And spreading the internet to new places.

Harald Alvestrand, “The role of the standards process in shaping the Internet,” IEEE, 08-09-2004, https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/1323284/authors#authors

It is obvious to me that standards will be needed in the future—people will continue to want communication, they will continue to resent artificial borders of incompatibility, and they will continue to want the open marketplace to function for them.

And as the Internet grows and transcends boundaries, people in non-English-speaking countries will demand to have their voice and concerns heard. With a large majority of the Internet-using population already outside the United States, it seems certain that standards setting for the Internet will be a concern, not only in Los Angeles, CA, and Washington, DC, but also in Brussels, Belgium; Madrid, Spain; Tokyo, Japan; Beijing, China; Dakar, Senegal; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

It is also certain that the organizations for developing standards will come under more intense scrutiny—governments, long a relative bystander in the network game, have become increasingly concerned with all of the myriad issues of the Internet and communication in general; users' organizations may find reason to become interested—and none of the current participants show any interest in leaving.

It is also certain that those who control the standards efforts will have a great influence on the shape of the networks to come—perhaps not a decisive influence, but an influence still.