"Digital Rights Groups Ask ITU To Stay Out of Net Neutrality Debate"

If the ITU moves to allow telecom-style termination fees for Web traffic, the United Nations agency could damage Internet openness and threaten net neutrality, said Danielle Kehlm, a policy analyst at the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute. The institute is one of the groups signing a set of recommendations to the ITU as it hosts its 2014 Plenipotentiary Conference in South Korea through Nov. 7. Some developing nations pushed for global standards allowing Internet termination fees—charges for carrying traffic from outside the country to end customers—in an effort to raise money for broadband deployment, at the ITU’s 2012 World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT). The issue is expected to come up again at this year’s ITU conference, Kehlm said. The ITU should focus on Internet access and deployment issues, where it has U.N. mandates, instead of public policy issues, Kehlm said. “Internet public policy should not be something the ITU is determining,” she said.