Report on Progress of ITU-T Study Group 3 at the World Telecommunication Standardization Assembly 2016 (WTSA-16)

2.1 Change of mandate

The term for the domain of study of each SG is a mandate. As mentioned, in the past few years, developing countries have been increasingly vocal in expressing their desire for ITU-T to make recommendations in order to justify domestic regulations or policies. At WTSA-16 also, Russia and the Arab states proposed adding the study of regulatory issues. However, the United States, western European countries, and Japan opposed the addition of this study theme, saying that regulatory issues are solely domestic issues. As a result, the mandate of SG3 was defined as International telecommunication/ICT (information and communication technology) policy and economic issues and tariff and accounting matters (including costing principles and methodologies).

The US and western European countries further insisted that study themes be limited to international issues, and the title of SG3 was also agreed to be ITU-T Study Group 3: Tariff and Accounting Principles and International Telecommunication/ICT Economic and Policy Issues, and by adding the word international, it was mandated that SG3 is not to discuss solely domestic issues [2].

2.2 Approval of five recommendations

Five recommendation proposals (four new and one revision) were submitted to WTSA-16 and were all approved (Table 1). However, the US, Australia, Germany, Canada, and others pointed out that D.52, D.53, and D.261 were domestic issues, and the recommendations were adopted with reservations from the opposing countries [3].

Table 1. Approved recommendations.

2.3 Compiling the new resolutions

At WTSA-16, the RCC (Russian regional group) proposed a resolution stating that the ITU-T should get involved in studying all manners of policies for consumer protection in telecommunications/ICT, including fair competition, business models, quality assurance, establishment of reliability, and the assurance of security. The developing countries supported this, but the developed countries, including Japan, opposed it, pointing out the broadness of the scope of consumer protection, and that many of the issues such as quality assurance and security would be redundant with the existing work of ITU-T. As a result, the content was amended to read “to resolve that ITU-T Study Group 3……within their mandates, should carry out studies, including on standards for the protection of consumers and users of telecommunication/ICT services,” and it was newly approved as Studies concerning the protection of users of telecommunication/information and communication technology services (New Resolution 84) [4].

2.4 International mobile roaming (Resolution 88)

Ever since the bill shock issue, which refers to receiving unexpectedly high mobile phone bills, began to surface, SG3 has been considering establishing a recommendation for lowering international mobile roaming rates. However, some members voiced their concern that the existing recommendation was not being fully utilized, and at WTSA-16, the CITEL (American regional group) proposed a new resolution to execute D.98 (Charging in international mobile roaming service). D.98 was approved in 2012; it recommended increased transparency of rates, provision of alternate plans, and appropriate regulatory measures. The new Resolution D.97 on international roaming is listed in Table 1; Resolution 88 encourages each member state to execute D.98, which had been compiled previously.

2.5 Mobile financial service (Resolution 89)

There are reportedly 2 billion unbanked people in the world. This means they remain outside of the banking system. Providing access to financial services to these people is referred to as financial inclusion. In ITU-T also, a focus group to discuss digital financial services was established in June 2014, and its target was to expand access to financial services through the use of mobile money. In SG3, some members expressed the desire to take leadership in studying this issue, and work is being done to compile recommendations that encourage countries to introduce competition principles and regulations of fees for service transactions.

However, more proposals were put forth from developing countries to include, for example, the issue of granting a license to financial service providers in SG3 recommendations, which is clearly the jurisdiction of financial authorities, and this has become a contentious issue. In WTSA-16, the Arab and African countries proposed a new resolution on “Promoting the use of information and communication technologies to bridge the financial inclusion gap” and resolved to gain the cooperation of telecom and financial authorities. At the same time, it was agreed to avoid redundancy with the work of other standardization bodies and to have the study carried out within the scope of the ITU mandate dealing with telecommunications. The progress in the study on mobile financial services is to be reported at the annual Board meeting and to WTSA in 2020.

2.6 Over the top (OTT) players and services

The activities of OTT players who are delivering content such as video and music and providing voice or messaging services have been gaining more prominence recently. Some members of SG3 concerned with the economic impact of these OTT players on network operators proposed making recommendations on the definition of OTT and the principles of regulation, and a rapporteur group was created to discuss specifics.

At WTSA-16 also, a new resolution was proposed by the African countries that seeks to resolve the OTT’s impact in an appropriate way. In the meeting, there were severely conflicting opinions between developed countries—primarily the United States—and the African and Arab countries on the scope of service the resolution covers, and the ensuing discussion was difficult. The developed countries of the West wanted to avoid subjecting a wide range of services to the resolution and also wanted to limit its scope to voice service and messaging service operators that use public numbering resources (E.164). The African countries that wanted to include more general OTT services strongly opposed this, and consensus was not reached by the end of the session. Multiple official and unofficial meetings were held, and as a result, while a resolution on OTT services was deferred, as a compromise, additions were made to the mandates of SG2 and SG3 of Resolution 2, adding “Study of the economic and regulatory impact of the Internet” to the mandate of SG3.