US, UK other countries refuse to sign UN communications treaty

The US, Canada, Australia and the UK have refused to sign an international communications treaty at a conference in Dubai, objecting to calls for all states to have equal governance rights over the internet by giving each country the ability to manage web addresses and numbering.

This comes as a setback to the UN's International Telecommunication Union (ITU), which was confident of delivering consensus.
 
"It's with a heavy heart and a sense of missed opportunities that the US must communicate that it's not able to sign the agreement in the current form," said Terry Kramer, the US ambassador to the World Conference on International Telecommunications (Wcit).
 
"The internet has given the world unimaginable economic and social benefit during these past 24 years."
 
Delegates from Denmark, Italy, the Czech Republic, Sweden, Greece, Portugal, Finland, Chile, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Costa Rica and Kenya said they would need to consult with their national governments about how to proceed with the proposals and would not be able to sign the treaty as planned today.

The 12-day conference had been organised by the ITU to revise a communications treaty that was last given an overhaul 24 years ago.

Management of web addresses and numbering is currently overseen by the nonprofit organisation, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers.

ICANN coordinates with governments, civil society groups and internet service providers to assign and manage domain names. Giving individual countries the powers to manage could potentially politicise that function by extending favorable treatment to some groups or providers and risk fragmenting the internet, which was useful precisely because it was universal and operated on the basis of globally accepted standards.

Other parts of the proposal were aimed at giving broad powers to countries over ''matters of internet governance'', which, according to analysts, appeared to legitimise and validate controls over content and access that many nations already used, by including them in an international treaty.