Proceedings of the Workshop - United Nations Office for Outer ...

86 EXPANDING GLOBAL COMMUNICATIONS SERVICESspecified bands for Regions 1 and 3 as newAppendix S30 of the RR. Thus, the “engineering”will continue and there will be no return to the pure“first come first served” concept anymore, at leastin my opinion!15. Lyall’s question as to “Public ServiceAllotments?”, on the contrary, is, in my view veryrelevant and timely and merits the greatest attentionpossible by UNISPACE III. I entirely agree withhis petitum “to secure the requirements of certainservices which fall into a ‘public service’category”, as this would indeed be “in the generalworld interest”. The ITU provisions in CS No. 17and 191 (concerning safety of life) and 200(concerning distress calls and messages) fullysupport the idea of entering for such publicservices appropriate allotments in an agreed plan(cf. RR S1.17) to be worked out under the ITUauspices indeed in the best understood “generalworld interest”. I strongly hope that UNISPACE IIIwill pronounce itself in favor of such enhancedsecurity measures and invite the ITU to act andimplement them accordingly.16. Lyall proposes that “more should be made of theconcept of ‘cost recovery’” (see paragraph 11above) and that “consideration should be given tothe introduction of a ‘Resource Utilisation Fee'”(see page 77), according to the device that “thosewho are to gain commercially by the use of ageneral natural resource should be willing to payfor it”. This is undoubtedly a most interesting ideafor which he also quotes certain precedents. Hisassertion that “the free use of space” in Article I,paragraph 2 of the Outer Space Treaty would onlymean “available to all” and that the word “free”would not exclude charging a “fee” for such usefreely available is rather clever, and I like it.However, as he himself, I foresee “doubtlessopposition”, though not necessarily for the reasonof an “unlawful tax on enterprise”. I see muchmore difficulties coming from the innumerablequestions related to the introduction, the fixing andthe collection of the fee (in particular by which‘supra-national’ authority?), and finally to the usemade out of such fee, all questions which Lyallhimself sees as well. For such questions it may bevery difficult to find generally acceptable answersand solutions, and, for this reason alone, the wholeconcept risks to remain an academic andhypothetical one and may never see the light of dayin practical terms ! Unless... .it might convincinglybe coupled with the next idea of Lyall’s, namely thecreation of ”an international regulator”, who couldbe financed out of the income from the collection ofsuch fees, as I hold the other uses which Lyallenvisages for spending such income as too remotefrom the subject matter itself i.e.“telecommunications”, a remoteness which wouldnot exist in the use just proposed by me!17. Thus, I come to the penultimate section of Lyall’sindeed stimulating discussion paper, i.e. “AnInternational Regulator” (see page 78), whom Iwould immediately and more precisely prefer to becalled “an international telecom regulator”, aterm against which I cannot imagine that Lyallwould raise any objection! Now more to the detailsof this concept itself, which is perhaps the mostfascinating idea in this paper and corresponds to(or is inspired by?) the currently, quite modernconcept of an “independent regulator”, asadvocated by the relevant EU Directives andcreated already at many national levels! One thingindeed must be ensured, i.e. that such aninternational telecom regulator, onceinstitutionalized and installed, has to act quiteindependently. Precisely in the interest of “generalworld public interest in the provision of globaltelecommunications services open to all withoutdiscrimination” and to preserve and protect“telecommunications as a public service” (Lyall),such independence is imperative. Such regulatorcould ensure - at the international level - thebenefits of real competition for the public at largeand supervise, control and direct the telecommarkets’ evolution. Thus “the establishment bycompanies of dominant positions” in those marketscould be avoided, in order not to fall from the old“monopolies” into a few “oligarchies” producingthe same results as the former! Nationallyprevailing interests in e.g. licensing could by sucha regulator be counterbalanced and be madecompatible with “the welfare of the world as awhole” (Lyall) both at the technical, economical