The latest publication by ITU-T’s Technology Watch looks into the major technological challenge of powering increasingly complex portable ICT devices.

Advances in processing power and new-generation communications links have increased mobility and driven the demand for mobile phones, laptops and other gadgets. Battery packs are a crucial ingredient of new technologies, not only in the ICT sector, but, also in other industries such as automobile. One report suggests that the $71 billion-a-year world-wide battery market – rechargeables accounting for two-thirds – could grow by 4.8 percent annually through 2012.

From a standardization perspective the report notes that to date, no common methodology or standardized procedure is available to provide exact and comparable information on battery runtime of ICT devices.

Batteries for portable ICT devices summarizes the trends and developments in battery technologies for mobile ICT devices. Today’s research on mobile power supplies mainly focuses on (a) incremental advances to current power solutions (e.g., Li-ion), (b) application of known alternative power supplies (e.g., photovoltaics, fuel cells) to mobile devices, and (c) the development of new battery concepts including nanotechnology. Advances in power supplies for mobile phones and other ICT devices are also important in bridging the digital divide and to address environmental issues.

Batteries for portable ICT devices is the second publication in a series of TechWatch Alerts (the first Alert addressed the topic Mobile Applications). Alerts are intended to provide a brief but concise overview of emerging technologies and trends in the field of ICTs.

ITU-T’s Technology Watch invites any interested party to submit comments and feedback, as well as papers of a non-commercial nature (max. three pages). Please contact tsbtechwatch@itu.int.

ITU together with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) will host a Web Accessibility Workshop for United Nations systems and other international organizations 2 – 5 February at WIPO headquarters, Geneva.

The objective is to promote encourage webmasters within the United Nations system and other international organizations to take accessibility into account in their daily work. Specifically, it aims to promote article 9 of the recent United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities which requires that measures are taken to ensure that accessibility is taken into account in the design of new information technologies and systems.

More information available at http://www.wipo.int/meetings/en/2010/wipo_itu_wai/

Beyond the Internet? Innovations for future networks and services is the title of the third ITU-T Kaleidoscope academic conference. The event will examine whether a clean slate approach is necessary for the internet of the future.

A call for papers has been issued and invites submissions until 30 April 2010. A prize fund totaling $10,000 will be awarded to the three best papers. The winning papers will be featured in a future special edition of IEEE Communications Magazine, with all papers available from the IEEE Xplore online catalogue.Young Author Recognition certificates will also be issued.

Organized by ITU-T with IEEE ComSoc as Technical Co-Sponsor and supported by Cisco and Nokia Siemens Networks, Kaleidoscope 2010 will take place in Lonavala, Maharashtra, India, 13-15 December.

Thus far, the Internet has proven to be robust and flexible and its continuous evolution has seen growth from a small experiment into a giant collaborative network capable of meeting the demands of more than one billion users. The rise of mobile access and its integration with optical transport networks present new challenges. Some experts question whether the current underlying architecture is sufficiently strong to address future demands or if a “clean slate” approach is needed to develop a really innovative internet of the future.

Kaleidoscope 2010 will highlight multidisciplinary aspects: technologies enabling future ICTs for future services and applications, their standardization, as well as their social and economic impact. The focus will be on innovative technologies and contributors are invited to challenge the fundamental networking design principles of the Internet.

This year, in addition to an exhibition for local universities and the presence of outstanding keynote speakers and invited papers, ITU-T Kaleidoscope 2010 will host Standards Corner, a series of standardization tutorials and Jules Verne’s corner, a special space for science fiction writers and dreamers.

Kaleidoscope events are peer-reviewed academic conferences that aim at increasing the dialogue between experts working on the standardization of information and communications technologies (ICTs) and academia. The first Kaleidoscope event – Innovations in NGN - was held in Geneva, 12-13 May 2008, and the second one - Innovations for Digital Inclusion – was held in Mar del Plata, Argentina, 31 August – 1 September 2009.

For sponsorship opportunities please contact the ITU-T Kaleidoscope secretariat at kaleidoscope@itu.int. For additional details see the event webpage at: www.itu-kaleidoscope.org/2010.

Leading standards bodies, ITU-T and ISO/IEC have launched a new project that seeks to better the Emmy award winning Advanced Video Codec ITU-T Rec. H.264 | ISO/IEC 14496-10.

The announcement on the new Joint Collaborative Team (JCT) accompanies finalization of a recent call for proposals on a successor to the H.264/14496-10 codec that has been widely adopted by the telecom, broadcast, and digital storage media industries.

ITU-T and ISO/IEC-MPEG are the pre-eminent standards bodies in the area of digital video compression and have collaborated in the past to produce H.264/14496-10 and the MPEG-2 Video and Systems Standards (also known as ISO/IEC 13818, and ITU-T H.262 and H.222.0).

The Video Coding JCT will consist of a group of video coding experts from ITU-T Study Group 16 (VCEG) and ISO/IEC JTC 1 SC 29 / WG 11 (MPEG). The group will meet to coincide with meetings of ITU-T SG16 and/or MPEG and aims at the new standard for 2012.

The ITU-T group working on home networking specifications under the G.hn banner has agreed on some specifications for smart grid products. G.hn is a next generation wired home networking standard developed by ITU-T, which supports high-speed communication over power lines, phone lines and coaxial cable.

 

The recent agreement included a ‘low complexity’ profile targeted at smart grid applications. The profile offers a minimum set of G.hn parameters and specifications that define a specific system to meet a targeted range of applications.This will allow multiple manufacturers to develop products that deliver the low power consumption, low cost, performance, reliability, and security that is required for Smart Grid and other lower bit rate applications.

 

Additionally, the low complexity profile also specifies minimum requirements for features such as signal bandwidth, data modulation methods, transmitter linearity requirements, and forward error correction, or “FEC,” while maintaining interoperability with fully-featured G.hn products.

 

Some of the smart grid products that will benefit from G.hn specification include:

• Smart Meters
• In-Home Displays and smart thermostats
• Plug-in Electrical Vehicles and Electrical Vehicle Supply Equipment
• Smart household appliances such as washing machines, dryers, dishwashers, heating, ventilating, and air-conditioning systems
• Energy System Interface devices

Smart grid applications that will benefit from G.hn include:

• Utility-based Demand Response programs via broadband internet connections or Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) systems
• Remote troubleshooting to minimize cost
• Support for realtime demand response systems that compensate users depending on their usage
• Flexible control of appliances to reduce power consumption during peak periods

 
Also agreed was an Appendix to the G.hn standard that provides guidelines for using G.hn in smart grid applications and on how they work with other G.hn-connected consumer devices in the home. The Appendix provides guidance to G.hn product developers and users and describes how G.hn devices can be used as part of application layer Energy Management System software that resides above the G.hn physical layer and data link layer. Additionally, the appendix shows how G.hn smart grid devices interface to a service provider's smart grid access network via the Energy Service interface to support secure end-to-end smart grid services between the service provider and home.

 

In October, HomeGrid Forum, an independent body set up to promote G.hn announced that the standard has received approval from the National Institute Standards Technology (NIST) for use in various smart grid applications in the US. Given this announcement, HomeGrid Forum formed a smart grid initiative group, which will help to bring a range of G.hn-based devices to the smart grid market and home energy management applications.

Measuring and Reducing the Standards Gap is a new report introducing the ITU-T's current research project on building standards capacity in the developing world.

 

The document authored by Dr. Laura DeNardis, Executive Director, Yale Information Society Project and Lecturer in Law at Yale Law School presents country case studies that answer questions such as; is there a national standards body; is there any participation in international standards development and what level of standards education is available? Based on these case studies it recommends actionable steps for improving national standards capacity in the developing world.

 

Inequality in national standards capability continues to be a contributive factor to the persistence of the digital divide between the developed and developing worlds and to diminished opportunities for economic development and technological innovation.

 

The overarching goal of ITU’s Bridging the Standardization Gap program is to facilitate increased participation of developing countries in standardization, to ensure that developing countries experience the economic benefits of associated technological development, and to better reflect the requirements and interests of developing countries in the standards-development process. One specific objective of this project is to understand the primary gaps that must be overcome to improve the standards development, implementation, and usage capacities of developing countries.

 

Bridging the standardization gap home: http://www.itu.int/ITU-T/gap/

Report

A new ITU-T Technology Watch Report titled Biometrics and Standards surveys biometric recognition as a key form of authentication made possible by powerful information and communication technologies (ICT).

Biometrics are used in forensics (e.g., for criminal investigations), government applications (more than 60 countries issue electronic passports containing biometric information) and commercial applications. The latter category includes deployments in the banking sector (secure access to ATMs, credit cards, e-Business), with other sectors gaining momentum. For instance, social-networking websites including Facebook and Picasa have integrated face recognition algorithms to make it easier to search and display all photos featuring one’s friends. Biometric systems embedded in cars of a vehicle fleet can help to identify the driver, adjust seat, rear mirrors, and steering wheel to meet individual preferences.

Technologies commonly used in biometrics include recognition of fingerprints, faces, vein patterns, irises, voices and keystroke patterns.

The Report discusses the advantages of biometric authenticators over their knowledge- and possession-based counterparts, describes different physiology- and behavior-related biometric traits and how they are used in biometric systems. A choice of biometric recognition applications is highlighted, and an overview of standardization work in the field of biometrics is given.

"Biometrics and Standards" can be downloaded here.

The authors welcome your feedback on this Report and all other publications of the Technology Watch series. We invite all interested parties to submit paper proposals for future Technology Watch Reports. The Technology Watch secretariat can be contacted at tsbtechwatch@itu.int.

Two new ITU standards in the field of IPTV have recently been agreed.

The first – Recommendation ITU-T H.740 - will enable a greater level of two way communication in IPTV services. For example it will support interactive services such as voting and e-commerce while also allowing better provision for emergency alerts and audience monitoring. Simply put the standard prescribes behaviour for an IPTV terminal in the case of receiving these instructions from either a broadcaster or a user.

More technically, H.740 "Application Event Handling for IPTV services" provides a framework of application event handling in IPTV services. An application event is describes as a specific user interaction or occurrence related with multimedia content. One of the characteristics of the new standard is that it gives a careful provision of privacy protection, with differing degrees of security.

The second standard - Recommendation ITU-T H.762 - "Lightweight interactive multimedia framework for IPTV services (LIME)" gives a subset of html and javascript for use in IPTV terminals. LIME is described as being very strictly profiled so that it can be used on a resource-limited devices like TV-sets. LIME can support interactivity like widgets and portals, as well as AJAX-like applications on IPTV. LIME can be used with basic services like video-on-demand (VOD), linear (channel) service (over IP), and EPG (extended programme guide). The expected main user interface is a remote controller.

The ITU group responsible for the development of the Primetime Emmy award winning video coding standard ITU-T H.264 (which is also standardized as ISO/IEC 14496-10) has issued a draft call for proposals for new video coding technology. The final call for proposals is expected to be issued in January 2010, and it may be issued jointly with ISO/IEC JTC1/SC29/WG11 (MPEG).

ITU-T Study Group 16 is asking for proposals that give substantially increased compression relative to existing standards.

The proposals will be evaluated using formal subjective tests with the results made public. A proposal evaluation meeting is planned for April 2010. Depending on the proposed technology, a final resulting standard may be developed by July 2012.

Details here.

ITU’s delegation to the UNFCCC Barcelona Climate Change talks has succeeded in raising awareness of ICTs as a key part of the climate change solution. In particular developing countries were receptive to the message and recognize the power of ICTs, also linking the issue to the digital divide.

At a side event jointly organized by ITU, OECD and GeSI equitable access and ensuring connectivity to schools, rural communities and health facilities were recognized as vital to economic development and to making effective use of ICTs to combat climate change.

Speaking at the event, Malcolm Johnson, Director of ITU’s standardization bureau said: “It is generally accepted that by 2050 global greenhouse gas emissions need to be reduced by some 80%. We can no longer talk in terms of incremental reductions of 5-10%. There is also a growing understanding that there is only one way that this can be achieved: by shifting from a high carbon physical infrastructure to a low carbon virtual infrastructure based on the evolving information society and smart technology – what we call information and communication technologies (ICTs).“

ITU will produce a communiqué that will be distributed to ITU Member States as well as parties involved in the negotiating process. One of the problems identified in the side event was that while communications ministries are aware of the link between ICTs and climate change this message is often not filtering through to environment ministries.

The following issues arose at the side event

• The capabilities of ICTs to monitor, measure and exchange huge amounts of information and their sheer ubiquity underlines their fundamental role in improving environmental performance.
  
  
• The  message that ICTs are a major part of the solution rather than being part of the problem has to  be emphasised further. “Smart” applications in transport, buildings and urban environments, energy generation and distribution and production are, and will increasingly be, ICT-enabled.
  
  
• In the utility sectors ICTs can provide better information, increase efficiency, and thereby reduce emissions.
  
  
• There needs to be a coming together of the ICT Sector with the other industry sectors that have traditionally been separate communities, in order to ensure the best use of ICTs. 
  
  
• Developing countries should participate more in international programmes that support the development and use of common performance standards, testing, verification and certification programmes.
  
  
• IPR policies related to global standards need to be addressed.
  
  
• Dumping is a major concern for developing countries. Greater emphasis is needed on recycling, reduction of hazardous substances in ICTs, and refurbishment.
  
  
• Life cycle methodologies for the ICT sector within the UNFCCC will be essential if ICTs are to play a significant role in climate change.
  
  
• ICTs can only assist in mitigating and adapting to climate change if they are widely available. There is a clear link between bridging the digital divide and climate change. There should be incentives within the UNFCCC to the ICT industry to invest in developing countries, in particular bringing the benefits of broadband technology to schools, hospitals, and businesses. 
  
  
• Including reference to the ICT/Telecommunication sector in the sectoral part of the negotiating text would enable a life cycle methodology to be included in the Clean Development Mechanism. This would provide an incentive to the ICT industry to invest in developing countries, help reduce the digital divide, and at the same time help fight climate change – a win-win scenario.
  

