US States Intention to Retain Control of the Internet

Curtis, Sophie. "US States Intention to Retain Control of the Internet." Techworld, September 5, 2012.

The United States has indicated that it is not willing to relinquish control of the internet to the United Nations.

At present, US-based ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) is responsible for the coordination of IP address spaces, the assignment of address blocks, the maintenance of registries and the management of the top-level domain name space.

However, it has been suggested that the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) – the UN agency responsible for encouraging the development of communications technologies – could perform at least some of these tasks.

The ITU is hosting a conference in Dubai in December, to which representatives from 178 nations have been invited to review the International Telecommunications Regulations (ITR), which set out how traffic should flow between telecoms networks in different countries.

At the conference, Russia, whose submission was leaked to website Wcitleaks.org, will suggest that the ITU should be responsible for the allocation IP addresses and the “determination of necessary requirements”. The proposal is expected to be backed by several other nations, including China.

However, the US has published its own submission for the conference, stating its concern that “proposals by some other governments could lead to greater regulatory burdens being placed on the international telecom sector”" Read more