The U.S. and its allies must show Internet success stories from around the world to defend against proposals to extract transmission fees and censor Web content during a United Nations' International Telecommunication Union (ITU) meeting in December, said Terry Kramer, head of the U.S. delegation to the ITU World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT).

The Internet has thrived on a regulatory model that favors open markets over expansive rules and a governance model where many people have input, said Kramer, a .

"Our approach is based on the recognition that the existing environment today works amazingly well," Kramer said at a WCIT discussion hosted by the Information Technology Industry Council, a trade group. "It is empowering telecommunications and human development by quantum leaps."

The U.S. delegation to WCIT will push for open markets and freedom of expression online, Kramer said.

Observers of the ITU expect that several countries will push for new, international termination fees for the Internet at the December meeting in Dubai. In traditional telephone services, telecom providers bill each other for carrying each other's traffic, with the carrier where the call originated paying the carrier where the call ended up.