At the Council session in October 2009 (www.itu.int/council/C2009/), TSB presented an unprecedented number of proposals which were approved. The proposals were related to Conformance and Interoperability Testing; Admission of academia, universities and their associated research establishments to participate in the work of ITU-T; Admission of Sector Members from developing countries in the work of ITU-T; ITU and the Internet; and Reorganization of TSB. Council also agreed that TSAG would meet once a year for four days, three days of Plenary meeting with interpretation in six languages and one day of working group meetings without interpretation.

Furthermore, Council endorsed the proposed ITU policy on Ethics initiated by the TSB Director and adopted the budget proposal for ITU-T which allows TSB to implement its work programme and the WTSA-08 Action Plan. Council also approved Resolution 1302 (Doc.C09/100) containing the four-year rolling Operational Plan for the Telecommunication Standardization Sector for 2010-2013 and considered the report of the Expert Group to Review the International Telecommunication Regulations, which completed its work in June 2009, and decided to create a Working Group to prepare the 2012 World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT; PP Resolution 146; Antalya, 2006). In addition Council 2009 approved the recommendation to form a group to examine various issues surrounding the implementation of IPv6 - ITU IPv6 Group.

2.1 ITU-T Recommendations in 2009

In 2009, despite the financial crisis, many of ITU-T’s study groups saw increased participation. Remote participation has seen a strong increase through the use of remote collaboration software. From April to December 2009, 120 e-meetings were held with a total duration of 381 hours (corresponding to almost 50 8-hour working days) and 769 online attendees.

Among the highlights are the first global standard for a fully networked home (ITU-T Rec. G.9960; ex G.hn), a universal charger for mobile phones, and work on a methodology to measure the impact of ICTs on climate change with the involvement of 20 other organizations. Among the handbooks approved by the study groups was ITU-T Handbook on Optical fibres, cables and systems, on converged networks, and the security manual.

ITU-T approved 135 ITU-T Recommendations (236 ITU-T Recs. in 2008, 182 in 2007), but some 60 texts are in the approval process right now, as well as 62 amendments, 22 corrigenda and 13 supplements.

2.2 ITU-T Focus Groups (FG)

• A new ITU-T Focus Group on Future Networks (FG-FN) was established in February 2009 by ITU-T SG13 in response to strong interest expressed by the academic community. The group is open to researchers around the world working on clean-slate approaches. The aim is to help place ITU in the forefront of standardization work on future networks.
• FG CarCOM: After successful completion of its work on wideband communications in cars, the Focus Group "From/In/To Cars Communication II" (FG CarCom) concluded its work in November 2009. ITU-T SG 12 then established a new Focus Group on Car Communication (FG CarCOM) with its main focus on sub-system level requirements in car communication and requirements/testing of frontends used for speech recognition in cars.

2.3 Regional groups

Several regional groups have been created for Study Groups 2, 3, 5 and 12.

TSB organized some 30 workshops and seminars in 2009 around the world, some in collaboration with the Secretariats of ITU-R and ITU-D. The subjects covered included: implementation of WTSA-08 decisions, bridging the standardization gap, standardization activity related to climate change, cybersecurity, NGN and accessibility. TSB also organised together with the Korea Communications Commission and TTA the first fully virtual ITU symposium on ICTs and climate change.

ITU organized the fifth Fully Networked Car event at the Geneva International Motor Show on 4-5 March 2009. The Geneva Motor Show has offered TSB continued collaboration up to 2012.

TSB developed a publicly available WTSA-08 Action Plan covering some 170 actions. It was first presented at TSAG April 2009 and updated at Council in October 2009 and further update just prior to the February 2010 TSAG meeting.

A major concern raised at WTSA-08 was the lack of conformance and interoperability of equipment being placed on the market, especially in developing countries. This led to the adoption of WTSA Resolution 76. The report C09/28 by the TSB Director, submitted to the Council session of October　2009, summarized studies conducted and proposed actions regarding conformity assessment and interoperability testing. Council 2009, representing the ITU membership, endorsed the TSB Director’s recommendations on a programme of action.

