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There is no sense to this proposal. If it cost a telecom more to relay international traffic, they could charge their customers more for it to make up for the expensive peering costs. The telecoms must not be able to charge their customers more to relay traffic through expensive peers due to market forces -- which is why they want the government to be involved. It doesn't compensate the telecom for anything, it's just mandated jealousy.

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I have to wonder how many of the members of government pushing this also happen to be shareholders of telecoms companies. (I long for the day somebody builds such a graph of all influential people so such questions could easily be answered).

Oversimplified, The caller-pays model of telephone compensations was a way to funnel money from richer countries to poorer countries with government-owned telephone monopolies. This fell apart with the internet where the state telecoms had to pay for pipes to western carriers because they had all the desirable content. This situation with the ITU is all about recreating that money flow.

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