APNIC Director General Paul Wilson recently spent five days at the ITU Plenipotentiary Conference 2014 in Busan – otherwise known as the Plenipot, or PP14 – covering some of the more important and contentious discussions about Internet-related issues.
ITU’s 19th Plenipotentiary Conference was held in Busan, Republic of Korea, from Monday, 20 October to Friday, 7 November 2014.
A reflection on where we stand after more than a year of preparatory events and three weeks of conferencing.
It was a day largely spent in approvals on the second to last day of PP-14.
We’re reached the stage where resolutions on Internet related matters passed through both readings of the Plenary without comment, ending the discussions on the Internet at this Plenipotentiary.
After a substantial amount of work in the Ad Hoc Group on Internet Related Matters, the results were finally passed up through the Working Group of Plenary session and are now destined for their first reading in the Plenary of the Conference tomorrow.
Monday saw the last of the issues related to the documents in the Ad Hoc Group on Internet related matters, and a number of matters passing through the Working Group of the Plenary.
It was a long weekend of work that focused on the Internet-related resolutions.
It’s Day 9 and we are mid way through the Plenipotentiary. All delegations are deep into Ad Hocs and informal groups negotiating consensus texts, sometimes with progress, but often without. As always the Internet issues remain contentious with virtually no prospect of consensus.
There was a lot of discussion and some resolutions in the Ad Hoc groups, but the bigger issues are simmering in the background. The hardest work of the conference is still yet to come.