Following Council-09, TSB reported to the Members of the JCA on Conformity and Interoperability Testing which includes chairmen and experts from all ITU-T study groups, about the results of Council and presented a draft TSB action plan for the implementation of the decisions of the Council including the scope and the contents of the conformity database.

At the end of January 2010, TSB launched a publicly available ITU-T Conformity Database to permit manufacturers and service providers to make declarations that their products and services conform to relevant ITU-T Recommendations. The database is freely accessible and will be populated by both ITU members and non-members, on a voluntary and free-of-charge basis.

The first meeting for high level industry executives (CTO Group) was held on 6 October 2009 during TELECOM World 2009; Res.　68 (WTSA-08)). Nineteen major CTOs or equivalents attended and agreed on a joint Communiqué and action plan.

The CTOs recognized that the standardization landscape has become too complicated and fragmented, with hundreds of industry forums and consortia in addition to national, regional and international Standards Developing Organizations (SDOs) competing for business. It is becoming increasingly challenging for the ICT industry to identify and prioritize the places to concentrate their standardization resources. Thus, CTOs called for a review of the standardization scenario so as to identify priorities for the industry. Such a review should include: (1) principles on why and what types of standards are needed; (2) identification of the different SDOs, their roles and capabilities; and (3) implementation of improvements to the present standards scenario so that SDOs complement rather than compete with one another.

Cisco has kindly offered to host the next CTO meeting on 7 June 2010 in California.

New Technology Watch Briefing Reports were issued on Distributed Computing: Utilities, Grids and Clouds (March 2009); The Future Internet (April 2009); ICTs & Food Security (July 2009), and Biometrics and Standards. As a further innovation and as part of the Technology Watch function, a series of shorter reports was launched (3-4 pages) under the title "Technology Watch Alerts" to provide up-to-date briefings on the latest trends in technology that impact the ICT community. The first such Alert was on Mobile Applications, and an Alert on Batteries has recently been published. Tech Watch publications have figured prominently in ITU News.

Pursuant to WTSA-08 Resolutions 44, 17 and 59, Bridging the Standardization Gap (BSG) remains a key focus of TSB activities. A TSB-internal task force was established to implement the Action Plan in Res. 44, training materials and best practices have been being prepared, and future workshops planned.

In December 2009, TSB published the "ITU-T Research Project: Measuring and Reducing the Standards Gap", which is a comprehensive report on the importance of standards to developing countries containing case studies and recommendations for best practices.

There was a significant increase in the role and participation of developing countries in Study Group management, following decisions taken at WTSA-08. Written contributions from developing countries have also risen steadily to 19% of total, up from 6% in 2000.

Council 2009 approved, in principle, lower fees for sector members from developing countries to participate in the work of ITU-T and ITU-R. TSB’s proposal was that ITU-T Sector Members from Least Developed Countries (LDCs) should participate for a reduced fee of　CHF 3’975 as compared to the current fee of CHF 31’800 and that this proposal also be applied for ITU-R. The proposal will be studied further.

The voluntary fund to help bridge the standardization gap (WTSA-04 Resolution 44) has now increased to over CHF 228’000. Contributions have been received from Nokia Siemens Networks, Microsoft, Cisco and MIC Korea.

In addition, CHF 80’000 has been received in 2008 and 2009 from KCC/TTA through a Cooperation Agreement for the enrichment of standardization capability of developing countries.

ITU-T has seen a great increase in work in the field of accessibility to meet the requirements of WTSA-08 Resolution 70 ("Telecommunication/information and communication technology accessibility for persons with disabilities") and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

ITU-T launched a new accessibility portal bringing together many standardization resources on accessibility as a one-stop shop for accessibility resources. One very valuable resource is the online tool of "G3ict-ITU Toolkit for Policy Makers on e-Accessibility & Service Needs for Persons with Disabilities".

TSB also produced an Accessibility Action Plan, and held several workshops. Ten events on accessibility were organized in 2009 in different countries addressing a wide variety of audiences (Thailand, Mali, Egypt, United States of America and Switzerland).

Concurrently, the technical work on accessibility has continued within the ITU-T Study Groups 2, 9, 12, 13, and 16.

