02 March, 2022

ETNO joins WTSA, supports open and interoperable internet protocols at a delicate time

Geneva, 2 March 2022 – ETNO, the Association representing Europe’s leading telecom operators, is attending the World Telecommunication Standardization Assembly (WTSA-20), a milestone event for the international telecommunications community.

This comes at an extremely delicate time, in which the resilience, openness and continuity of internet communications is more important than ever.

In this context, ETNO supports a multi-level governance for the internet and its decentralized model. We are fully aligned with the European Commission in advocating that Internet Protocols remain open and interoperable.

Internet ecosystems should be secure and trustworthy. An internet ecosystem that is fully centralised, closed or governed in a top-down manner is typically more vulnerable to cyberattacks and other security threats, exacerbated by the presence of a single point of failure. The societal and economic impact of cyberattacks is felt not only by the targeted entity or country, but by the entire surrounding internet ecosystem.

As to governance, we believe that the work done by standards development organizations is critical to building secure, trustworthy and inclusive Internet ecosystems: the IETF, ETSI, IEEE, and 3GPP have a very important role to play. We believe that their work should continue to be inclusive as they investigate new network architectures and develop new protocols, or enhance the capabilities of current protocols. The multi-stakeholder approach must remain a lighthouse also in the context of standardization.

ETNO members are committed to continue engaging with the global standardization community. By doing so, we can continue collectively working to make digital opportunity available to more countries and local communities.