.svg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"thumbimage\" src=\"http:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/thumb\/2\/29\/Internet_users_per_100_inhabitants_ITU.svg\/600px-Internet_users_per_100_inhabitants_ITU.svg.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"458\" height=\"302\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Let&#8217;s first take a moment to celebrate the fact that 2.5 billion people have access to the Internet, and that the rate of Internet penetration has grown at a rate of 14% over the last few years to 35%, according to the ITU&#8217;s own numbers.\u00a0 That&#8217;s great news, and it leads to a question: how shall WCIT focus on improving on that number?\u00a0\u00a0 How have the International Telecommunication Regulations that have served 2.5 billion people not served the other 4.5 billion?<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately, <strong>none<\/strong> of the proposals that have been made available actually focus on this very problem.\u00a0 Instead, at least one <a href=\"http:\/\/files.wcitleaks.org\/public\/S12-WCIT12-C-0027!R1!MSW-E.pdf\">prominent proposal from Russia<\/a> focuses on&#8230; <strong>Internet governance.<\/strong>\u00a0 Let&#8217;s wish the Secretary General great success in persuading Russia and other governments that indeed that is <strong>not<\/strong> what this conference is about.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This week the World Conference on International Telecommunication (WCIT) began with a remarkable and important declaration from the Secretary General, Dr. Hamadoun Tour\u00e9: And WCIT is not about Internet governance.\u00a0 WCIT is about making sure that we connect the billion people without access to mobile telephony, and that we connect the 4.5 billion people who &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/?p=1573\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;What&#8217;s WCIT about?  It depends on who you ask.&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":172,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[87,4],"tags":[502,457,404,446],"class_list":["post-1573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-internet","category-politics","tag-internet","tag-internet-governance","tag-itu","tag-wcit"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/172"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1573"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1573\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1576,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1573\/revisions\/1576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}