Many MindedITU conference opens with 278 proposals and a fight over who runs the internet
The International Telecommunication Union opens its quadrennial plenipotentiary conference on a Monday shortly after 8 November 2026. It runs 18 days, with 278 proposals on the table. The ITU is the UN agency for information and communication technologies, and its members are nation-states.
The ITU already manages radio spectrum and satellite orbits, and its standards include X.509 for public key infrastructure, E.164 for telephone numbers, and the H.264 and H.265 video codecs behind most online streaming. The internet's core protocols and naming sit elsewhere, with the IETF, ICANN, the regional internet registries and the W3C. Those bodies work by consensus among many stakeholders, and governments are one voice among many. They cannot override that consensus. In 2025, WSIS+20 made the Internet Governance Forum permanent, which effectively endorsed that model. China has earlier pushed the ITU toward work on a 'New IP', and in 2022 a candidate for ITU president who favored a stronger state role, backed by Russia and China, lost.
Why it matters for abundance: cheap global access to information and connection depends on a network that no single government can reshape or gate. The Internet Society says it is challenging proposals that could alter the internet's technical architecture, increase fragmentation, or harm connectivity for remote, underserved and unserved communities. It is also watching undecided questions on oversight of low-earth orbit satellite constellations, submarine cable resilience and spectrum policy. ICANN told The Register that proposals expanding the ITU's role in IP networks, DNS and internet public policy could create overlapping mandates and parallel processes.
The caveats are real. ICANN named no specific proposals. The fears of a power shift to governments come from governance groups, not confirmed outcomes. Most proposals are settled by consensus, and nothing says any given one will pass. Members can still amend text during the meeting, so watch for late changes that reach a vote.
Source: The Register