For video archive of ITU media briefing in Barcelona: http://tr.im/Ek5t.
See also TelecomTV coverage including: http://tr.im/Elxb
And Computer Weekly: http://tr.im/Ek4H

ITU in collaboration with Broadband Business Forum/EXPO COMM ITALIA 2009 will host a session on ITU studies on NGN, wireless and interoperability, on 25 November 2009, in Rome, Italy.

This session will provide information on work in ITU-T on new technologies such as wireless, NGN and conformance and interoperability.

Broadband Business Forum/EXPO COMM ITALIA 2009’s stated aim is to be a platform to present products and services to a wide range of decision makers, procurement officials, policy planners, and business leaders in Italy and throughout the EMEA Region.

Key topics to be discussed include the latest innovations in ICTs, from Broadband/IP enabled services to mobile and wireless technologies that allow migration to next generation networks. Other topics include infrastructure that enables the convergence of all available technologies to offer a more integrated solution and a more efficient broadband platform for the future.

ITU is to host a workshop - Greening the Internet - 17 November 2009 in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt, as part of 4th IGF (Internet Governance Forum) meeting.

A key component of the economic stimulus agenda in US, Japan, Europe and other regions, is investment in broadband, so Greening the Internet and addressing climate change is a major concern. Internet based-applications can unleash many opportunities for real solutions to climate change, such as smart homes, smart appliances, smart transportation and smart energy grids. Many companies today are already recognizing that going Green makes good business sense.

The ICT industry has been making progress in energy efficiency and the use of renewable energy, and best practices can be already shared. Even new technologies such as NGN, are innately green compared to their predecessors.

ITU-T’s Study Group on Environment and Climate Change examines how to measure and reduce the impact of ICTs on the environment in order to help advance the Green ICT agenda. At its last meeting, the Study Group consented a standard describing an energy-efficient universal charging solution (UCS) for mobile phones, but also digital cameras and other devices with micro-USB interfaces.
 
Greening the Internet, will examine new Internet trends, the potential impacts on climate change and the ways in which the Internet can evolve in an environmentally-friendly manner.

Panelists are Joseph Alhadeff, VP for Global Public Policy at Oracle Corporation; Catherine Trautmann, Member of the European Parliament; Catalina McGregor, Founder and Deputy Champion of the Green ICT CIO/CTO Council of the UK Government; George Sadowsky, Director of ICANN, Alice Munyua of the Kenya ICT Action Network; Tony Vetter of the International Institute for Sustainable Development and Nezar Sami of Nile University.

The workshop will be opened with a keynote message given by Malcolm Johnson, Director of the ITU Telecommunication Standardization Bureau, and moderated by Arthur Levin, Head of the ITU Telecommunication Standardization Policy Division.

Speakers’ biographies and information on logistics and registration are posted on the website of the workshop.

A meeting of the Dynamic Coalition on Internet and Climate Change (DCICC) will take place one day earlier, on 16 November 2009. The DCICC is an open body of 29 members committed to moderating the environmental impact of the Internet, seeking new ways to embrace the power of the Internet for reducing greenhouse gas emissions worldwide, and enabling transformation in line with the objectives set and to be set under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Meeting and Coalition are open to governments, private sector, standards development organizations, non-governmental organizations, international organizations, researchers, vendors, network operators, academia and other bodies. A draft agenda is available on the DCICC website.


17 November 2009: Greening the Internet: Workshop website

16 November 2009: Meeting of the Dynamic Coalition on Internet and Climate Change: Website

One-size-fits-all solution will dramatically cut waste and GHG emissions. "ICTs are an essential element of an effective Copenhagen climate agreement," says Secretary-General Hamadoun Touré

Geneva, 22 October 2009 — ITU has given its stamp of approval to an energy-efficient one-charger-fits-all new mobile phone solution. The announcement comes as ITU lobbies hard to have the essential role of information and communication technologies (ICTs) recognized in the draft Copenhagen Agreement as a key part of the solution towards mitigating climate change.

full press release

ITU voice coding and home networking articles published by IEEE

The latest IEEE Communications Magazine (subscription needed) contains a special feature on ITU-T Coders For Wideband, Superwideband, and Fullband Speech Communication. In addition the issue contains an overview of the new G.hn home networking standard from ITU.

The feature is part of a formalised cooperation between the standardization sector of ITU (ITU-T) and IEEE Communications Society. Also published recently are the best papers from the first Kaleidoscope academic conference.

The articles on speech coding:

• ITU-T G.711.1: Extending G.711 to Higher-Quality Wideband Speech
  
  
• ITU-T G.718: A New Embedded Speech and Audio Coding Standard with High Resilience to Error-Prone Transmission Channels
  
  
• ITU-T G.719: The First ITU-T Standard for High-Quality Conversational Fullband Audio Coding
  
  
• ITU-T G.729.1 Scalable Codec for New Wideband Services
  
  

G.hn standard for wired home networking gets international approval

Geneva, 15 October 2009 — ITU has approved a cutting-edge technical standard that will usher in new era in ‘smart home’ networking systems and applications. Called ‘G.hn’, the new standard will enable service providers to deploy new offerings, including High Definition TV (HDTV) and digital Internet Protocol TV (IPTV), more cost effectively. It will also allow consumer electronics manufacturers to seamlessly network all types of home entertainment, home automation and home security products, and greatly simplify consumers’ purchasing and installation processes.

full press release

A revision to key Optical Transport Network (OTN) standard - Recommendation ITU-T G.709 - extends its applicability to 40 and 100 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE). This revision also adds a variable-size switchable container (ODUflex) to the OTN hierarchy to more efficiently carry packet and constant bit rate clients, which did not fit well into the traditional fixed-size OTN containers. OTN mappings for storage area network (SAN) interfaces and mobile interfaces are also a part of this new revision.

ITU-T Recommendation G.709 "Interfaces for the optical transport network (OTN)" describes a means of communicating data over an optical network. It is a standardized method for transparent transport of services over optical wavelengths in DWDM systems.

Operators are facing challenges with the migration from traditional SDH/SONET to IP/Ethernet based services. The ITU-T G.709 OTN standard is a vehicle to enable convergence, and for providing a common and SONET/SDH-like operational model for network administration, performance monitoring and fault isolation, without altering the individual services.

Using OTN, multiple networks and services such as legacy SONET/SDH, Ethernet, storage protocols and video can all be combined onto a common infrastructure.

Most importantly, unlike SONET/SDH, OTN is the only transport layer in the industry that can carry a full 10/40/100 GbE LAN PHY from IP/Ethernet switches and routers at full bandwidth. With the rapid migration towards IP/Ethernet-based infrastructure, OTN becomes the transport layer of choice for network operators.

The recent Study Group 15 meeting saw agreement on a new standard that defines Ethernet ring protection switching (ERPS) in multiple rings.

The work has been driven by the move by operators to offer Ethernet services with the same level of service protection offered in networks based on synchronous digital hierarchy (SDH).

The standard gives sub-50 millisecond (ms) protection for Ethernet traffic in a ring topology and at the same time ensures that there are no loops formed at the Ethernet layer. The protocol is said to be robust enough to work for unidirectional failure and multiple link failure scenarios.

Experts say that there are already products on the market deploying the standard.

G.8032 offers a flexible topology with single or interconnected multi-rings; broad applications for access, metro, and core networks; support for Ethernet speeds (1/10/40/100GbE MAC); support for multiple Ethernet services; client-server agnostics and OPEX and CAPEX savings.

High-level meeting underlines importance of unified international approach to technology development

Geneva, 8 October 2009 — Nineteen CTOs from some of the world’s key ICT players have called upon ITU to provide a lead in an overhaul of the global ICT standardization landscape.

The call came at a meeting held at ITU headquarters in Geneva on 6 October between ITU senior management and the world’s technology leaders. The meeting will become a regular feature on the ITU calendar.

The CTOs agreed on a set of recommendations and actions that will better address the evolving needs of a fast-moving industry; facilitate the launch of new products, services and applications; promote cost-effective solutions; combat climate change; and address the needs of developing countries regarding greater inclusion in standards development.

Participants reaffirmed the increasing importance of standards in the rapidly changing information society. Standards are the ‘universal language’ that drives competitiveness by helping organizations optimize their efficiency, effectiveness, responsiveness and innovation, the CTOs agreed.

Malcolm Johnson, Director, Telecommunication Standardization Bureau, ITU, said: "Standards are a proven and key driver in the successful growth and deployment of new ICT products, services, and applications. And while there are many examples of successful standards collaboration, a fragile economic environment and an ICT ecosystem characterized by convergence makes it all the more important to streamline and clarify the standardization landscape. We have agreed on a number of concrete actions that will help us move towards this goal and strengthen understanding of standards’ critical role in combating climate change, while better reflecting the needs of developing countries."

The meeting reinforced the importance of standards in assuring interoperability. As operators embrace IP, the networks and services of the next 20-30 years are being developed that will help people make contact anywhere and anyhow. The emergence of technologies such as globally standardized IMS will bring customers richer services. Only agreed global standards can deliver on the promise of disseminating those services on mobiles, PCs, wirelines and home devices, CTOs agreed. At the same time, they acknowledged that new players and business models will emerge, and that the continued convergence of telecoms and IT is likely to provoke some tensions across different paradigms and cultures. CTOs pledged to cooperate to bridge the developed and developing worlds, bringing IP benefits to all while also ensuring network security and reliability.

The standardization landscape has become complicated and fragmented, with hundreds of different industry forums and consortia. CTOs agreed that it has become increasingly tough to prioritize standardization resources, and called on ITU – as the preeminent global standards body - to lead a review to clarify the standardization scenario. This will allow ICT companies to make more efficient use of resources and ensure that standards are developed in the most appropriate bodies, benefitting both industry and users.

ITU will host a web portal providing information on the interrelationship of standards and standards bodies, which would facilitate the work of industry and standards makers while promoting cooperation and collaboration and avoiding duplication.

The meeting also recognized that standards can play a critical role in ‘greening’ the ICT industry and reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in other sectors, and supported ITU’s efforts to have this role recognized in the new Copenhagen Agreement on Climate Change.

An official communiqué from the event can be found here.

A September meeting of the ITU’s security standards group saw progress in key areas including identity management and a cybersecurity information exchange. The meeting - of ITU-T’s Study Group 17 saw record attendance signalling the importance attached to ITU’s cybersecurity work in the global ICT community.

A key achievement was the establishment of a Cybersecurity Information Exchange which enables a global communications infrastructure for cybersecurity. The framework imports best-of-breed standards from government agencies and industry. Experts say that it promotes better interoperobility including convergence on a common set of open standards.

Malcolm Johnson, Director of the Telecommunication Standardization Bureau (TSB), ITU: “It is essential that cybersecurity and telecoms infrastructure protection communities worldwide are able to exchange information on network digital forensics and vulnerabilities. The Framework will, for the first time, provide for this exchange globally.”

Without progressing on this Exchange, experts say there is a risk that no coherent common specifications will emerge, with different countries unable to communicate cybersecurity information to each other.

The Cybersecurity Information Exchange focuses on platforms that capture and exchange information about the security state of systems and devices, vulnerabilities, incidents such as cyber attacks, and related knowledge heuristics. It pulls these platforms together to facilitate their global interoperability and use. It does so in a framework that allows for continual evolution to accommodate the significant activities and specification evolution occurring in numerous cybersecurity forums.

Global organization of incident/emergency computer response teams – FIRST contributed its vulnerability enumeration standard to the framework. An agreement was reached to hold joint workshops and ITU and FIRST will work together to implement the first comprehensive web-based directory of cybersecurity organizations and centers worldwide.

The recent meeting of ITU-T’s Study Group 17 also saw approval of a core global identity management (IdM) standard – Recommendation ITU-T X.1250. The agreement signals the start of work on implementation protocols for essential capabilities like trust mechanisms and identity assurance interoperability.

Arkadiy Kremer, Chairman of Study Group 17, said: “Global acceptance of identity management solutions is paramount. The agreement that we have reached here signals an important milestone from where the world’s service providers and users can profit from international standards for IdM capabilities. Industry has put significant weight behind this activity and an IdM framework for global interoperability is emerging.”

The term IdM is understood as "management by providers of trusted attributes of an entity such as a subscriber, a device, or a provider." IdM promises to reduce the need for multiple user names and passwords for each online service used, while maintaining privacy of personal information. A global IdM solution will help diminish identity theft and fraud. Further, IdM is one of the key enablers for a simplified and secure interaction between customers and services such as e-commerce.

ITU-T X.1250 gives the ability to enhance exchange and trust in the identities used by telecommunication/ICT networks and services. The definitions and need for identity management trust are highly context dependent and often subject to very different policies and practices in different countries. The trust capabilities include the protection and control of personally identifiable information.

Also agreed was X.1251, a framework for users of digital identity. The standard defines a framework to enhance user control and exchange of their digital identity related information. Two other important Recommendations were progressed to the first stage of approval: X.1252 and X.1275. X.1252 provides a collection of terms and definitions used in identity management (IdM) and it sets the stage for common definition for the whole industry. While, X.1275  provides guidelines and best practices regarding radio frequency identification (RFID) procedures that can be used by service providers to gain the benefits of RFID while attempting to protect personally identifiable information.

Also at the SG 17 meeting new correspondence groups designed to kickstart work in the areas of security for cloud computing, e-health and grid computing were started.

Announcement made at pioneering virtual symposium

Geneva, 28 September 2009 — ITU has declared its intention to press for the importance of information and communication technologies (ICTs) as a cross-sectoral tool to combat climate change to be recognized in the upcoming Copenhagen Agreement.

full press release

The winning papers from ITU's Kaleidoscope 2009 - Innovations for Digital Inclusion academic conference shared a prize fund of USD$10,000 on 1 September. Also, at the event held in Mar del Plata, Argentina, Richard Stallman, founder of the GNU Linux project and now President of the Free Software Foundation, presented a paper Is digital inclusion a good thing? How can we make sure it is?.

