The International Chamber of Commerce, the global business body which USCIB represents in the United States, welcomed the renewed strong representation of business in a multi-stakeholder advisory group responsible for steering preparations for the 8th Internet Governance Forum (IGF) – an open forum for policy dialogue on issues of Internet governance that will take place this October in Bali, Indonesia.

Nine members of ICC’s Business Action to Support the Information Society (BASIS) initiative secured a place on the MAG, a special advisory group to the UN secretary general representing Internet interest groups from governments, business, civil society and the Internet technical community. These included, from USCIB’s membership, Jeff Brueggeman, vice president-public policy, deputy chief privacy officer , AT&T, Theresa Swinehart, executive director, global Internet policy, Verizon, and Patrick Ryan, policy counsel, open Internet, Google. The United Nations confirmed 56 MAG members overall.

Read more on the ICC website.

USCIB members also played important roles contributing to and shaping discussions at the World Telecommunications/ICT Policy Forum (WTPF) and WSIS Action Lines Forum, held May 13-17 in Geneva. The WTPF addressed issues as wide-ranging as the build-out of broadband capabilities and how that drives development, the transition from IPV4 to IPv6 and related capacity-building needs, and the importance of the multi-stakeholder model in Internet governance, to name a few.

The WSIS Action Lines Forum considered progress that has been made since 2002 in implementing goals set forth by the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) aimed at bridging the digital divide, and spreading the fruits that can be realized from a digital economy to emerging economies. Some of the themes addressed at the WTPF and the WSIS Action Lines Forum likely will be re-visited at the Internet Governance Forum in Bali, Indonesia, on October 21-25.

Ambassador David Gross, partner at Wiley Rein and chair of USCIB’s Information, Communications and Technology Committee, led the informal “USCIB delegation” at both the WTPF and WSIS meetings. Barbara Wanner, USCIB’s vice president for ICT policy, and member representatives from Amazon, AT&T, BT America, Cisco, Disney, Google, Intel, Juniper Networks, Microsoft, Telecommunications Management Group, Versign, and Verizon also participated.

Staff contact: Barbara Wanner

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