The Joint Coordination Activity on Accessibility and Human Factors (JCA-AHF) established by ITU-T's Study Group 2 to coordinate standardization activities in the field of human factors and accessibility, held its first two meetings in 2009. The ITU-T secretariat provided a great increase in the accessibility features of these meetings, by running the meetings online, adding teleconference and captioning facilities.

10.1 ICT and Climate Change

ITU concentrated a considerable effort in 2009 to the issue of climate change and TSB played a large role in this effort.

In Council Resolution 1307, the 2009 session of the ITU Council requested that efforts be made so that ICTs would be mentioned in the final global agreements that had been expected at the United Nations Climate Change Conference, Conference of Parties (COP-15) meeting in December 2009 in Copenhagen. At Copenhagen, the Secretary General and the TSB Director, as well as ITU staff did a great deal to raise awareness of the importance of ICTs in mitigating and adapting to climate change.

All sectors participated in the ITU Climate Change and Emergency Telecommunications Task Force, and provided content and made contributions to various ITU documents as inputs to the UN-led negotiation meetings.

The key message conveyed is that although ICTs are part of the problem, they can also be an important part of the solution. Studies have shown that the application of telecommunications/ICTs can reduce total greenhouse gas emissions by at least 15 per cent by 2020. ICTs provide means for virtual meetings (to replace/reduce travelling), smart grids, e-governance, e-health, intelligent transport systems, dematerialization (for example electronic publications rather than paper, downloading videos instead of buying DVDs etc), as well as providing for early-warning and disaster relief communications.

ITU also leads the Dynamic Coalition on Internet and Climate Change, composed of 34 organizations. ITU’s own efforts to reduce emissions included the launch of a six-month teleworking trial for its staff, and offering remote participation to many of its meetings.

Under the leadership of TSB, ITU co-organized two international symposia on ICTs and Climate Change one in Quito, Ecuador, on 8-10 July 2009, And the first ITU virtual international symposium co-organized with the Korea Communications Commission (KCC) (Seoul, Korea, 23 September 2009).

ITU-T Study Group 5 on Environment and Climate Change is developing a methodology to measure the impact of ICTs on climate change for use in international standards with involvement of 20 other organizations. This generated a lot of interest at the COP 15 meeting in Copenhagen and a number of new organizations have asked to join the work.

ITU received unprecedented press coverage for its work for a universal charger for mobile phones for mobile phones, Recommendation ITU-T L.1000, which was consented in October 2009.

10.2 ITU and Cybersecurity

As an integral part of the global ITU effort, 2009 was an important milestone for standardization on cybersecurity. Significant actions were taken to bring about substantially enhanced global cybersecurity. These included the adoption of a cybersecurity information exchange framework (CYBEX) that imports more than twenty best of breed standards for platforms developed over the past several years by government agencies and industry. The framework pulls these platforms together to facilitate their global interoperability and is also designed to be "extensible" and capable of evolving over time to include new threat-specific capabilities. Also, a first set of　ITU-T Recommendations dealing with identity management was approved for application in NGN, for globalization of existing solutions, and ensuring interoperability, and for user control of digital identity. Looking ahead,　exploratory work　was initiated on cloud computing and Smart Grid security,

The fourth edition of the "Security in Telecommunications and Information Technology" manual　was also completed.

10.3 ITU and the Internet

With IPv4 address depletion approaching, migration to IPv6 is becoming a high priority for many ITU Members. In 2009, in response to WTSA-08 Resolution 64 ("IPv6 allocation and registration"), TSB commissioned a study on IPv6 address allocation, implemented a webpage on IPv6, and initiated together with BDT an ITU project to encourage the deployment of IPv6. Council 2009 approved the TSB Director’s recommendation to set up a joint ITU-T/ITU-D group to continue the implementation of WTSA-08 Resolution 64 on IPv6 issues.

ITU participated in the 2009 IGF and played an important facilitation role in the organization of the event. ITU (co-)organized twelve events (one pre-IGF event and eleven IGF events), presented ITU’s position at several Main Session events (especially the session on the IGF review process), facilitated the participation of 40 experts from developing countries and promoted ITU activities through the setting up of a stand.