Eng. Alicia Alonso Becerra, Rector of the José A. Echeverría Superior Polytechnic Institute, Cuba awarded the prizes to the presenters:

Kamugisha Kazaura from Tanzania of Waseda University, Japan, for:  

·         ROFSO: A universal platform for convergence of fiber and free-space optical communication networks, Kamugisha Kazaura; Kazuhiko Wakamori; Mitsuji Matsumoto; Takeshi Higashino; Katsutoshi Tsukamoto; Shozo Komaki.

Ms Lina Gomez from Columbia staff member at the Centro de Investigacion de las Telecomunicaciones, Columbia for:

·         Discrimination in NGN service markets: Opportunity or barrier to digital inclusion?, Fernando Beltran; Lina Gomez.

Ms Eva Ibarrola from Spain studying at University of the Basque Country, Spain for:  

·         Quality of Service management for ISP: A model and implementation methodology based on ITU-T Rec.802 framework, Eva Ibarrola; Jin Xiao; Fidel Liberal; Armando Ferro.

Ved Kafle from India of the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology, Japan for:

·         An ID/Locator Split Architecture of Future Networks, Ved Kafle; Hideki Otsuki; Masugi Inoue.

The many academics in attendance expressed the importance of the role of universities in the standardization process and the high value of strong collaboration between ITU, academia, and research institutes.

Malcolm Johnson, Director of the Telecommunication Standardization Bureau, ITU highlighted a recently approved Resolution (Resolution 71) which invites the ITU Council to consider the admission of academic institutions, universities and associated research establishments to ITU-T at reduced cost. His proposal to the ITU Council to be held in October for a reduced fee of $2000 was welcomed by participants.

Innovations for Digital Inclusion was held at the kind invitation of Ministerio de Planificación Federal Inversión Pública y Servicios and hosted by the National Communications Commission and the Secretariat of Communications of Argentina, was organized by ITU with IEEE Communications Society as Technical Co-Sponsor and supported by Cisco and Nokia. The conference brought together the best academic minds from around the world to present their future visions to achieve digital Inclusion. The conference also included an exhibition by local Universities which provided insight into their activities.

In addition to the three invited papers, from 80+ papers submitted, 32 were presented, and the best four awarded prizes. The winning papers will also be featured in a future special edition of IEEE Communications Magazine. The consolidated Proceedings of the conference are also available and all papers will be soon also available from IEEE Xplore online catalogue.

In addition to the prize pool, eight entrants - Jose Simões, Lina Gomez, Tullio Bertini, Aline Zim, Kei Wada, Juan Pablo Bernal, Paul Plantinga and Alberto Diez Albaladejo - received a Young Author Recognition Certificate.

Building on the success of the first and second Kaleidoscope events, a third conference is planned for end 2010.

For more information and presentations from Kaleidoscope 2009, see the event web page.

Attendees of the world’s first Virtual Symposium on ICTs and Climate Change are being asked to send questions to speakers via Twitter or e-mail ITU-CC@tta.or.kr. Virtual coffee breaks will also give attendees a chance to discuss among themselves - via Twitter - the topics covered in the sessions. Speakers from the event will also join in this discussion, with key experts on hand to answer questions and join the conversation.

Questions or comments should be sent using the hashtag #VCCKR. You can follow ITU on Twitter here.

The event will feature keynote speeches from Dr. Hamadoun I. Toure, Secretary-General of ITU speaking from New York and H. E. Mr. Nguyen Thanh Hung, Vice-Minister, Ministry of Information and Communications, Viet Nam.

Sessions will see individual presentations from speakers in the UK, US, China, India, Switzerland, Viet Nam and Korea followed by a virtual roundtable discussion.

ITU together with the Korea Communications Commission (KCC) is co-organizing the first ever Virtual International Symposium on ICTs and Climate Change. The event, also supported by Korea’s Telecommunications Technology Association (TTA), will feature speakers participating virtually from locations around the world.

The symposium will bring together key specialists in the field from top decision-makers to engineers, designers, government officials and regulators.

Topics to be discussed will include green ICTs to tackle climate change, clean technologies and smart applications, reducing the environmental impact of ICTs and building a green future.

The Virtual International Symposium on ICTs and Climate Change will launch a new era in conducting events, offering all the benefits of physical participation but without the environmental costs. The event’s virtual nature will allow more participation from developing and least developed countries, providing a deeper knowledge of their needs and creating a sound basis for solutions that take into account all stakeholders.

This event is open to anyone and can be watched without prior registration. If you want to actively participate, comment or ask questions you must register here. Please choose "Participants" as your function.

A new ITU report, the eleventh in a series of ITU-T Technology Watch Reports, presents examples of the ways in which information and communication technologies (ICT) can and are being employed to improve food security.

In the past few years, sharply rising prices and shortages of food and agricultural commodities, particularly in many developing countries, have led to global concern about food security. This problem is linked in large part to the impact of climate change on agriculture.

There are many factors (policy, legal framework, technology, knowledge, markets, research, etc.) to be considered when addressing food security, but in all of them ICT can act as catalysts.

ICTs are employed by many international organizations for mapping and monitoring world food supplies, for early warning systems and for emergency communications. Interoperable technical standards - developed in ITU - are essential to the functioning of these technologies and facilitate the work of the humanitarian community. Access to ICT is beneficial to the rural population, to farmers and the agricultural industry, and is prerequisite for the deployment of ICT applications in domains such as e-Agriculture, e-Environment and e-Learning.

The report, entitled ICTs and Food Security, examines ways in which ICT can be used locally and globally to address the problems of food security and hunger and reviews the relevant ITU standardization work.
Download Technology Watch Report on ICTs and Food Security

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The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) is inviting applications for the post of Chief, Study Groups Department, Telecommunication Standardization Bureau (TSB), at ITU headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. Standards from the ITU are at the heart of modern information and communications technologies (ICTs). For more information see: http://www.itu.int/ITU-T/info.

The successful candidate should have an excellent knowledge of the ICT industry and in particular the ICT standardization landscape. Familiarity with ITU-T rules and procedures, its meeting activities and its products would be an advantage, as would previous involvement in the development of standards.

The senior management level (Director level in the United Nations system) post demands strong organizational skills and diplomacy. The successful candidate will work in an international, multicultural environment, directing an experienced team that manages the secretariat functions of ITU-T in support of the technical study groups that author ITU-T standards. He/she will be expected to represent ITU at the highest level, prepare technical papers and reports for presentation at ITU and other global ICT events, and develop and coordinate relations with other standards bodies.

The challenge of the role will be to maintain ITU-T’s role as leader in global ICTs with the provision of strategic direction via authoritative advice to the Study Group management teams and the Director of TSB.

An attractive package of salary (approximately USD 177,700 with dependants, USD 164,260 without dependants) plus international allowances and benefits is offered:

The closing date for applications is 2 October 2009

A detailed vacancy notice and application form including remuneration can be downloaded at www.itu.int/employment. Applications using the form must be sent to recruitment@itu.int or by post to ITU Human Resources Administration Division, Place des Nations, CH-1211, Geneva 20, Switzerland.

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The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) is inviting applications for the post of Chief, Services Department, Telecommunication Standardization Bureau (TSB), at ITU headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. Standards from the ITU are at the heart of modern information and communications technologies (ICTs). For more information see: http://www.itu.int/ITU-T/info.

The successful candidate should have an excellent knowledge of the ICT industry and ICT tools. Familiarity with ITU and its products would also be an advantage.

The senior management level (Director level in the United Nations system) post demands strong organizational skills and diplomacy. The successful candidate will work in an international, multi-cultural environment, directing an experienced team for the delivery of a range of administrative support services involving operational planning, budget/finance services, procurement, meeting and logistic services. He/she will direct the bureau’s IT programmes, including the maintenance of current tools, databases and applications and develop new electronic services and projects.

The challenge of the role will be to maintain ITU-T’s role as leader in global ICTs with the development of innovative working methods and best practices for the improved delivery of services to the ITU-membership and the world telecommunication community at large.

An attractive package of tax free salary (approximately USD 177,700 with dependants, USD 164,260 without dependants) plus international allowances and benefits is offered.:

The closing date for applications is 2 October 2009

A detailed vacancy notice and application form including remuneration can be downloaded at www.itu.int/employment. Applications using the form must be sent to recruitment@itu.int or by post to ITU Human Resources Administration Division, Place des Nations, CH-1211, Geneva 20, Switzerland.

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The latest publication by ITU-T’s Technology Watch looks into the quickly growing field of mobile applications. Mobile applications (apps) are add-on software for handheld devices, such as smartphones and personal digital assistants (PDA).

Between 2008 and 2009, the market for smartphones is expected to grow by 23 per cent, against an overall decline in the total mobile phone market caused by the economic crisis. The availability of a wide choice of applications can be critical to the commercial success of new mobile devices. Even as more smartphones are sold, the creation of mobile applications to run on them is constrained by the fragmentation of the market between different platforms.

Mobile Applications describes the mobile application market and identifies initiatives that aim at standards for an open and interoperable mobile environment.

Mobile Applications is the first publication in a series of TechWatch Alerts. Alerts are intended to provide a brief but concise overview (3-5 pages) of emerging technologies and trends in the field of ICTs.

ITU-T’s Technology Watch invites any interested party to submit papers of a non-commercial nature (max. three pages). Please contact tsbtechwatch@itu.int for submission advice.

Download TechWatch Alert on Mobile Applications

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Participants at a unique international gathering of standards development organizations have agreed that a major concern, especially for developing countries, is a lack of equipment interoperability. Delegates at the Global Standards Collaboration (GSC) meeting taking place at ITU Headquarters, Geneva agreed that providing for interoperability should be an important aim of standardization.

The Global Standards Collaboration (GSC) provides an opportunity to exchange information, collaborate to reduce duplication, and to support the ITU as the preeminent global telecommunication and radiocommunication standards development organization.

In addition to interoperability, standards aimed at mitigating climate change continued as a key topic of discussion, with all participants agreeing that collaboration and focus is of key importance here.

The GSC meeting saw a broad spectrum of issues covered including international mobile telecommunications (IMT), NGN (next generation networks), home networks, emergency communication, security and lawful interception, identity management, IPTV, reconfigurable radio systems, broadband wireless access and intelligent transport systems (ITS). Topics highlighted as warranting further investigation included smart grid, service oriented networks, future networks and machine-to-machine communications /smart embedded device communications.

The host, Malcolm Johnson, Director of the Telecommunication Standardization Bureau, ITU: “Increasing the probability of interoperability will greatly increase both the quality of standards and quality of service for service providers and end users alike. ITU welcomes the opportunity to work with the world’s most important standards bodies on this and other important matters. GSC has an enormously important role to play in globalizing the standardization process. GSC promotes the value of standardization to the international community by sending a clear message of efficiency and commitment to address global needs by working together to avoid the duplication of effort and wasted intellectual resource.”

Zhu Gaofeng, Chairman of the Council of China Communications Standards Association, next year’s GSC host: “GSC continues to be an important venue for coordination of global standardization strategies. It is clear that in an age with a proliferation of standards bodies and newly emerging technologies, industry requires this level of collaboration. I am very happy that we have achieved – again – this high-level agreement on a diverse range of issues, some of which are not just important in terms of market development but have much wider ranging social impact.”

Susan M. Miller, President and CEO of ATIS, last year’s GSC host: “The tremendous collaborative work of GSC expands our ability to deliver global standards which, at heart, are designed to promote innovation, foster market competition, advance infrastructure development, and enhance interoperability. The ability to do this is fundamental to the global ICT industry’s primary objective – responding to and delivering on user needs with innovative services and solutions in a timely and cost-effective basis.”

More than one hundred participants from eight Participating Standards Organizations (PSO) attended, along with observers from additional groups.

Participants at GSC-14 included the Association of Radio Industries and Businesses (ARIB) of Japan, the China Communications Standards Association (CCSA) of China, the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), the ICT Standards Advisory Council of Canada (ISACC), the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions (ATIS) and Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) from the U.S., the Telecommunications Technology Association (TTA) of Korea and the Telecommunications Technology Committee (TTC) of Japan.

Guests and observers included representatives from American National Standards Institute (ANSI), APT Wireless Forum, Broadband Forum, CDMA Development Group (CDG), European Patent Office (EPO), Home Gateway Initiative, International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) Sector Boards 4 (SB4), Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), ISO/IEC Joint Technical Committee 1, Open Mobile Alliance (OMA), UMTS Forum, and the U.S. Patent & Trade Office.

The official communique from the event can be found here

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The new ITU-T G.711.0 standard will give increased efficiency to ITU-T G.711, the most used voice coding in global telephony systems.

The key selling point for customers and operators alike is the fact that G.711.0 gives as much as a 50 percent reduction in bandwidth use while showing absolutely no degradation of sound quality, thanks to its lossless compression algorithm.

Solid support for the standard by some of the major players – operators and vendors – means that we will likely see quick implementation in products.

Experts say that the standard has very low computational complexity and is thus very easy to implement on a wide range of telecommunication/ICT platforms.

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Achieving climate justice is in the interest of all countries and citizens. This was a conclusion of the recent ITU Symposium on ICTs and Climate Change, Quito, Ecuador, 8-10 July 2009, the first ITU Symposium on the topic in a developing country and the first to focus on the concerns of the Americas.

Participants agreed that global effort to combat climate change should not impede the economic and social growth of developing countries and that bridging the digital divide and bringing the benefits of ICTs to all citizens is fundamental to tackling climate change. They recognized that while Latin American and Caribbean countries are minor contributors to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions they are often victims of the extreme weather events and other negative impacts of climate change.

Equitable access and ensuring connectivity to schools, rural communities and health facilities are vital to economic development and to making effective use of ICTs to combat climate change. Increased deployment of affordable broadband will help facilitate this participants agreed.  

The conclusions of the symposium also acknowledged the growing problem of e-waste while highlighting the positive role of ICTs as enabling technologies to reduce GHG emissions in other sectors. Increased use of clean renewable energy sources and preservation of the jungles, savannah and oceans, the conclusion says, are key to the future and a real opportunity in Latin America.

