International Telecommunication Union (ITU)

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) was created in the 1860s by a loose confederation of engineers and diplomats representing twenty European nation-states amid the excitement (and anxieties) over the implications of the telegraph and the new potential for long-distance communication. The ITU, now an agency branch of the United Nations (UN), is among that organization’s most powerful and influential international regulatory bodies. Primarily concerned with coordinating and assigning the millions of frequencies for the global radio network and with charting and coordinating international cooperation in designating orbit loops of all satellites, the mission of the ITU has been radically extended by the massive evolution of international communication networks. The ITU has sought to regulate, control, and even standardize the development of international Internet communication in an effort to make it accessible and cost-effective for all countries.

Background

It is a measure of the rapid evolution of global telecommunications in the last century and a half that for more than a dozen centuries before that the principal methods of moving important messages included carrier pigeons, couriers on horseback or on foot, and ship’s mail. In the 1840s, with the telegraph, the potential for rapid (and global) communication grew steadily more apparent. By the 1860s, submarine telegraph services had linked the nation-states of Europe and, in turn, Europe with the United States. But problems were considerable as messages crossed nation to nation; interruptions were routine as equipment was not standardized, nor were message retrieval and delivery systems; in addition, there was virtually no accountability or transparency for messages once they crossed borders. A conference of twenty nations convened in Paris in May 1865 to address these growing concerns. Calling itself the International Telegraph Convention (ITC), the delegates worked out a revolutionary protocol that called for international cooperation as the only way to codify telecommunication services.

Over the next seventy years, the Convention struggled to keep pace with the rapid development of quicker, more efficient communication systems. By the turn of the twentieth century, its focus was primarily on maritime communication, particularly on methods for ships to communicate quickly in times of emergency—indeed, the Convention devised the international distress signal, SOS. In April 1912, the need for such efforts was underscored by the catastrophic failure of international communication in assisting the sinking Titanic. In the aftermath, the ITC took the lead in developing the first global emergency frequency, and by mandating that all ships silence all communication for a period of time every day just to monitor for distress signals. In 1932, the ITC merged with the International Radiotelegraph Convention and became the International Telecommunications Convention, changing its name two years later to the International Telecommunications Union.

After World War II, developments challenged the international body to maintain some control over telecommunications. Joining the UN network of agencies in 1947 and relocating its headquarters to Geneva, Switzerland, the ITU is made up of representatives from 194 countries as well as more than 1,000 telecommunication companies from the private and public sectors—a roster that includes not only government representatives but also telecommunication industry representatives, researchers, and computer engineers, representatives of Internet carriers and regional telecommunication providers, and banks and financial institutions responsible for funding communication networks. In addition to sponsoring numerous international symposia on a range of telecommunications issues, the ITU divided its vast day-to-day operations into three broad commissions: Telecommunications Standardization, which develops non-binding standards for the implementation of telecommunication technology; Radio Communication, which assigns radio frequency slots and assigns and tracks satellite coordinates; and Development, which develops communication policies for governments and industry and broadly promotes the essential role of telecommunications in every nation’s economic, political, social, and cultural life.

Impact

The challenge of the digital revolution, as the ITU conceives of it, is that global communication has divided the world into those countries with Internet access and those underdeveloped countries (particularly in Africa, the Pacific Rim, and Latin America) with inefficient, little, or no access, creating what the ITU has termed the digital divide. Seeing as a crucial element of its mission to connect the global community, to bridge the digital divide, the ITU convened in Dubai in 2012 for its annual international convention to address the issue. The accord fashioned at the summit stressed that telecommunications were essential in virtually every area of contemporary life: emergency services, meteorological disaster systems, power grids, transportation networks, food supplies, environment monitoring, education, government services, commerce and trade, financial markets, to say nothing of the essential communication pipelines among people. In an effort to provide telecommunications assistance for developing nations, the conference called for long-term strategizing to control and contain Internet traffic flow, privacy rights, data management, and the potential for cyberattacks and transmission of fraudulent data.

The protocol proposed monitoring domain names and IP addresses. The protocol touched off a firestorm. Many developed nations (among them the United States) regarded the protocol as an overreach of UN authority, an attempt to usurp the free market evolution of the architecture of international telecommunications systems. They vigorously opposed the accord, arguing that it would ultimately create numerous smaller Internets and then place those powerful information networks in the hands of governments that would not be answerable to the international community. The protocol was supported by authoritarian governments in Russia, China, and the Arab confederation.

When the agency celebrated its 150th anniversary in 2015, it did so amid calls for its dissolution as obsolete and irrelevant. Contact, commit, connect—that has been the guiding maxim of the ICU since the days of the telegraph. The difficult realities of elaborate communication systems that the founders could not have envisioned tested the viability and resiliency of that idealistic vision of a truly global world.

As information and communication technologies advanced, the ITU has worked to address cybersecurity and data protection issues. To provide countries with a framework for developing their national cybersecurity strategies (NCS), the ITU and twenty-five organizations developed a Guide to Developing an NCS (2021). The guide is a comprehensive framework to assist member countries in classifying threats, identifying critical and vulnerable infrastructure, establishing response mechanisms, and developing collaboration between public and private sectors to assess and deter cyber risks.

ITU also partnered with over forty UN sister agencies to develop a digital platform called AI for Good, which aims to support the collaboration of experts aiming to identify and advance practical applications of artificial intelligence (AI) to aid in achieving the UN's Sustainable Development Goals.

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