Sala: I don't believe that settlement issue - ala upgrade of the settlement regime floated by the European operator group is a 'distraction'. Come to think, Toure may be onto something. It could be a proxy war, a reprise of the old net neutrality issue but on a different front. So the feints and deceptions he alludes might be in play. Big telecoms - read infrastructure companies who own wire and/or spectrum that transit packets - are all for an upgrade to the settlement regime; not just the Europeans with their name on the ticket. Big content providers are on record as against. In the days of the old settlement formula and plain old telephone service, the traffic pattern made it inevitable for positive flows from North to South; we in the South made money. In fact given our large immigrant populations up North, most Caribbean countries saw positive revenue inflows from the arrangement. The operators up North never liked that one little bit. It was the hey day of national telecoms administrations, when governments in the South typically were owners of the telephone monopoly. Most succumbed to pressure from the multilateral agencies to privatize state enterprises or lose credit privileges. So after they privatized - really just handed the monopoly to a private company - most of the private companies simply upped the game. The big monopoly operator in our region - and whaddya know, in your corner of the Pacific as well! - milked this fact for all it was worth, principally to justify and maintain their monopoly status. Everybody made money. That is, everybody except the consumer who paid artificially high prices for telecom services. Times and politics changed it all. The political shift up North in the 80's gave an opening to operators there to influence FCC rule making. They succeeded to the extent that certain advantageous unilateral declarations on settlement charges were made; fixed reductions in bands over time. Most countries simply went along with the program. And here we are today. The jury is still out on what might emerge from the 'stalking horse' offering at WCIT-12. Maybe it's a pig in lipstick. Remains to be seen. - Carlton ============================== Carlton A Samuels Mobile: 876-818-1799 *Strategy, Planning, Governance, Assessment & Turnaround* ============================= On Wed, Sep 12, 2012 at 4:41 PM, Salanieta T. Tamanikaiwaimaro < salanieta.tamanikaiwaimaro@gmail.com> wrote:

- Excessive mobile roaming charges stemming from interconnection Agreements between Network Providers - Taxation issues etc

Interesting article, thanks Carlton :)

On Thu, Sep 13, 2012 at 9:18 AM, Carlton Samuels <carlton.samuels@gmail.com>wrote:

...

....and is a distraction from more important issues..... says a 'irritated' Secty-General Hamadoun Toure........

http://www.bna.com/itus-toure-wcit-b17179869586/

- Carlton

============================== Carlton A Samuels Mobile: 876-818-1799 *Strategy, Planning, Governance, Assessment & Turnaround* ============================= _______________________________________________ At-Large mailing list At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large

At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org

-- Salanieta Tamanikaiwaimaro aka Sala P.O. Box 17862 Suva Fiji

Twitter: @SalanietaT Skype:Salanieta.Tamanikaiwaimaro Fiji Cell: +679 998 2851 _______________________________________________ At-Large mailing list At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large

At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org