[[Image:ITU monument, Bern.jpg|thumb|230px|Monument in Berne, Switzerland. The text reads: "Union Télégraphique Internationale fondée à Paris en 1865 sur l'initiative du gouvernement français. Érigé par décision de l'Union Télégraphique prise à la conférence internationale de Lisbonne en 1908." (In English: "International Telegraph Union founded at Paris in 1865 on the initiative of the French government. [This monument] erected by a decision of the Telegraph Union made at the international conference at Lisbon in 1908.")]]

The International Telecommunication Union is the second-oldest international organization still in existence (the oldest being the Rhine Commission), established to standardize and regulate international radio and telecommunications. It was founded as the International Telegraph Union in Paris on 17 May 1865. Its main tasks include standardization, allocation of the radio spectrum, and organizing interconnection arrangements between different countries to allow international phone calls — in which regard it performs for telecommunications a similar function to what the UPU performs for postal services. It is one of the specialized agencies of the United Nations, and has its headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, next to the main United Nations campus.

Composition

The ITU is made up of three sectors:

• The Telecommunication Standardization Sector, ITU-T, whose secretariat is the Telecommunication Standardization Bureau or TSB, known prior to 1992 as the International Telephone and Telegraph Consultative Committee or CCITT (from its French name "Comité consultatif international téléphonique et télégraphique");

• The Radiocommunication Sector, ITU-R, whose secretariat is the Radiocommunication Bureau or BR, known prior to 1992 as the International Radio Consultative Committee or CCIR (from its French name "Comité consultatif international des radiocommunications");

• The Telecommunication Development Sector, ITU-D, whose secretariat is the Telecommunication Development Bureau or BDT, created in 1992.

A permanent General Secretariat, headed by the Secretary General, manages the day-to-day work of the Union and its sectors.

Leadership

The ITU is headed by a Secretary-General, who is elected to a four-year term by the member states at the plenipotentiary conference.

At the 17th Plenipotentiary Conference (2006) in Antalya, Turkey, the ITU's Member States elected Dr. Hamadoun Touré of Mali as Secretary-General of the Union.

Directors and Secretaries-general of ITU

Standards

The international standards that are produced by the ITU are referred to as "Recommendations" (with the word ordinarily capitalized to distinguish its meaning from the ordinary sense of the word). Due to its longevity as an international organization and its status as a specialized agency of the United Nations, standards promulgated by the ITU carry a higher degree of formal international recognition than those of most other organizations that publish technical specifications of a similar form.

Members

The work of the ITU is conducted by its members. As part of the United Nations structure, a country can be a member, in which case it is referred to as a Member State. Companies and other such organizations can hold other classes of membership referred to as Sector Member or Associate status. As of September 2007 there were 191 Member States and more than 700 Sector Members and Associates.

Sector and Associate memberships enable direct participation by a company in the development of standards (something not allowed in some other standards bodies such as ISO, where formal ballots are processed by a single entity per country and companies participate only indirectly through national delegations). Various parts of the ITU also maintain liaison relationships with other organizations.

Members are almost all of the UN members plus the Vatican City State. Only Palau and East Timor are not participating at this time. Other entities not represented are the Palestinian Authority and Taiwan, although the Palestinian Authority is granted non-voting observer status .

Meetings

The ITU decides matters between states and private organizations through an extensive series of working parties, study groups, regional meetings, and world meetings.

Examples

• Regional Radiocommunication Conferences (RRC)

• World administrative radio conferences (WARC)

• World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC)

Conferences

• Geneva 1925

• Prague 1929

• Luzern 1933

• Montreux 1939

• Copenhagen 1948

• Stockholm 1952

• Stockholm 1961

• Geneva 1975

• Geneva 1977

• Geneva 1984

• WRC 2000

• Geneva 2006

World Summit on the Information Society

The ITU was the lead organizing agency of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), a United Nations summit aiming at bridging the digital divide and turning it into digital opportunity for all. WSIS provided a global forum on the theme of ICTs (Information and Communication Technologies) for development, involving for the first time all stakeholders - governments, international organizations, civil society and business. WSIS was a pledge for building a people-centered development-oriented Information Society. Other big themes of the Summit were Internet governance and Financial mechanisms for meeting the challenges of ICTs for development.

The idea of holding WSIS came from the Tunisian President Ben Ali on the ITU Plenipotentiary Conference in Minneapolis in 1998. The process was launched late in 2002 on the initiative of Kofi Annan. The first phase of the WSIS summit took place in December 2003 in Geneva and the second and final phase took place in Tunis in November 2005.

See also

• Global Cybersecurity Agenda (GCA)

• Inter-American Telecommunication Commission (CITEL)

• ITU Radiocommunication Sector (ITU-R)

• ITU Telecommunication Development Sector (ITU-D)

• ITU Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T)

• ITU-R Recommendations

• ITU-T Recommendations

• Telephone numbers in the European Union

• UIT X.509

• Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG)