AT&T pushes for private sector role at the ITU - Industry Trend or Event

CommunicationsWeek International, March 20, 2000 by David Molony

AT&T has signaled it wants to lead the private sector lobby pressing for reform of the industry's largest association, the International Telecommunication Union.

At a meeting of a joint working group of industry executives and telecoms ministers earlier this month, AT&T presented a proposal to give the private sector an equal say in running the UN association's business.

The U.S. giant's proposal is the first significant contribution by invited industry members of the new forum, the reform advisory panel, set up at the invitation of the ITU secretary general, Yoshio Utsumi. The group held its first meeting at the Telecom 99 exhibition in Geneva last October.

Until now, the ITU Council has been exclusively representative of governments or their ministries, The new proposal would effectively force governments to take decisions on ITU activities in consultation with commercial companies for the first time.

"At the conclusion of the meeting, the decision was to send a representative to [future] ITU Council," said Utsumi. "Logically, once the private sector representative is included in Council, I think opinions concerning management of the ITU will have to be taken in consultation with the private sector...and [will] lead to many other changes in activities of the ITU."

The proposal, still to be agreed by the ITU Council itself, would set up a private sector board alongside a government members board within the executive, as well as a joint board.

The outcome was just what the former overseas representative for Japan's ministry of communications has been working towards since setting up the group, in a step-by-step approach to forcing the ITU as a body to reform.

Industry delegates said together with other recommendations from the meeting, the secretary general would be given a role more like that of a company chief executive.

"We are looking for the secretary general to have more influence and authority to change," said Robert Dombkowski, chairman emeritus of the European Competitive Telecommunications Association, in London.

This month's meeting, chaired by Maria Livanos Cattaui, secretary general of the International Chamber of Commerce, in Brussels, was only the group's second meeting. Attendance was, according to delegates, a significant improvement on the first, although key chief executives were represented rather than attending in person, as before (CWI, 25 October 1999, p.3).