Summary

  • RCC members have proposed a new ITU resolution linking both the standards and development sectors with the Universal Postal Union on services shared by posts and telecoms.
  • Its practical test is a dual reporting line: ITU-T and ITU-D study groups would report their cooperation to their own advisory groups, while their bureau directors would support joint work.

A parcel can arrive at the right building and still be delivered to the wrong desk. That is the small institutional problem tucked inside an ambitious RCC proposal for the November ITU conference: when postal services become digital services, should the conversation sit only with telecom standards, or also with the people responsible for development and training?

The ITU register lists the Russian-language draft as addendum 27 to contribution 94, posted on 23 October. RCC member states ask for a new plenipotentiary resolution on cooperation with the Universal Postal Union (UPU). It would involve the ITU's standardization and development study groups and, on the postal side, the UPU Council of Administration and Postal Operations Council. Both ITU sectors would report periodically to their own advisory groups. The two bureau directors would encourage each organisation's officials to attend the other's meetings and support joint work.

There is already a postal address in the ITU rulebook. Resolution 11, revised in 2024, tells relevant ITU-T study groups to work with UPU Postal Operations Council committees and report to the standards advisory group. The RCC would give the development sector its own route into that relationship. Its draft also proposes requested joint courses, workshops and training using the organisations' regional presence. That matters more to a post office trying to add a digital public service than another ceremonial photograph of two delegations.

The draft's list of possible subjects is broad: electronic services and security, digital finance, e-government, commerce, cyber security, circular economy and AI applications. The RCC points to post offices as public-access sites, including for vulnerable people. The UPU's 2026–2029 strategy likewise places the postal network in a changing digital economy. Yet the proposal names no funded programme or pilot counter. Its immediate promise is a clearer route for joint work and a record of who did what.

Doha will determine whether that route enters an ITU resolution. After the conference, the interesting document will be the first pair of sector reports: the same collaboration, described from two desks, with enough detail to show whether training and standards actually met.

Official sources