Equitable solutions must be found so that the major contributors to GHG emissions cooperate with the countries that are suffering most from climatic impacts or those that are making efforts against deforestation, in particular through reduction of the digital divide and the environmental divide.

The Symposium was attended by 60 virtual as well as 450 physical attendees from 20 countries and was hosted by Centro Internacional de Investigación Científica en Telecomunicaciones, Tecnologías de la Información y las Comunicaciones (CITIC) Ecuador. The Symposium was chaired by Ing. Jorge Glas Espinel, representing the President of the Republic of Ecuador, Economist Rafael Correa.

A meeting report containing a general summary of the event will be made available from the symposium website.

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ITU will hold a Consultation meeting to capture the views of all stakeholders with regards to Resolution 76: Studies related to conformance and interoperability testing, assistance to developing countries, and a possible future ITU mark programme.

Participants will learn how conformity assessment can be beneficial to all stakeholders, increasing the probability of interoperability, quality of standards and quality of service. Those wishing to submit contributions to the discussion should send them to tsbworkshops@itu.int by 11 July 2009.

2008’s World Telecommunication Standardization Assembly (WTSA-08) addressed conformance and interoperability testing resulting in the first Resolution on the topic. The aim is to have ITU-T Study Groups more actively involved in developing test suites in key areas of ICTs and to have ITU-T’s secretariat (TSB) assist developing countries in their capacity to conduct tests. This includes the planning and creation of their own test facilities.

More information and registration details here.

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ITU has given first stage approval (consent) to a new standard that enables an IPTV end user to locate and subscribe to content coming from different, independent service providers.

The standard will enable a greater deal of choice for end-users and will help service providers offer a more competitive package.

Recommendation ITU-T H.770 - Mechanisms for service discovery and selection for IPTV - describes the mechanisms for service provider discovery, service discovery and selection. Services such as linear TV and video-on-demand are addressed with metadata that describes programming and delivery protocols detailed.

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A new portal bringing together many standardization resources on accessibility has been launched.

The page is a one stop shop for accessibility resources with links to all ITU-T work areas, tools, workshops, news, photos and other resources. For example it carries links to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disability, an ITU Tutorial: "Making ITU Accessible: Web Design, Web Conferencing and Real Time Web Captioning" and the G3ict-ITU Toolkit for Policy Makers on e-Accessibility & Service Needs for Persons with Disabilities.

In addition it links to the Telecommunications Accessibility Checklist which allows standards authors to ensure that they are taking into account the needs of those to whom accessibility to ICTs are restricted. The checklist is a tool which helps to ensure that accessibility needs are taken into account at an early stage of the standards development process, rather than "retrofitted".

The new page can be found at:  http://www.itu.int/ITU-T/accessibility/index.html

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Malcolm Johnson, Director of ITU’s standardization bureau - is interviewed here on ITU’s recent work on ICTs climate change.

The video is in support of the Light Reading Green Telecom East: Transitioning to Environmentally Responsible Networks event, taking place Wednesday, June 17, at The Westin Times Square in New York City. ITU is an official association sponsor of the conference.

Light Reading has kindly offered an unlimited number of discounted VIP Guest Packages to ITU members. In addition free admission will be granted to registrants employed by a cable or service provider, or network professionals at a large enterprise, educational establishment, utility, or government agency. Details of the offer here.

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ITU-T's Study Group 5 (SG5) meeting for the first time with its new name and mandate “environment and climate change” has started work on turning the deliverables of the Focus Group on ICTs and Climate Change into ITU-T Recommendations. Key among them is the methodology giving ICT companies a consistent mechanism to report their carbon footprints (see previous newslog). In addition to Study Group 5's two Working Parties involved in studies related to the electromagnetic environment, a new Working Party dealing with ICTs and Climate Change has been established.

The meeting also saw a correspondence from the GSMA requesting the support of ITU for its work on a Universal Charging Solution (UCS). The request was positively received and SG5 will work on adopting the solution as an ITU-T Recommendation.

The UCS proposal is for an energy-efficient one-charger-fits-all new mobile phones solution. GSMA estimates it will result in a 50 per cent reduction in standby energy consumption, elimination of 51,000 tonnes of duplicate chargers and a subsequent reduction of 13.6 million tonnes in greenhouse gas emissions each year. GSMA says that UCS will also make life much simpler for the consumer, who will be able to use the same charger for future handsets, as well as being able to charge their mobile phone anywhere from any available charger.

The SG 5 meeting appointed new leads (working party, vice chairs and rapporteurs) for the various new work areas (questions) including; coordination and planning of ICT and climate change related standardization; methodology of environmental impact assessment of ICT; data collection for energy efficiency for ICTs over the lifecycle and environmental protection and recycling of ICT equipments/facilities.

Also at the meeting two new ITU-T Recommendations were consented; K.80 electromagentic compatibility (EMC) requirements for telecommunication network equipment (1 GHz - 6 GHz) and K.81 high power electromagnetic (HPEM) immunity guide for telecommunication systems.

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ITU has given first stage approval (consent) to two new standards on fixed-mobile convergence (FMC). Operators offering FMC will be able to provide both services with a single phone, switching between networks on an ad hoc basis.

Experts say that the standards are an important step in the ongoing study and development of next generation network (NGN) mobility support and FMC service and network capabilities.

Recommendation ITU-T Y.2018 describes a mobility management and control framework and architecture for NGN. The architecture supports IP-based mobility for user devices in the NGN transport stratum. Y.2018 defines a new component called MMCF (Mobility Management and Control Functions) which includes support for handling mobile location management and handover decision and control as well as the interaction with other existing NGN functional components such as NACF (Network and Attachment Control Functions), RACF (Resource and Admission Control Functions), service control functions and transport functions.

Recommendation ITU-T Y.2808 describes principles, service and network capabilities, and architectures for IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) based FMC. The Recommendation describes a network architecture that uses IMS to provide the same set of services to user terminals regardless of the use of fixed or mobile access network technologies, and ensures service continuity when the point of attachment of the terminal changes between different access network technologies.

    

The June issue of IEEE Communications Magazine carries a ‘feature topic’ on ITU’s Kaleidoscope event – Innovations in Next Generation Networks (NGN).

The magazine, also available online, carries the winning papers, as well as two invited papers from the first of ITU’s academic events.

The winning papers were:

• Architecture and business model of open heterogeneous mobile network, Yoshitoshi Murata; Mikio Hasegawa; Homare Murakami; Hiroshi Harada; Shuzo Kato.
• Differential phase shift quantum key distribution, Hiroki Takesue; Toshimori Honjo; Kiyoshi Tamaki; Yasuhiro Tokura.
• Open API standardisation for the NGN platform, Catherine Mulligan.

Organized by ITU-T with IEEE ComSoc as Technical Co-Sponsor and supported by Cisco, Intel, the International Communications Foundation of Japan and Sun Microsystems, the conference brought together the best academic minds from around the world to present their future visions for Next-Generation Networks (NGN).

Among over 140 papers submitted. 53 papers were presented and the best three were awarded prizes totaling $10,000 kindly donated by Cisco. These papers will be included in a future special edition of the IEEE Communications Magazine.

The second Kaleidoscope event - Innovations for Digital Inclusion - will be held in Mar del Plata, Argentina, 31 August – 1 September 2009.

Kaleidoscope events are a series of peer-reviewed academic conferences aiming to increase the dialogue between experts working on the standardization of information and communications technologies (ICT) and academia.

Kaleidoscope 2009 will feature original academic papers offering innovative approaches to digital inclusion. As before prizes totaling USD 10k will be granted to the best papers. In addition a young author recognition certificate will be granted to authors presenting papers whoare pursuing their studies and do not – at the time of the event - have a PhD.

Accepted papers will be presented during the event, published in the proceedings and made available through IEEE Xplore. The best papers will be evaluated for potential publication in IEEE Communications Magazine.

Kaleidoscope-2009 will analyze technologies, services and applications five years and beyond that will capitalize on NGN infrastructure and promote digital inclusion. The event will cover multidisciplinary aspects, including regulatory and societal challenges as well as analysis of standardization needed.

Innovative technologies will help bring the benefits of ICTs to all segments of the population, in particular those in underserved communities and developing countries. The event seeks to promote research that supports innovation in ICTs toward universal, sustainable, ubiquitous and affordable access by all.

For more information please contact kaleidoscope@itu.int.

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On the occasion of the third Symposium on ICTs and Climate Change, which will take place on 8-10 July 2009, in Quito, Ecuador, ITU has revised and published a background paper on this important issue.

The paper reflects recent work done in the three ITU Sectors, including the work of the Focus Group and the creation of an ITU-T Study Group on Environment and Climate Change, and addresses key issues in the Latin American region, such as deforestation and emergency communications.

The rise in the number of extreme weather events, such as hurricanes in the Caribbean, threats to low-lying areas from rising oceans are evidence of the impact of climate change on developing countries and in the Americas. Latin America is particularly impacted by deforestation, which, according to estimations, contributes nearly one-fifth of total global greenhouse gas emissions.

For developing countries, implementing climate change solutions raises questions of funding, financing and access to technology, and thus this updated background paper addresses these issues and presents examples of national plans and innovations in technologies to reduce emissions. The annex provides an inventory of work underway in ITU on climate change.

The background paper can be downloaded here.

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ITU has published a new online resource for IPv6 related information.

The webpages have been published in response to WTSA-08 Resolution 64 ‘IP address allocation and encouraging the deployment of IPv6’.

The aim is to raise awareness of IPv6 deployment, as well as providing information related to training events and IPv6 related news. An IPv4 exhaustion counter estimates the number of days until all IPv4 addresses are used.

The site also hosts a questionnaire that will collect information and feedback from ITU members. Deadline for submission is 12 June.

With the massive deployment of Internet-related resources worldwide and the integration of IP-enabled consumer devices connected directly to the network, the issue of the depletion of IPv4  addresses is an increasing concern. In addition to other features, IPv6 with its 128 bit address space is aimed at addressing the current shortage of public IPv4 addresses. However for various reasons the transition from IPv4 to IPv6 taking longer than expected.

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The fourth World Telecommunication Policy Forum (Lisbon, 2009) invited ITU-T Study Group 13 (Future networks including mobile and NGN) to accelerate its work on cloud and grid computing, noting that increased use of services and applications including cloud and grid computing may result in the need for flexible networks to accommodate unforeseen demands.

A recently published ITU-T Technology Watch Report titled “Distributed Computing: Utilities, Grids and Clouds” describes the advent of clouds and grids, the applications they enable, and their potential impact on future standardization. The report is available to download here.

Cloud computing is receiving a lot of press attention with the announcement of new projects seemingly on a daily basis. A recent example is the Digital Japan Creation Project. Japan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC) revealed plans to build a massive cloud computing infrastructure to support all of the government’s IT systems. Read more at Green Telecom Live.

Called tentatively the Kasumigaseki Cloud (literally Fort of Fog), the new infrastructure will be built in stages from now until 2015. The goal of the project is to consolidate all government IT systems into a single cloud infrastructure to improve operational efficiency and reduce cost.

According to the MIC, the Kasumigaseki Cloud will eliminate the need for individual ministries to maintain their own IT systems by consolidating current data centres, and allow each ministries to use only the computer resources necessary through the cloud platform.
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Networking vendor Ciena has announced plans to deploy 100 Gigabits per second (Gb/s) Ethernet network equipment to connect NYSE Euronext’s New York and London datacenters. The equipment will connect the respective trading floors over a single optical wavelength with the lowest latency possible.
 
Expected to be operational in 2010, the network equipment will make use of an upcoming extension of ITU-T G.709/Y.1331 currently under discussion in Study Group 15, ITU-T’s Study Group on optical transport networks and access network infrastructures.

G.709/Y.1331 defines “Interfaces for the Optical Transport Network (OTN)”. OTN is presently offered at three bit rates, OTU1 (~2.7 Gb/s), OTU2 (~10.7 Gb/s) and OTU3 (~43 Gb/s), where the latter corresponds to the highest bandwidth on a single wavelength commercially deployed today.

OTU4 will define a transport interface capable of carrying the 100 Gigabit Ethernet client signal studied in IEEE’s P802.3ba 40 Gb/s and 100 Gb/s Ethernet Task Force.

Also see background papers by NORDUnet, Nortel and NTT describing the transition to 100G and the related standardization activities.

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A two day Forum on Implementation of decisions of the World Telecommunication Standardization Assembly-08 (WTSA-08) will take place in Accra, Ghana, 16 to 17 June 2009.

The event hosted by the Ministry of Communications, Ghana will review WTSA-08 results from an African perspective and consider how to implement those Resolutions that are of interest to the region. Participants will share experiences in order to identify areas of cooperation and to establish priorities and an action plan to ensure that they gain most benefit from the WTSA-08 Resolutions.

Leading representatives from governments, regulators, industry and academia will join with operators and service providers from the African region. Key topics to be discussed include conformity and interoperability testing, IP-based networks, misappropriation of numbering resources, cybersecurity initiatives, IPv6 and CIRTs. 

Other topics include environment and climate change, accessibility, measurement concerns related to human exposure to electromagnetic fields, and emergency communications.

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Episode 1 of TelecomTV's Green Planet features Malcolm Johnson, Director of the Telecommunication Standardization Bureau, ITU, talking about ITU's ICTs and Climate Change initiative.

The Green Planet series provides an overview of different elements of Sustainable ICT. Featuring leading scientists, politicians and heads of industry from across the globe, Green Planet is a timely and fascinating examination of issues and solutions that will change the world.

Watch here.

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The Telecommunication Standardization Advisory Group (TSAG) concluding its three day meeting 30 April agreed on how work on ICTs and environment including climate change and recycling will be distributed in ITU-T. This follows its approval of the report of the Focus Group on ICTs and Climate Change and will formalize the Focus Group’s output as ITU-T Recommendations (see previous newslog) – including a methodology for evaluating the effects of ICTs on climate change - both in direct terms and how ICTs can reduce emission in other industry sectors.

Study Group 5 was chosen as the lead study group and will be renamed the Study Group on Environment and Climate Change to reflect its new mandate. SG 5 remains the lead Study Group for protection against electromagnetic effects.

