And now the covetousness begins: The ITU, being the only standards organization that practically brings together all international governments and private entities at one table, would be very well suited for this. Sorry, Mr. Hill, that's wrong. Private at the ITU is equivalent to large corporations. But quite amusing: At the protocol level, a solution would basically be needed that lies between the X.400 standard, which failed in the IP world, and SMTP, Hill said. Ouch. No. Nobody wants anything that even remotely lies on or in the direction of X400. That's one of the stillbirths of the ITU's design-by-committee philosophy. A pile of garbage. Mountains of paper. Far too complicated.
At heise online news there's the original article.