Tuesday, February 11, 2020

FCC Commissioner Questions Future of ITU



FCC Commissioner Michael O'Rielly has proposed to Congress that the U.S. consider developing an
FCC Commissioner Michael O'Rielly (FCC photo)
alternative to the International Telecommunica- tion Union, or ITU, for future matters of international spectrum management. 

O'Rielly told the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation that the ITU and its quadrennial World Radiocommunication Conferences, or WRCs, may actually be stifling progress in promoting advanced technology. He noted that in the ITU, as an agency of the United Nations, each country has just one vote and that at the last WRC, it seemed that certain countries came with the goal of opposing whatever the U.S. wanted. He proposed creating a separate body of the world's telecommunication leaders - similar to the G7, or Group of Seven major economies - to effectively bypass the ITU in the future.