Specifically SG 5 will work on documents related to:

• Study of methodologies for calculating the amount of greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions from ICTs, and the amount of reduction in the GHG emissions in other sectors as a result of using ICTs.
• Creation of a framework for energy efficiency in the ICT field, taking account of WTSA Resolution 73.
• Study of methodologies for power feeding that effectively reduce power consumption and resource usage.
• Study of methodologies that reduce environmental effects for ICT facilities and equipment such as recycling,

Study Group 5 will next meet 25-29 May in Geneva and is likely to establish a new working party to address these issues. The many organisations that contributed to the work of the Focus Group will be open to contribute at the invitation of the Study Group chairman.

In addition a Joint Coordination Activity (JCA) will ensure that the work across ITU-T’s study groups is focused on delivering climate change focused standards in a timely and efficient way. Essentially the group will aim to see that standards are developed in the most appropriate way and that no duplication of effort occurs. It will also provide a single point of contact for ICT and Climate Change activities in ITU-T and seek collaboration from external bodies working in the field. It is expected that the work of the JCA will be carried out mainly via web-conferencing tools.

Full details will be published on the website of Study Group 5 and a soon to be created JCA page.

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A new white paper by Polycom highlights “G.719: The First ITU-T Standard for Full-Band Audio”.

Recommendation ITU-T G.719 describes a coding algorithm for conversational speech and audio supporting the full human auditory bandwidth (from 20 Hz to 20 kHz), that is, all sounds that a human can hear.

The paper concludes that “major technical achievements of the G.719 codec are its high quality and low complexity that make it perfect for devices ranging from telephones and low-power mobile devices to soft clients and to high end video and telepresence systems.” First products implementing ITU-T G.719 are expected to appear in 2009/2010.

The standard was developed in Study Group 16, ITU-T’s lead Study Group on multimedia coding, systems and applications, and adopted in June 2008.

Continue reading

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A new ITU-T Technology Watch Report titled The Future Internet surveys the current debate on Internet architecture.

The Internet has grown from a small experiment into a collaborative network with more than one billion users. The rise of mobile access poses additional infrastructure challenges including addressing, routing and security, which might require a review of the architecture.

The report examines the design and architecture of the Internet, and contrasts different views calling for evolutionary to radical changes to the Internet. Emerging trends and features of the Internet are identified in an attempt to provide pointers for future standards work for consideration by the ITU-T membership and the broader standards community.

The Future Internet, the tenth report of the Technology Watch series, is available to download here.

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A workshop on Overlay Networking will be held on Friday, 15 May at ITU headquarters in Geneva. The event is jointly organised by ITU-T’s Future Networks and NGN Study Group (SG13) and the IEEE Next Generation Service Overlay Network (NGSON) Working Group.

Overlay networking provides the ability to customize a network via a virtual communications structure laid over the physical network. Overlay networking techniques have been proposed for various purposes, including as a way to improve Internet routing and to enhance content delivery capabilities.

The workshop will act as a way for the two groups to exchange information on their respective ongoing and planned activities in the Overlay Networking area, with a view to future collaboration.

Session topics will include: an overview of the Next Generation Service Overlay Network (NGSON) framework and status of related standards activities; the business vision behind NGSON; NGN services and capabilities and NGN architecture, and information about current and planned activities for an advanced service infrastructure from both services/capabilities and architecture perspectives.

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Over 150 delegates from 25 countries met last week in Colombo, Sri Lanka to discuss standardization and regulatory issues relating to next generation networks (NGN).

The event, jointly-organised by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation (CTO), and hosted by the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (TRC) of Sri Lanka, constitutes a major step in engaging with industry stakeholders in the region and beyond on NGN standardization issues.

Participants at the event agreed to invite the ITU to establish a web-based NGN Gateway, linking NGN activities in the three ITU sectors (standardization, radiocommunication and development).

The NGN Gateway would act as an NGN information sharing point particularly aimed at developing countries and give resources such as:

• NGN Tutorials
  
• Standardization pointers
  
• Governmental issue guidelines
  
• Regulatory guidelines
  
• Case studies on migration to NGN
  
• Conformance and interoperability guidelines

NGNs are packet-based networks able to make use of multiple broadband, transport technologies, and in which service-related functions are independent from underlying transport-related technologies. Networks built on NGN technology have the potential to offer significantly lower service delivery costs, deliver a greater range of services and applications, and at the same time, support seamless and generalised mobility which will allow consistent and ubiquitous provision of services to end-users.

Various operators in the region have started the migration of their networks to NGN, however there is a pressing need to agree on a set of global standards on a range of issues, including interconnection and interoperability between networks, QoS, mobility, and IPv6.

The ITU and CTO joined forces to ensure the widest participation from Asia and beyond. Present at the event were leading operators, regulators and manufacturers including NTT, BT, Ericsson, Motorola, and ZTE.

“This is a historic event. Not only is it the first ITU-T event in Sri Lanka, it is the first joint event between ITU and CTO”, said Malcolm Johnson, Director of the Telecommunication Standardization Bureau, ITU during his welcome address.

“Sri Lanka was pleased to host this event. We are committed to such collaborative arrangements with the ITU and the CTO, as we see the ICT sector as a driving force of our economy”, Priyantha Kariyapperuma, Director-General of Sri Lanka TRC added.

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ITU-T has published a Guide on the use of the ITU-T Recommendations related to Optical Technology. Currently available in PDF form – here – it is expected printed versions will be made available shortly. The publication of the guide is - in part - to meet the requirements of WTSA-08 Resolution 44 - Bridging the standardization gap between developing and developed countries.

The guide starts with a short but interesting history of optical technology noting that the capacity of optical systems has jumped by a factor of more than 10,000 over a period of 20 years. In the same time it also notes that the applications of optical technology have progressively moved from short distance links (a few tens of km) to very long distance links in backbone networks, completely replacing traditional copper cabling. In the last few years it charts the arrival of optical technology in access networks.

The practical part of the guide contains a functional grouping of Study Group 15 Recommendations on optical technology e.g. optical fibres and cables, physical optical interfaces, optical fibre submarine cable systems. An introduction to each category with more than one Recommendation outlines the subjects which are common to that category. For each Recommendation there is a short description of the purpose, the content and, in many cases, the evolution of the content in subsequent versions of Recommendations. There are also cross-references to other related Recommendations.

The main purpose of this Guide is to give to developing countries improved capability in the application of standards. It is also seen as benefiting the wider telecommunication industry, particularly manufacturers and operators, which could benefit from the greater involvement of developing countries in the making and application of standards. Experts also point out that the value of the guide could to a wider group of manufacturers and operators than those directly involved in optical technologies.

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Live video streaming of the Forum on Next Generation Network (NGN) Standardization, in Colombo, Sri Lanka, 7 - 10 April 2009 will be available here.

Standardized methodologies for calculating the impact of information and communication technologies (ICT) in terms of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have been proposed by an ITU Focus Group meeting in Hiroshima, Japan.

The ITU-T Focus Group on ICTs and Climate Change, a global group comprising of some of the world’s leading ICT players, has developed a method for calculating two elements:

1.   Energy usage and carbon impact arising from ICT lifecycles

2.   Decrease in GHG emissions that can be achieved with ICTs, such as substituting ICT services and devices for intensive fossil-fuelled activities for travel and transport and by replacing atoms with bits (buying an MP3 file instead of a CD), also known as “dematerialization”.

The meeting agreed on a set of four ‘deliverables’ that also give guidance on terms and definitions, including units of measurement to be used. The deliverables draw on best practices from many organizations around the world and will be published as the proceedings of the Focus Group. The next step will be to formally issue the Focus Group outcomes as ITU-T Recommendations, or standards. 

“This work has an important bearing on current and future global agreements under which countries undertake commitments to reduce their overall GHG emissions,” said Malcolm Johnson, Director of ITU’s Telecommunication Standardization Bureau. “Common approaches to calculating the impact of ICTs are vital to ensure coherent and effective solutions.”

Clearly, ICTs have the potential to drastically reduce GHGs. A contribution to the Focus Group meeting showed that direct e-mail has the effect of a 98.5 per cent carbon dioxide emission reduction compared with paper. The group also noted a trend towards ‘always-on’ devices that are a drain on power supplies. Recommended steps toward more efficient energy use of ICT devices are part of the output of the group.

“Even conservative estimates show a significant contribution to addressing climate change can be made through the application of ICTs,” said Johnson. “But, we cannot be content to sit and tell one another that ICTs can mitigate climate change. We must demonstrate our case with hard facts and figures. This methodology will give added credibility and coherence to the estimates of the positive impact of ICT. A common methodology will help establish the business case to go green and can ultimately be beneficial to informed consumer choices and climate-friendly business procurement.”

Dave Faulkner, BT and Chairman of the Focus Group said, “The Focus Group has highlighted ways to minimize the ICT sector's carbon footprint. But, more importantly, the group has highlighted key ways to reduce GHG emissions in other sectors by the clever use of telecommunication and ICTs. We expect these measures will be taken up by telecommunications operators and vendors around the world.”

Jason Marcheck, a Principal Analyst with Current Analysis: “Without a standardized methodology for measuring the carbon footprint of ICTs it is impossible to fully comprehend data provided by well-meaning companies. This initiative helps to provide a framework that companies can follow to give reliable data that can be compared on an international scale. It shows the importance that the ICT industry attaches to this topic, and represents a necessary step forward in standardizing the way that the industry approaches environmental sustainability.”

Takashi Hanazawa, Senior Vice President, NTT: “The development and implementation of a standardized methodology is something that all industry players have been waiting for. As an ITU member, NTT has supported this work from the beginning. Today’s announcement sends a strong message, underlining this industry’s commitment to reducing its carbon footprint. We applaud ITU’s efforts and join with ITU management in sending a message of environmental consciousness and belief in sustainable growth for the future.”

Makoto Totsuka, Director-General for ICT Strategic Policy Planning, Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, Japan: “Prior to the Focus Group, we have not had an international forum for discussing common measures to calculate the positive and negative aspect of ICTs. We were honoured to host the final meeting of the Focus Group and would like to thank all delegates for their efforts. We will continue to contribute to ITU activity on ICT and Climate Change and environmental issues.”

Laura Ipsen, Senior Vice President of Cisco Global Policy and Government Affairs and co-chair of the Cisco EcoBoard: “Accurate, standardized measurement is the first step towards effective reduction of the ICT carbon footprint. The ITU-T Focus Group deliverables provide a valuable foundation for further ICT industry global collaboration in helping to address the world’s environmental challenges. Cisco is committed to continuing its efforts in ITU and with customers globally for energy efficiency in an inclusive and sustainable information society.”

As part of its ongoing work on ICTs and climate change, ITU is organizing the third Symposium on ICTs and Climate Change in Quito, Ecuador, 8− 10 July 2009, hosted by Centro Internacional de Investigación Científica en Telecomunicaciones, Tecnologías de la Información y las Comunicaciones (CITIC) Ecuador. More details here.

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A new Technology Watch report examines Distributed Computing: Utilities, Grids and Clouds.

A key conclusion is that increased focus on standards for interfaces will enable commoditization of clouds and grids and ensure interoperability.

Expanding communication networks, combined with the growth of affordable broadband in developed countries, has enabled organizations to share their computational resources. What originally started as grid computing, temporarily using remote supercomputers or clusters of mainframes to address scientific problems too large or too complex to be solved on in-house infrastructures, has evolved into service-oriented business models that offer physical and virtual resources on a pay as you go basis – as an alternative to often idle, in-house data centers and stringent license agreements.

The report describes the advent of these new forms of distributed computing, notably grid and cloud computing, the applications that they enable, and their potential impact on future standardization.

Distributed Computing: Utilities, Grids and Clouds is available to download here.

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ITU-T’s work on IPTV standards has progressed significantly in recent weeks with a raft of new specifications agreed.

The work has moved on from the foundation documents containing high-level architectures and frameworks to more detailed specifications. Experts say that this is an important milestone that will allow manufacturers to start implementing the specifications in their products.

A standardized IPTV environment could mean an end to walled-garden approaches where subscribers are limited to content from a particular service provider. It would for example make it easier for ex-pat subscribers to consume content from their countries of origin.

Among standards consented or approved recently include Recommendation ITU-T H.720 which gives the overview of the architecture and functional components of an IPTV terminal device and provides a high-level description of functionality necessary to support IPTV services. Also key is ITU-T H.721 which describes and specifies the functionalities of IPTV terminal devices such as set-top boxes and digital TV sets for IPTV basic services. The Recommendation also takes into consideration such conditions on content delivery as QoS.

Below is a list of recent ITU standards approved or ‘consented’ by ITU-T’s Study Group 16:

 - Rec. H.701 - Content Delivery Error Recovery for IPTV services
 - Rec. H.721 - IPTV Terminal Device: Basic Model
 - Rec. H.760 - Overview of Multimedia Application Frameworks for IPTV
 - Rec. H.761 - Nested Context Language (NCL) and Ginga-NCL for IPTV
 - Rec. H.720 - Overview of IPTV terminal devices and end systems
 - Rec. H.750 - High-level specification of metadata for IPTV services
 - Rec. H.622.1 - Architecture and functional requirements for home networks supporting IPTV services

In addition a Technical Paper has been approved that addresses the use of audio coding in services delivered over IPTV

See also New IPTV standard supports global rollout.

Membership of ITU-T gives exclusive rights to access working documents of standards under development – tomorrow’s ICTs. The vast majority of all Recommendations are available in electronic (PDF) form free of charge to all once a final editing process is complete.

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ITU together with the Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation (CTO) will hold a Forum on Next Generation Network (NGN) Standardization, in Colombo, Sri Lanka, 7 - 10 April 2009.

The event will examine the latest developments in NGNs including architecture, service requirements, network capabilities and migration. Case studies will allow attendees to learn from existing and ongoing NGN deployments from Asia-Pacific and beyond. Participants will also be kept up-to-date on recent changes to ITU-T working methods and its new mandate relating to IPv6.

