During these days is taking place the decisive meeting over the future of the Internet, the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT), organized by the ITU – International Telecommunication Union, a specialized agency of the United Nations. Representatives from 193 different Country are right now in Dubai to attend the summit. The aim of the Conference is to revise the ITR – International Telecommunication Regulations treaty, adopted by Governments in 1988. The ITR focuses on telecommunication and currently does not mention the Internet that,  in 1988, was still in its “infancy”, used only by a small number of researchers. Nowadays, experimenting the big revolution of the digital age, a review of the ITR was largely felt as necessary and urgent.

The ITU’s 193 member States have offered their proposals for how to revise the ITR, which form the basis for the negotiations at the WCIT.

The out come of the Dubai Summit could change how the Internet works.

The WCIT is a two-week conference that started last Monday, 3rd December and will go on until next Friday, 14th December.

We’ve just passed the halfway point of the conference. The first week had a few surprises but little indication what the outcome on Dec. 14th will actually look like. And the situation seems to be a “stand-by point”.

We have two blocs. On the one hand, The United States and a number of Countries in Europe, Latin America, and Asia-Pacific want to keep Internet governance out of international treaties, a sort of  “no man’s land” (with all the consequences in terms of  privacy and protection), while others — namely, Russia, China, and Saudi Arabia — are pushing to extend governmental control over the Internet.

We look forward to the end of the Summit and the decisions taken and we’ll certainly write about in this column.