Robert Pepper is the vice president for global technology policy at Cisco. He has elaborated “a grave threat” in ITU’s “fatally flawed proposals to update” the way Internet would be regulated. While analyzing the impact of revising International Telecommunications Regulations (ITRs), he said:
It could break the global Internet into unconnected islands of national or regional networks, extend telecommunications regulations to computing, or lead to onerous government regulation of the Internet……….. Some proposals for the WCIT would control the routing of Internet traffic in the name of security but would balkanize the Internet and threaten Internet freedom.
Interestingly, two weeks before Robert Pepper’s publication, LIRNEasia’s CEO Rohan Samarajiva had also warned the Internet getting “balkanized” by the proposals being pushed by ETNO in the WCIT. It may be noted that Cisco has the status of an “Observer” in ETNO. And it is, by far, the only vendor that has publicly criticized the move of ITU and ETNO to regulate the Internet.
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