Sessions will additionally focus on cybersecurity, ICTs and climate change, traffic accounting principles and QoS. There will be discussion of policy, regulatory and developmental issues related to NGNs and a report on the main results of the World Telecommunication Standardization Assembly (WTSA-08).

NGN growth in Asia-Pacific is in different stages of development. In a climate of many complex economic, technological, strategic and operational considerations, including the cost of implementation, changing marketplaces, complex migration scenarios and regulatory uncertainties, the role and importance of standardization is highlighted more than ever before.

By leveraging on the experiences of renowned experts in the ICT field, the conference aims to allow participants to explore a wide spectrum of NGN standardization and related topics, with a special focus on the Asia-Pacific region.

Click here for details.

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Clarifications regarding work on MPLS functionality to address the needs of the transport network were made at the December meeting of Study Group 15 (see previous newslog entry) with experts from the IETF and ITU-T present.

The two organizations have been working on the development of a transport profile for MPLS technology referred to as “MPLS-TP”.

IETF and ITU management have again underlined their commitment to work together in the interest of the ICT industry and its customers.

Key agreements are clarified in a document here.

In summary it says:

• There is no agreement, or proposal to cancel or deprecate the [ITU-T] T-MPLS Recommendations currently in force.
• It was clarified that the statement that ITU-T would "terminate work on current T-MPLS" should be understood to mean that ITU-T will not undertake any further work to progress T-MPLS.
• There is no intent to prevent the ITU-T from having a future role in MPLS-TP standardization.

The following agreements were reached concerning current T-MPLS:

• The current T-MPLS Recommendations remain in force, unchanged, until the next updates that will result in aligning them with the jointly developed MPLS-TP architecture.
• There will be no other update (amendment, revision) to these Recommendations prior to the ones for aligning with MPLS-TP, at which time the name will be changed to reflect the new content.

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ITU-T has made public a database tracking test signals applicable to uses such as testing end-to-end quality of telecoms systems, compliance to specific ITU standards (ITU-T Recommendations) and performance assessment of certain types of telecom terminals.

The ITU-T Test Signals for Telecommunication Systems  database currently contains 15 gigabytes of audio, still image, video signals and encoded bitstreams. It is a “one-stop shop” for data found within ITU-T Recommendations. Some of this material was previously available only in physical media (such as CDs or DVDs), and can now be downloaded for free.

Database entries are augmented with explanations and links to the corresponding Recommendations.

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ITU will team up with ISO and IEC for a fourth time on  4-5 March 2009 to present the Fully Networked Car. The three organisations working together under the World Standards Cooperation (WSC) banner will host the workshop and exhibition at one of the world’s leading automotive events, the Geneva International Motor Show.

The question of how can ICTs (Information and Communication Technologies) in vehicles help mitigate and monitor climate change will be retained as a key theme for 2009. The Lightning Car Company has kindly agreed to display, as the key feature of the exhibition, its Lightning GT prototype electric vehicle to give special emphasis to the environmental theme.

Experts believe that more sophisticated traffic management and driver assistance systems can help reduce the environmental impact caused by motoring.

2009 will see keynote speeches from:
Burkhard Göschel, CTO, Magna International 
Jürgen Leohold, Executive Director Group Research, Volkswagen
Russ Shields, Chairman, Ygomi
Tadao Saito, CTO, Toyota InfoTechnology Center
Hermann Meyer, CEO, ERTICO (ITS Europe).

In general, the event will focus on (ICT) in motor vehicles and specifically standards that will facilitate the convergence of these industries.

ICT in vehicles represents a significant value-add for consumers in terms of safety, comfort and mobility. Predictions for the size of the market run into billions of dollars and stakeholders agree that standardization is key to the development of new technologies and that coordination between the traditionally remote vehicle manufacturing and ICT industries is crucial.

The Fully Networked Car brings together experts ranging from top decision-makers to engineers, designers, planners, government officials, regulators, standards experts and analysts. The workshop programme features speakers from some of the biggest names in the ICT and automobile industries.

The panel of high-level global experts that will frame the major issues and engage the audience in discussion come from companies including: Magna International, Toyota, ERTICO, Freescale Semiconductor, IEEE, Telcordia, Aachen University, Thinking Highways, Connexis, Daimler AG, Telecom Italia, Volkswagen, France Telecom/Orange, NXP Semiconductors and Harman/Becker Automotive Systems GmbH.

Among other topics to be discussed are car to x communication, safety and security and voice and audiovisual services.

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A new ITU group has been set up to collect and identify visions of future networks, based on new technologies.

The move to set up the Focus Group on Future Networks (FG-FN) follows a request from members to push forward study in this area and strong interest expressed by the academic community during the ITU-T Kaleidoscope event in May 2008.

The term Future Networks has come to encompass such projects as IRTF (International), GENI/FIND (US), FP7/FIRE (EU), CNGI (China), AKARI/NwGN (Japan), FIF (Korea) as well as standardization works in ISO/IEC JTC1/SC6.

Experts say that taking into consideration the importance of global connectivity and interoperability between devices, networks, services and applications, global harmonization between these different activities is extremely important and necessary to build up globally interoperable future ICT infrastructures.

Given ITU-T’s role as a global ICT standards organization, it is in the best position to support the development of global and harmonized frameworks (e.g. requirements, functional architectures and protocols) collaborating with all relevant entities and activities.

The provisional dates and venue for the first meeting of the group are 6-10 July, Geneva.

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A major milestone for providing global IPTV has been reached with the approval of a new ITU standard, giving requirements for the support of IPTV services.

Experts say that standards are essential for the rollout of global IPTV services. While we have already seen a first generation of IPTV services, a second generation may see a change in regulation or market demand that will require interoperation between service and/or network providers. A potential outcome of this will be that a customer can go into a shop, buy an IPTV box, call their network operator and sign-up, and then access services from a range of third party service providers. It is to meet needs such as this the value of ITU’s work on standardization will be realised.

IPTV, defined by ITU-T as “multimedia services such as television/video/ audio/text/graphics/data delivered over IP-based networks managed to support the required level of quality of service (QoS)/quality of experience (QoE), security, interactivity and reliability”, is one of the most significant business cases and drivers for the deployment of next generation networks (NGN).

The standard, Recommendation ITU-T Y.1901, specifies high level requirements for the support of IPTV services, including requirements concerning service offering, QoS/QoE, service and content protection, middleware, content, network and end system aspects. Y.1901 and previously approved Recommendation ITU-T Y.1910, “IPTV functional architecture”, plus various other IPTV related ITU-T Recommendations, constitute an initial set of IPTV standards enabling equipment vendors, including consumer electronics suppliers, to roll-out standardized IPTV products. Deployment of ITU-T compliant products will enable service providers to offer value added services like traditional (linear) TV, video on demand (VoD) and interactive TV over IP-based managed networks such as NGN.

Y.1901 has been developed with a truly international effort at ITU-T IPTV-GSI (IPTV Global Standards Initiative) events, with the active participation of administrations, service providers and equipment vendors from a large number of countries, including, but not limited to Canada, China, France, Japan, Korea, United Kingdom and United States.

ITU-T standardization activities related to IPTV continue in various ITU-T Study Groups, in cooperation with relevant standard developing organizations, forums and consortia, including ATIS IPTV Interoperability Forum, ETSI TISPAN, Broadband Forum, Digital Video Broadcasting project and Home Gateway Initiative.

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A key standard – ITU-T Recommendation – on identity management (IdM) has been approved by the ITU-T.

Entitled “NGN Identity Management Framework,” the Recommendation (Y.2720) specifies a structured approach for designing, defining, and implementing interoperable identity management (IdM) solutions for next generation networks (NGN).

The term IdM is understood as "management by providers of trusted attributes of an entity such as a subscriber, a device, or a provider." IdM promises to reduce the need for multiple user names and passwords for each online service used, while maintaining privacy of personal information. Global IdM solutions will help diminish identity theft and fraud. Further, IdM is one of the key enablers for a simplified and secure interaction between customers and services such as e-commerce.

ITU-T Y.2720 results from a truly international effort involving governments, operators and equipment vendors from various countries, including China, Japan, Korea, the United States, and United Kingdom.

In a heterogeneous, converged environment such as NGN, the assurance, security and management of identity information faces unique challenges, including:

• End users are increasingly using multiple identities
• These identities may be associated with differing contexts and service privileges
• The identities may only partially identify the end user
• The identities may be used anywhere, anytime
• The identities may not be interoperable between providers

Y.2720 addresses these challenges and identifies a set of functions and capabilities (e.g., administration, discovery, communication exchanges, correlation and binding, policy enforcement, authentication and authorization) to allow:

• Assurance of identity information (e.g., identifiers, credentials, and attributes)
• Assurance of the identity of an entity (e.g., users/subscribers, user devices, service providers, and network elements)
• Enablement of business and security applications.

The framework defined in Y.2720 provides a holistic view of IdM in NGN. It lays the foundation for developing specific aspects of IdM, including detailed requirements, mechanisms and procedures which will form the next stage of work for ITU-T experts.

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The Dynamic Coalition on Internet and Climate Change (DCICC) held its first ever meeting on 4 December 2008 during the Internet Governance Forum in Hyderabad.

The DCICC is an open group committed to moderating the environmental impact of the Internet and to seeking new ways to embrace the power of the Internet for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions worldwide.

The meeting was well-attended and many new entities joined the Coalition, which was originally launched by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the Global e-Sustainability Initiative (GeSI), Japan and British Telecom.

At its meeting, the Coalition agreed on a set of objectives and actions for the coming year. One major objective will be to advocate the important role that ICTs can play as an enabling technology to reduce GHG emissions in all sectors and the need for the Internet to grow in an environmentally-friendly manner. More information about the DCICC can be found on its website hosted by the ITU at: http://www.itu.int/themes/climate/dc/index.html.

ITU also organized a workshop the IGF on the “Internet and Climate Change”, which featured a number of prominent speakers and generated a lively debate on this issue. Speakers noted that while ICTs contribute about 2.5 percent to annual GHG emissions, ICTs can potentially play an important role to reduce these emissions across all sectors.

A Declaration on Internet Accessibility was adopted by the Dynamic Coalition on Accessibility and Disability at the recent Internet Governance Forum (IGF) held in Hyderabad, India. DCAD counts ITU as one of its founder members.

ITU took part in twelve sessions at the IGF, organizing seven of them. As well as opening remarks from the Secretary General, and various addresses from the Director of the Telecommunication Standardization Bureau, six other ITU staff participated. In addition ITU sponsored the participation of 39 people (27 from developing countries).

DCAD aims to facilitate interaction between relevant bodies and ensure that ICT accessibility is included in the key debates around Internet Governance in order to build a future where all sectors of the global community have equal access to the Information Society. It held its first face-to-face meeting on 6 December 2008 during the third Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Hyderabad.

The Declaration urges all governments to support the process of adoption, ratification and implementation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. It also “strongly urges” that the needs of persons with disabilities be included in all aspects of designing, developing, distributing and deploying of appropriation strategies of information and communication technologies, including information and communication services, so as to ensure accessibility for persons with disabilities, taking into account the universal design principle, existing standards, and the use of assistive technologies.

The Coalition has also approved an “Action Plan” for activities to be carried out in 2009.

Organizations that are members of the DCAD include ACMA, Council of Europe, DAISY Consortium, Digital Accessible Information System Consortium, G3ict, ICDRI, ISOC, ISOC-AR, Mais Diferenças, NCC, People Who, UNESCO, W3C Web Accessibility Initiative. A new member joined during the IGF: the Indian “Centre for Internet & Society”.

Also during the IGF, ITU, in collaboration with DCAD members organized a workshop “Including Accessibility and Human Factors in the Universalization of the Internet - How to reach persons with disabilities, the 10% of the next billion”. Most of the panelists were persons with disabilities who brought varied experiences of Internet accessibility from various perspectives.

The DCAD, lead by ITU, will continue to facilitate inclusion of the needs of persons with disabilities in the global information society.

The paper submission deadline for the ITU-T Kaleidoscope 2009 event: Innovations for Digital Inclusion has been extended by two weeks. The new deadline is 1 February 2009.

Innovations for Digital Inclusion is the second in a series of peer-reviewed academic conferences that aims at increasing the dialogue between experts working on the standardization of information and communications technologies (ICT) and academia.

Charles Peter Sandbank, who was very well known to many in ITU, and was recently elected as Chairman to ITU-T’s Study Group 9 has died aged 77.

Charlie, as he was affectionately known to friends and colleagues, started his long and distinguished career with STC making radio valves and later transistors. During his time here he developed some of the first semiconductor integrated circuits to be produced in Europe. Among his early papers were proposals for the techniques now commonly used in ASICS and the principle of surface mount.

In 1964 he was appointed head of the Electron Devices Laboratory at Standard Telecommunications Laboratories and in 1968 became Manager of the STL Communications Systems Division. While at STL he was responsible for the team which pioneered the use of optical fibres for communications and in 1976 built the world’s first wide band digital optical fibre communications system (140 Mbit/s between Hitchin and Stevenage) installed in BT ducts. He edited one of the first books on the technology of optical fibre communications in which he proposed the optical amplifier as now commonly used in long haul systems.

In 1978 he joined the BBC as head of its Research Department and became BBC Deputy Director of Engineering in 1984. He made personal contributions to the BBC’s work in electronic graphics; the ‘BBC MICRO’ project; HDTV and particularly digital broadcasting. NICAM stereo sound for TV was among the activities which he initiated while he was Head of Research. He played a leading role in the establishment of the technology and world-wide standards for Digital Television (a subject on which he also edited a book). The work he initiated at the BBC contributed to the establishment of the world’s first terrestrial digital radio service in 1997 and TV service in 1998. After leaving the BBC in 1993 he became a Director of Snell and Wilcox Ltd and DTI Broadcasting Technology Adviser.

He was a founder member of the DVB project, the founding Chairman of the ETSI/EBU JTC and founding co-chair of the European Digital Cinema Forum. He was also the Royal Academy of Engineering’s Visiting Professor in the Principles of Information Systems Design at the University of Bradford.

