Defending the Internet at the World Telecommunication Standardization Assembly 2024 (WTSA-24)

The Internet Society recently participated in the World Telecommunication Standardization Assembly 2024 (WTSA-24), which was held in New Delhi, India, from 18 to 24 October.

The WTSA is a quadrennial meeting of the International Telecommunication Union’s Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T), where the work program for global information and communication technology standardization is determined, including forming future Study Groups and approving technical recommendations.

Our main goal was to ensure that negotiations on recommendations and resolutions accurately assess potential impacts on the open and globally connected Internet that could arise from ITU-T’s activities during the next study period.

WTSA-24 Outcomes: All Major Concerns Addressed

Before WTSA-24, we highlighted our concerns through the WTSA-24 Issues Matrix, a document we produced with our community and stakeholders that evaluated each of the resolutions and recommendations being put forward. To address these concerns, our delegation on the ground in Delhi closely monitored relevant developments and actively engaged in the drafting process of several problematic resolutions.

We worked with different government delegations and members of the ITU-T sector to discuss the risks associated with expanding the ITU-T’s mandate, which could undermine the role of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and open standard-making processes. We aimed to address these and other threats to our vision of the Internet and its multistakeholder governance model.

We are happy to share that all our major concerns related to modifications to existing resolutions and new proposed resolutions were successfully resolved during WTSA-24 negotiations.

In the weeks following the WTSA meeting, we analyzed the WTSA-24 resolutions and other outcomes, such as WTSA Actions on the proposals that were not adopted. Subsequently, on 18 November, we published the ITU WTSA-24 Outcomes Matrix, which summarizes the changes to Internet-related resolutions (including new resolutions) to identify issues, areas of concern, and organizations impacted. While we recommend closely following some of the ITU-T activities due to their potential impact on the Internet in the future, we are confident that all the significant risks identified were mitigated during the Assembly.

Successful mitigation of these risks was a crucial milestone considering ITU-T’s potential role in standardization related to new technologies, such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the Metaverse. Our concern was that these efforts, if not scoped appropriately within the ITU remit, could overlap with the mandate of technical community organizations. The negotiations addressed the raised concerns, refining the language on emerging technologies in various new and existing resolutions to align closely with the ITU-T mandate in telecommunications and ICTs.

WTSA-24 Outcomes: Highlights

We closely monitored and engaged with the national delegations on the amendments to existing resolutions on cybersecurity, deployment of IPv6, and the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), which could directly affect the Internet and its governance. These issues were fully resolved in negotiations, in particular:

• Resolution 50 on Cybersecurity had several concerning proposals for changes. If adopted, they could have expanded the ITU-T’s remit through references to new and emerging technologies. In the final outcome, all these concerns were addressed by removing the problematic language and limiting the ITU-T’s role to ICT and telecom-related emerging technologies.    
• Resolution 64 on IPv6 had proposed modifications that could be interpreted as greater government intervention in Regional Internet Registries’ work. These changes were not adopted, and other problematic proposals were successfully resolved, too. The modifications to Resolution 64 adopted at WTSA-24 effectively complete ITU-T’s transition away from focusing on IP address allocation and toward supporting constructive activities to encourage the deployment of IPv6.
• Resolution 75 on WSIS had a proposal for modification, which added the wording on “management of the Internet.” This could have expanded ITU-T’s mandate to Internet-related public policy issues. No changes to Resolution 75 were adopted at WTSA-24.

Our concerns related to the proposals for new resolutions were also successfully resolved:

• The new resolution on Metaverse is limited to ITU-T’s mandate and promotes collaboration with other SDOs to avoid duplication. The resolutions on digital public infrastructure and AI aim to create collaboration possibilities without expanding ITU-T’s standardization work beyond its remit.
• The proposals on Over-the-Top Services (OTTs) and Post-Quantum Cryptography were not adopted, resulting in only minor follow-up items.
• The new resolution on Vehicular Communications mentions the IETF among other standards development organizations.  
• China proposed a question on Web 3.0 for the next ITU-T Study Group 13 (Future Networks) study period. The question was not approved. Previously, there were other unsuccessful attempts to add the term to various proposals in the preparatory processes we followed.

You can check our ITU WTSA-24 Outcomes Matrix for more details about modifications to existing resolutions, new resolutions adopted at WTSA-24, and other outcomes.