10.4 Emergency Communications

In the area of emergency telecommunications, Study Group 2 is continuing to develop a Recommendation that defines service requirements for terrestrial mobile alerting broadcast capabilities for civic purposes and has begun work to provide guidelines for Member States who are in the process of selecting Message Identifier assignments to be used for such services. Study Group 9 approved four Recommendations for implementing preferential telecommunications in IPCablecom / IPCablecom2 networks.

10.5 WSIS Implementation

All the WSIS action lines agreed in the Geneva phase of WSIS require the development of standards in order to meet the expectations of WSIS stakeholders for successful implementation. ITU-T is responsible for international standards able to ensure security and protection of data and infrastructure, and providing guidelines for telecommunication security. The ICT Security Standards Roadmap is regularly maintained to assist in the development of security standards by bringing together information about existing standards and current standards work in key standards development organizations.

TSB staff participate regularly in the ITU WSIS Task Force, the Council Working Group-WSIS: Implementation of Outcomes, and the WSIS Forum 2009 (Geneva, 18-22 May 2009)

11.1 Liaison with ITU-D and ITU-R

Study Group 16 maintains a continued communication with ITU-D study groups in particular in the areas of e-health and accessibility. Study Group 17 continues collaboration with Q.22/1 in ITU-D on issues such as cybersecurity, countering spam and telebiometrics and related applications such as e-health. TSB also provided resources for participating in regional forums and/or developing awareness and tutorial material.

Electromagnetic Compatibility (EMC) concerns related to powerline telecoms (PLT) in ITU home networking systems (G.hn, G.9960) have been raised by ITU-R experts. ITU-T SG15 acknowledges the importance of this issue and looks to ITU-R, CISPR-I and ITU-T SG5 as the experts regarding EMC to provide spectral guidance. ITU-R experts agreed to provide a draft on the necessary guidance by June 2010. The PLT issue has become an opportunity to strengthen collaboration between ITU-R and ITU-T in order to provide the industry leadership required to protect radio services.

11.2 World Standards Cooperation (WSC)

The members of the World Standards Cooperation (ITU, the International Standardization Organisation (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC)) held their annual management meeting in February 2009. Joint efforts underway include the fifth Fully Networked Car event, 2010 WSC Academia Week in Geneva, the 2010 World Energy Congress in Montreal and a 2010 World Standards Day conference at World Expo, Shanghai, in China.

11.3 ISO/IEC JTC 1

The first ITU-T | ISO/IEC JTC 1leadership meeting took place 4-5 February 2010.

Study Group 16 has renewed its cooperation with ISO/IEC JTC 1 SC 29 with the establishment of a new joint collaborative team (JCT) for the next generation of video coding, building on the successful cooperation of the Joint Video Team that produced the Prime-time Emmy Awarded H.264. Experts expect the new standard to be ready by 2012.

11.4 Global Standards Collaboration (GSC)

For the first time, ITU hosted the Global Standards Collaboration (GSC-14) in July 2009 consisting of the major regional and national ICT standards bodies with the remit to support ITU. There were 95 participants from eight organizations and 13 observers (see TSAG TD 60).

11.5 ETSI

TSB is also keeping close contact with ETSI, whose Director General has invited the TSB Director to discuss collaboration on conformance / interoperability testing. The meeting will take place 15 February 2010. The TSB Deputy Director attended the ETSI General Assembly and TSB participated in an ETSI workshop on security.

11.6 IEEE ComSoc (Communication Society)

IEEE ComSoc continues in 2010 its technical sponsorship of the Kaleidoscope events. Various articles featuring ITU-T standardization work and papers from the two Kaleidoscope academic conferences have been published in ComSoc’s prestigious IEEE Communications Magazine. ITU-T and IEEE held a joint workshop on Overlay Networking on 15 May 2009 in Geneva, which was an opportunity for greater exchange of information between ITU-T and IEEE NGSON for future collaboration.

11.7 IETF

A regular communication channel is maintained between the TSB Director and the Chair of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Interaction with the IETF is very strong for some study groups: ITU-T SG 15 on T-MPLS, SG 11, SG 9, SG 16. An IETF / ITU-T leadership meeting is scheduled for 2 August 2010.