He was elected to the Royal Academy of Engineering in 1983, was also FIET and FInstP. He received Fellowships from the RTS, BKSTS and SMPTE for contributions to broadcast engineering and Honorary Doctorates from the Universities of Surrey and Bradford.

In the ITU he participated actively since the late 1970s in ITU-R SG6 (previously SG10 and 11) and in ITU-T SG9 since its formation, acting as a Vice Chairman in the last two study periods before being appointed Chairman at WTSA-08 in Johannesburg. He played a major role in the drafting of the basic Digital TV Recommendation ITU-R Rec. 601, and more recently in the ITU-T network independent middleware Recommendations. He chaired the JRG1 the joint T/R Rapporteur group on middleware and was a co-chair of the joint activity of ITU-T SG9 and ITU-T SG9 on IPTV.

The first global standard offering an in-home, high-speed network capable of delivering room-to-room HDTV has been agreed by ITU. The standard, published under the G.hn banner, promises high quality multimedia over power, coaxial, phone and other home wiring. It will give up to 20 times the throughput of existing wireless technologies and three times that of existing wired technologies.

The specifications will be used by chip manufacturers to build transceivers that can be incorporated into set-top boxes, residential gateways, home computers, home audio systems, DVD players, TVs or any other device that might be connected to a network now or in the future. Experts say that silicon companies will immediately start incorporating the specifications into transceivers, implying that G.hn-compliant products could be on the market as early as 2010.

Joyce Putscher, Principal Analyst at market research firm In-Stat, said, “Service operators have been looking for an international standard that encompasses multiple existing-wire mediums for video distribution. G.hn meets that requirement and it seems clear that with significant industry backing from service providers, semiconductor and equipment vendors, and the fast rate at which the process is moving to achieve a standard, we will see first equipment by 2010.”

“There’s a clear market need for a unified networking approach,” said Malcolm Johnson, Director of ITU’s Telecommunication Standardization Bureau. “With G.hn, every wire in every home around the world can become part of a home entertainment network. This will enable seamless communication between computers, HDTVs and telephones over existing wires. I expect that this exciting new technology will also foster innovations such as energy efficient smart appliances, home automation and telemedicine devices.”

Work on G.hn was started at the instigation of service providers looking to extend broadband and video services in the home. As well as its offer of greater speed, it may be bundled as complementary to Wi-Fi where G.hn offers greater coverage, extending, for example, to areas of a house where Wi-Fi does not reach.

The standard has achieved remarkable industry backing even before its publication. An industry group — the HomeGrid Forum — has been formed specifically to back G.hn. The goal of HomeGrid Forum is to market G.hn worldwide and to create a compliance and interoperability programme to ensure that products based on the standard will operate in any home around the world.

Other industry analysts backing the standard include Michael Wolf, Research Director at ABI Research. “If G.hn sees integration into carrier devices by 2010, we expect that some 42 million G.hn-compliant nodes will ship in 2013 in devices such as set-top boxes, residential gateways and other service provider CPE hardware,” Wolf said.

“A single, unified technology for multimedia networks over power lines, coaxial cable, and phone lines has the potential to enable a simple, easy-to-use means of networking devices in the home,” said Kurt Scherf, analyst with market analyst firm Parks Associates. “We believe ITU’s work is an important step towards eliminating fragmentation in the industry and in achieving the vision of a networked home.”

Recommendation ITU-T G.9960 focuses on the physical or PHY layer, giving the data bit rate and quality of service necessary for triple-play residential services as well as business-type services delivered over xDSL, PON, or other access technology. In step with ITU guidelines on new standards development, several power saving modes have been incorporated. Ongoing work is focused on the media access control (MAC) layer.

The second meeting of the Focus Group on ICT and Climate Change will take place 25-28 November 2008, at ITU Headquarters in Geneva.

The meeting will gather global experts and continue work to finalize the four Deliverables on ICT and climate change that the Group has been mandated to prepare, notably an agreed methodology to measure the impact of ICTs on GHG emissions.

The recent WTSA-08 adopted Resolution 73 emphasising the high priority given to work on this issue in ITU-T.

This is an open meeting and registration is available online. The meeting will be paperless and is accessible via audiocast and webinar. For more information please visit the FG ICT&CC website.

The latest issue of IEEE Communications Magazine features a number of articles on ITU-T.

As well as a general article on the challenges faced by ITU-T, more detailed pieces focus on working methods, initiatives on climate change, audio coding, optical transport and bridging the standardization gap.

An electronic version of the publication can be seen here.

A new Technology Watch report focuses on Standardization Activities for Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS).

ITS are used to improve traffic flow, to increase the efficiency of freight and public transportation, and to reduce fuel consumption. Given the increasing number of road fatalities – it is estimated that some 1.2 million people die on the world’s roads each year, while as many as 50 million are injured – ITS could also become a tool to improve road safety, for instance through emergency vehicle notification systems, collision avoidance systems, driver assistance systems, and also through automatic road law enforcement.

While users will profit from new or improved services, a growing demand for ITS will create new opportunities for service providers (telematics, information, entertainment, etc.) and ITS equipment manufacturers.

The report identifies the main features of ITS including five modules: data gathering, data processing, information transfer and output, ITS communication, ITS control and management.

ITS are subject to standardization work in different standards bodies, including ITU, regional ITS societies and consortia. Standardization Activities for Intelligent Transport Systems analyzes these activities, and identifies possible future ITS related work in ITU.

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The World Telecommunication Standardization Assembly (WTSA-08) drew to a close yesterday in Johannesburg, South Africa with decisions on a wide range of issues that will impact the future direction of the information and communication technology (ICT) industry.

ITU members, spanning the global ICT industry and administrations from across the world, asked for increased emphasis on key areas such as ICTs and climate change, the deployment of IPv6, accessibility to ICTs for persons with disabilities, conformance and interoperability testing, and encouraging academic participation in ITU’s work.

Malcolm Johnson, Director of ITU’s Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T) said in his closing speech, "We have received a strong message from our members that ITU is, and will remain the world’s pre-eminent global telecommunication and ICT standards body. And we also hear very clearly that ITU should continue on its mission to connect the world, and that bridging the standardization gap — by increasing developing country participation in our work — is an essential prerequisite to achieve this goal."

Delegates at the ten-day meeting in Johannesburg agreed on measures including a restructuring of ITU’s standards work and a revised focus that will serve to strengthen ITU’s position as the world’s premier ICT standards body. Eight new chairmen were elected bringing a fresh outlook to many of ITU’s areas of study. 768 delegates, including 13 Ministers or Vice-Ministers from 99 countries participated.

"The reorganization of the Study Groups was not a simple task," Johnson added. "It has been attempted before but this time we have established a streamlined and efficient structure, avoiding duplication and focusing on our key objectives."

A key agreement encapsulated in a Resolution adopted by the Assembly is that ITU members will work towards reductions in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions arising from the use of ICTs, in line with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The Resolution also recognizes that ICTs can be a major mitigating factor in efforts to moderate climate change and to limit and ultimately reduce GHG emissions across all industry sectors. It also acknowledges that ITU has committed to achieving climate neutrality within three years.

Another Resolution tasks the ITU secretariat with carrying out studies in order to introduce the use of an ITU Mark as a voluntary programme permitting suppliers to make a visible declaration that their products conform to ITU-T Recommendations.

ITU Secretary-General Dr Hamadoun Touré said, " We have made significant strides in the development of a knowledge-based information society. This World Telecommunication Standardization Assembly, which has brought together close to 800 experts from nearly 100 countries, has laid out a road map for the future development of standards that underpin the world’s communications networks. This is a critical input for all stakeholders who join ITU in our commitment to connect the world."

The closing plenary of the Assembly saw Dr Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri, Minister of Communications of South Africa switch on South Africa’s digital broadcasting signal, which will be fully implemented in time for the Football World Cup in 2010.

A full report from the Assembly will be made available via its website.

A key conclusion of a recent ITU workshop on IPv6 is that capacity building will be fundamental to progress IPv6 deployment. A report from the workshop is available here.

The workshop, held in Geneva on 4-5 September 2008, brought together key policy makers, standards makers and other industry figures to progress international cooperation on the implementation of IPv6.

“We have noted voices and opinions from the developing world and from the developed world, from academia and research institutes, as well as from industry members,” said Malcolm Johnson, Director of ITU’s Telecommunication Standardization Bureau (TSB), in a speech to welcome workshop participants. “Often these voices focus on the issue of the management of Internet resources, including IPv6 addresses, and that it may be appropriate to consider systems that avoid some of the problems that have arisen with IPv4 allocations.”

Johnson invited the “IPv6 global community” to engage with ITU on this important topic. “It will be essential in the coming months to address some of the roadblocks that have so far stalled IPv6 implementation,” he said, adding that “ITU has proven and relevant competence as the architect and custodian of the world’s international telephone numbering system, a system which is characterized by stability”. ITU could play an active role in areas such as technical and standardization issues, which will enable the most efficient and effective usage of IPv6. It would also take part in capacity building and technical assistance to help countries in the deployment process and parallel running of IPv4 and IPv6.

Presenters highlighted Asia as home to several pioneering deployments of IPv6. Japan has long been a leader in research on the technology. China is home to the world’s biggest IPv6 infrastructure project, part of the China Next Generation Internet (CNGI) programme covering more than 40 cities nationwide.

The workshop recognized the role of governments in efforts to foster the deployment and usage of IPv6. It was also noted that the transition to IPv6 might be market driven, and that ISPs keen to ensure business continuity will benefit from the migration.

Participants agreed that there is a need to share knowledge, because migration scenarios are not yet completely clear. In this regard, it could be helpful to publicize comparisons between the architecture of IPv4 and IPv6, in order to demonstrate to decision makers the value of a more agile network.

The meeting recommended creating a project within ITU to assist developing countries based on regional needs as identified by the Telecommunication Development Bureau (BDT). This project should include a training component, and should be carried out jointly by the Telecommunication Standardization Bureau (TSB) and the BDT, taking into consideration the involvement of those partners willing to join and to contribute their expertise.

“The stability of the Internet is paramount. I am sure that the problems experienced so far are surmountable, and I know that ITU has the knowledge, strength and will to assist,” said Johnson.

A call for abstracts has been issued for ITU, ISO and IEC’s regular event focusing on information and communication technologies (ICT) in motor vehicles.

For the fourth year running The Fully Networked Car is being organized by ITU, ISO and IEC, working together as the World Standards Cooperation (WSC) under the leadership of ITU. Taking place at one of the world’s leading automotive events, the Geneva International Motor Show, the event will take place between 4 and 5 March 2009.

Presentations are sought that bring light to some of the complex questions that the ICT industry and the car industry are faced with. As was the case this year, a major topic will be ICT and climate change. Examples for other topics are standards and spectrum; car-to-x communications; nomadic devices; voice and audiovisual services; advanced driver assistance systems; wireless technologies for car production lines; safety; and security and privacy.

Authors wishing to present papers should submit a half-page abstract, including the title of the paper and the author’s full name, short biography, address, telephone and e-mail, to tsbcar@itu.int by Friday, 28 November 2008.

Cybersecurity experts in ITU-T’s Study Group 17 are exploring available methodologies to mitigate denial of service (DoS) attacks and short message service (SMS) spam by determining the origin of electronic communications when this becomes necessary. The work will also better enable settlements for carrying traffic over IP networks, and provide consumer protection from cyber crimes such as stalking and child pornography.

Specifically the group is working on a new Recommendation ITU-T Trace back use case and capabilities (temporarily designated X.tb-ucc). The work is in its early stages and collecting use cases and methodologies from which technical needs will be determined.

Currently there are many ways to find out the origin of network traffic, but it is possible to “spoof” source addresses. The new work will examine the diverse R&D accomplished over the past several years in many research institutions and consider the needs for operators and users for a trusted means of determining the source of traffic.

For example, telecoms operators are keen to find trusted trace back mechanisms where phantom traffic could be costing them millions of dollars a year. SMS and VOIP (voice over IP) traffic often comes from Internet gateways, and operators may claim a right to charge the originators for delivering it. Consumers are also seeking trusted CallerID capabilities globally that constitute one form of trusted traceback.

Many companies and institutions have provided input material.

Experts anticipate that the resulting Recommendation should describe a broad array of use-cases, as well as generally support the very substantial body of existing legal, regulatory, and industry business requirements for traceback worldwide, including the protection of personal information. The implementation in individual countries is as always subject to requirements specific to national jurisdiction.

The final programme and input documents for ITU’s Workshop on IPv6 4-5 September have been announced.

The event will be made available as an audio webcast, click here for details.

Cisco will host a reception on 4 September from 18:30 to 20:00 and all the coffee breaks are offered by Tiscali International Network.

See also previous newslog entry.

Press release.

The seventh in a series of ITU-T Technology Watch Briefing Reports covers next generation networks (NGN) and energy efficiency.

The report examines the relationship between climate change and NGN by analyzing energy efficiency and applications.

NGNs are seen by many as the new network architecture that will unify today’s fixed, mobile and broadcast networks. This innovative technology is expected to bring about greater energy efficiency than legacy networks by, for example, reducing the number of switching centres and increased temperature tolerance within those centres. NGNs are expected by some commentators to reduce energy consumption by 40 per cent compared to today’s public switched telephone network (PSTN).

This report presents an overview of the main characteristics of NGN and looks at how NGN can minimize the power consumption of the network, transmission and end-user equipment and in data centres. It examines the energy savings that can be indirectly obtained from greater NGN usage, such as remote collaboration and ITU-T standardization work on NGN and climate change.

Download the report here.

ITU-T has issued a call for papers for its Kaleidoscope 2009 event - Innovations for Digital Inclusion - to be held in Mar del Plata, Argentina, 31 August – 1 September 2009. The event is the second in a series of peer-reviewed academic conferences that aims at increasing the dialogue between experts working on the standardization of information and communications technologies (ICT) and academia.

The first Kaleidoscope event – Innovations in NGN - was held in Geneva, 12-13 May 2008.