11.8 IGF

The TSB Director chaired ITU’s Internet Governance Group (IGG) to harmonize ITU’s activities on Internet governance meets regularly and coordinated ITU participation in IGF 2009. Also IGG met with a delegation from the ICANN secretariat in May 2009 to further the collaborative relationship between ICANN and ITU.

11.9 E-Business MoU between IEC, ISO, ITU and UN/ECE:

ITU-T continues to participate actively in the work of this group. In 2010, it is TSB’s turn to provide the Secretariat for the group. ITU will host next MoU Management meeting scheduled on 8 – 9 April 2010.

11.10 ISO, IEC, ITU-T Strategic Advisory Group on Security (SAG-S)

ITU-T continues to participate actively in the work of this group. The last meeting of SAG-S was held on 10-11 March 2009 which ITU attended by teleconference.

11.11 New qualified Fora/Consortiums (A.4, A.5 and A.6)

Since the last TSAG meeting in April 2009, ABNT (Associação Brasileira de Normas Tecnicas) was approved by the TSB Director as being A.5 and A.6 qualified. The list of the A.4, A.5 or A.6 qualified organizations now includes 28 A.4 qualified Forums or Consortia, 15 A.6 recognized national or regional SDOs and 32 A.5 qualified organizations.

12.1 Kaleidoscope Event

In June 2009, IEEE Communications Magazine featured ITU’s first Kaleidoscope event of May 2008 – Innovations in Next-Generation Networks, with the winning papers and two invited papers from this event.

The 2nd ITU Kaleidoscope event took place in Mar del Plata, Argentina, on 31 August – 1 September 2009 on the theme: Innovations for Digital Inclusion It analyzed technologies, services and applications for five years and beyond that will build on NGN infrastructure and promote digital inclusion. The best paper will be included in a special edition of IEEE Communications Magazine.

The 3rd ITU Kaleidoscope event, technically co-sponsored by IEEE Communication Society, will take place in Lonavala (TBC), Maharashtra, India, 13-15 Dec 2010, on the theme Beyond the Internet? - Innovations for future networks and services.

12.2 Participation of universities and researchers in ITU standards work

ITU-T is attracting universities and researchers in particular to a new Focus Group on Future Networks working on clean-slate approaches to future internet.

Pending Plenipotentiary’s decision on a possible new membership category for universities (see below), and with the agreement of the ITU-T study group chairmen, the TSB Director has invited some University students and professors that are active in the Kaleidoscope conferences, to participate in ITU-T Study Group meetings during 2010 as "invited experts".

12.3 Admission of academia, universities and their associated research establishments to participate in the work of ITU-T (WTSA-08 Resolution 71)

Council　endorsed the　TSB Director recommendations and supported efforts to increase the links between academia and ITU and to allow academic and research institutions to participate in the work of ITU at a reduced fee.

Twenty-four Operational Bulletins and five annexes on the lists of codes and numbers were published in 2009. The number of registrations for universal international freephone numbers (UIFNs) is around 1,700 per year. As of December 2009, 33,317 UIFNs are assigned and in service.

The ITU-T website has seen a 30% increase in hits over the last two years and the ITU-T Newslog is the most popular point of entry. Experimentation and implementation of strategies to increase online visibility for ITU-T include the use of Wikipedia, LinkedIn and Twitter.

TSB organized a number of press days with journalists and analysts in London, Johannesburg and Hong Kong with the TSB Director and senior TSB staff.

Thanks to the sponsorship of NHK, NTT and Cisco, a video on the role of ITU-T standards in a real world scenario was placed on the ITU-T website and YouTube and has received very good reviews.

In order to cope with the additional workload for TSB due to the decisions of WTSA, it was necessary to reorganize and reinforce TSB. TSB now comprises three departments:

• Study Group Department (headed by Mr Bilel Jamoussi as of 25 January 2010)
• Telecommunication Standardization Policy Department (headed by Mr Reinhard Scholl). The Department comprises three divisions: WTSA Programmes Division, Policy & Technology Watch Division, Workshop and Promotion Division.
• Services Department (headed by Mr Arthur Levin as of 1 January 2010)

The TSB staff has been maintained at 63 persons as in 2008-2009. Council 2009 approved the reorganization.