Kaleidoscope 2009 is calling for original academic papers offering innovative approaches to digital inclusion. Prizes totalling USD 10k will be granted to the best papers, as judged by the organizing and programme committees. In addition a young author recognition certificate will be granted to authors presenting papers who are pursuing their studies and do not – at the time of the event - have a PhD. Accepted papers will be presented during the event, published in the proceedings and made available through IEEE Xplore. The best papers will be evaluated for potential publication in IEEE Communications Magazine.

Kaleidoscope-2009 will analyze technologies, services and applications five years and beyond that will capitalize on NGN infrastructure and promote digital inclusion. The event will cover multidisciplinary aspects, including regulatory and societal challenges as well as analysis of standardization needed.

Innovative technologies will help bring the benefits of ICTs to all segments of the population, in particular those in underserved communities and developing countries. The event seeks to promote research that supports innovation in ICTs toward universal, sustainable, ubiquitous and affordable access by all.

For sponsorship opportunities, please contact the ITU-T Kaleidoscope secretariat at kaleidoscope@itu.int.

ITU will host a workshop to address international public policy issues on the migration to IPv6, as well as the economic aspects related to IP address allocation 4-5 September in Geneva.

With the massive deployment of Internet-related resources worldwide and the integration of IP-enabled consumer devices connected directly to the network, the issue of the depletion of IPv4 addresses is becoming pertinent. Indeed, there is wide recognition of the need for better awareness of the availability of IPv4 addresses and the deployment of IPv6.

Despite the use of network address translation (NAT) as a strategy for reducing the use of public IPv4 addresses, several experts forecast depletion in the next few years. In addition to other features, IPv6 with its 128 bit address space is aimed at addressing the current shortage of public IPv4 addresses. However the transition from IPv4 to IPv6 is going at a rather slow rate, with both versions being used in parallel. Many informed observers attribute this to market forces and other economic considerations.

There is growing interest in IPv6 especially among the organizations involved in its management. ITU is organizing this workshop in order to foster dialogue and international cooperation on IPv6 related issues.

The workshop will provide a platform for dialogue where key players in the field, including all ITU sectors, as well as other interested entities will be able to discuss and address international public policy issues on the migration to IPv6, as well as the economic aspects related to IP address allocation.

The workshop is designed to stimulate discussion and interaction with the audience, rather than offer a string of presentations and speeches provided by panelists and speakers.

A meeting of the world’s leading ICT standards bodies has urged members to support the ITU-T Focus Group on ICTs and Climate Change. The ITU group formed earlier in July is working on the development of methodologies for the analysis, evaluation and quantification of greenhouse gas emissions from the ICT sector and the reductions that may be achieved through the use of ICTs in other sectors, and is open to any interested organisation.

A Resolution named ICT and the Environment from the Thirteenth Global Standards Collaboration (GSC-13) meeting asks that participating standards organizations (PSOs) share their views and experiences on this topic with ITU. The Resolution gives high priority to standards development related to ICT and climate change and encourages PSOs to closely collaborate on the topic. The Resolution promotes the following areas:

- awareness of changing environment and impacts of ICTs
- energy-saving definitions, reference models, gap analysis, measurement methods, quantification methods, and requirements in a harmonized way
- development of ICT standardization that have a positive impact on the environment
- electronic working methods and its tools
- use of ICTs (e.g. USN, RFIDs etc.) for monitoring and measuring climate change.

Malcolm Johnson, Director of the ITU's Standardization Bureau said, "This Resolution promotes a spirit of collaboration and mutual support in order that this globally important issue is tackled with the utmost efficiency. ITU gives all the world's standardization bodies the opportunity to work together to apply the power of ICTs to this greatest of all challenges".

The Thirteenth Global Standards Collaboration (GSC-13) was hosted by the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions (ATIS) in Boston, Massachusetts. One hundred participants attended. They included representatives from the Association of Radio Industries and Businesses (ARIB) of Japan, the China Communications Standards Association (CCSA) of China, the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), the ICT Standards Advisory Council of Canada (ISACC), the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions (ATIS) and Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) from the U.S., the Telecommunications Technology Association (TTA) of Korea and the Telecommunications Technology Committee (TTC) of Japan.

GSC-13 is the latest in a series of such events that commenced in Fredericksburg, Virginia, in 1990. The events provide a strategic opportunity for dialogue among senior officials from national, regional and international standards bodies. The next GSC meeting will be hosted by the ITU, the 13th to 16th of July 2009 in Geneva, Switzerland.

Press release.

Malcolm Johnson, Director of the Telecommunication Standardization Bureau, ITU interviewed by Gareth Mitchell on the BBC's Digital Planet programme on ICTs and climate change. Podcast available here.

The second ITU symposium on ICTs and climate change closed June 18 with a call for ITU to increase its activities in three areas: reducing energy consumption of ICT equipment; promoting efficiencies to be gained through the use of ICTs in other sectors; encouraging behaviour change – both in business and consumers.

"We are here because we are seeking to find the best ways to make ICTs a critical element in addressing climate change, and to identify the work that must be carried out in standards development, environmental monitoring, climate change mitigation and adaptation," said Malcolm Johnson, Director of ITU's Telecommunication Standardisation Bureau.

In a message to the symposium, UN Secretary-General, Mr Ban Ki-moon commended ITU for working with partners inside and outside the UN family to give high priority to actions in this field. "The information and communication technology sector has much to offer in creating a cleaner, greener world," he said.

Since the adoption of the Kyoto Protocol, in December 1997, the number of ICT users has tripled worldwide. The ICT Sector produces between two to three per cent of the total emissions of greenhouse gases, but if applied to reducing emissions in other industry sectors such as energy, transportation and buildings, could reduce global emissions by between 15 to 40 per cent depending on the methodology used to make these estimates.

The first ITU symposium on ICTs and climate change, held in Kyoto April 15-16, and co-organised by MIC Japan, drew attention to the wide variation in estimates on the impact of the fast paced ICT evolution on the global climate and recommended that ITU standardise methodologies for estimating the impact of ICTs on climate change both directly and indirectly. This was confirmed in London.

The chairmen’s reports of the two symposia will now be forwarded to the G8 Summit, to be held at Lake Toya, Hokkaido Prefecture in July 2008, and to other relevant meetings.

“We must remind ourselves that this is only a first step on the long road to finding and implementing global solutions to the challenge of climate change through the use of ICTs. What is important is not so much what we say this week, but how we act and follow up on the momentum we have created” said Johnson.

Speaker Luis Neves, chairman of the Global e-Sustainability Initiative (GeSI), a group comprised of key technology companies and organizations (including ITU) said that communications technology is a part of the climate change solution. A GeSI study on facilitating the low carbon economy in the information age has been published.

The London symposium was chaired by Mr. Tom Walker, Director, Europe and international Business Relations, Department for Business Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR), UK.

During the opening session BT chairman Sir Michael Rake accepted a Queen's Award for Enterprise - recognizing the company’s efforts in the field of sustainable development. The award - also received by BT in 2003 and which runs for five years - was presented by the Lord Mayor of the City of London Alderman David Lewis on behalf of Her Majesty the Queen.

The ITU is expected to conduct most of its work using remote collaboration tools. It may also undertake a gap analysis of work being carried out among other standardization development organizations so as to better focus its activities. In the closing session Johnson strongly encouraged all the attendees, as well others, to participate in this work.

Presentations from Kyoto and London can be viewed here.

See also climate change news feed.

A new ITU-T standard unifies identification schemes used for example in multimedia mobile applications. Currently no uniform way exists to reconcile the many different ID schemes in place now, or to be defined.

The standard - Rec. ITU-T X.668 - concentrates on what it calls tag-based applications and services. This description includes RFID and bar code 'tags'. The standard allows the referencing of schemes using the object identifier (OID) system which ITU-T and ISO/IEC developed in the 1980s and widely deployed, for example, in e-commerce applications.

The introduction of this standard will not cause existing tags to become obsolete. Given deployment of the standard, a tag placed on a billboard poster can be read with a mobile phone and make it easy for the user to get additional multimedia (text, graphics, even voice or video) information about the content of the poster.

ITU-T X.668 is the first and key stage in the standardization process with the next work focussing on specifications of the system and protocol that will associate the multimedia information to an ID (a.k.a. ID resolving).

Technically, this Recommendation (also published as an equivalent ISO/IEC International Standard) specifies the information and justification to be provided when requesting an OID for identification schemes for tag-based applications and services, and the procedures for the operation of the Registration Authority (see here). It was jointly authored by experts from ITU-T Study Groups 17 (with input from SG 13 and SG 16) and ISO/IEC. The original drive for the work came from Korea's Electronics and Telecommunication Research Institute (ETRI).

New About Us pages have been developed to give those new to ITU-T an overview of the work of the world’s premier ICT standards organization.

The pages offer an overview of ITU-T, a guide to its framework and working methods and high level introductions to each of the Study Groups (eg Study Group 15).

Users are invited to submit questions to an already well populated FAQ and an animated sequence puts ITU standards into a real world context.

Standards development and standards approval procedures are also summarized. A news page contains YouTube highlights and a list of all ITU-T RSS feeds. The contacts page includes an embedded googlemap and should help you find the right person to talk to if you have any enquiries. If all else fails standards@itu.int will always help direct your mail.

The second ITU Symposium on ICTs and Climate Change (June 17-18 in London, UK, hosted by BT) will be made available as a live webcast in order that remote participants can see and hear presentations from wherever they are in the world.

The symposium will bring together key specialists in the field, from top decision-makers to engineers, designers, planners, government officials, regulators, standards experts and others. (See here for programme, bios and presentation slides).

Remote participants may also submit questions in real-time to: TSBSPD@itu.int.

Register now for free webcast access.

ITU-T NGN expert, Seungyun Lee, from the Korean Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (Korea) will make a presentation at the upcoming Telemanagement Forum’s (TMF), Service Delivery Summit. Lee’s presentation is entitled Towards a SOA/WS enabled NGN Open Service Environment - ongoing developments in ITU-T SG13.

His abstract:

“Across the telecom industry, much work is underway to separate the communications capabilities in today’s networks from the networks themselves and to make those capabilities available for integration into the applications in the IT industry. This effort is making possible a rich menu of modular building blocks that can be easily mixed and matched with building blocks from the IT industry to form wholly new kinds of multimedia services and automated business processes that marry the rich content, data applications, and business processes of the IT world with the intelligent, real-time, in-the-network functions of the telecom domain.

Key to this effort at the core of future multimedia service architectures are the SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) and the WS (Web Services) frameworks. ITU-T SG13 has started the development of specifications towards the integration of SOA and WS technical approaches in the NGN context. In line with approved and ongoing ITU-T recommendations, this presentation, building over the basic concept of NGN capabilities, will introduce some key requirements and capabilities for the support of an advanced open service environment in NGN. The integration of SOA and WS in NGN will be then examined, including some achievements and current challenges for the standards community.”

The event focuses on the drive to create an open, industry owned blueprint of how new and exciting services can be created and delivered across complex value chains. It examines standardization of key elements of service delivery platforms (SDPs), which will open up the ability of partners to add end-user value by working seamlessly together to deliver novel services, created and delivered in a fraction of the time and cost it takes today, while dramatically cutting integration costs and avoiding vendor lock-in.

A recent meeting of ITU-T’s Study Group 12 saw consent – first stage of the approval process - on two key new standards for IPTV.

The first ITU-T Recommendation defines user requirements for Quality of Experience (QoE) for IPTV services.

Quality of Experience (QoE) is defined thus: The overall acceptability of an application or service, as perceived subjectively by the end-user.

The new Recommendation (ITU-T Rec. G.1080) defines QoE requirements from an end user perspective, agnostic to network deployment architectures and transport protocols. They are specified as end-to-end and information is provided on how they influence network transport and application layer behaviour. QoE requirements for video, audio, text, graphics, control functions and meta-data are provided.

The second ITU-T Rec. (ITU-T Rec. G.1081) consented defines performance monitoring for IPTV. The goal of this is to provide higher QoS/QoE to customers by identifying, localizing and quantifying service and network issues. IPTV performance monitoring can be software based, hardware based, or a hybrid.

Monitoring parameters, monitoring points and monitoring methods are defined that allow the service provider/network operator to monitor the performance of the service delivery to the end user.

Successful deployment of IPTV services requires performance to be monitored at the customer premise (e.g. set-top-box), key aggregation points such as DSL Access Multiplexer (DSLAM) or cable modem termination system (CMTS) and at interconnect points between disparate network domains. Performance monitoring can help:

• Find errors in an end-to-end system (system debugging)
  
• Check the resource utilization and the work load of system components
  
• Compare values (metrics) regarding performance of different system deployments
  
• Provide a base for modelling the system
  
• Find system bottlenecks
  
• Optimize IPTV network deployment
  
• Ensure that system performance does not degrade with time.

IPTV standards are progressing rapidly through ITU-T's IPTV Global Standards Initiative (GSI). With successful first generation IPTV services offered by many service providers worldwide standards are seen as vital to boost next generation services where a customer may go into shop, buy an IPTV box, call their network operator and sign-up and then access services from a range of third party service providers. More Recommmendations are expected to be consented at the upcoming IPTV-GSI meeting 23-27 June in Geneva.

The sixth in a series of ITU-T Technology Watch Briefing Reports covers the technology and standards behind lawful interception (LI), the lawfully authorized monitoring and interception of telecommunications.

Information and communication technologies (ICTs) have enabled (lawful) interception since the early days of electronic communications, but it remains a shadowy area due to the necessary secrecy that must be accorded to investigations. National laws, LI methods and standards need to be adapted to new telecommunication technologies, which continue to develop at an ever faster pace.

LI has been subject of recent discussion in different ITU-T Study Groups and there is agreement that the topic cannot be limited to its technical parameters: it involves a range of different aspects including legal, regulatory, social and political considerations, at national and international levels. Some parties view LI as a national rather than an international matter while others fear that ITU efforts might duplicate work already done elsewhere. Any discussion of LI, even from a strictly technical perspective, tends to get very quickly into a parallel discussion on human rights.

The report addresses the importance of developing international standards assuring a transparent process of interception, focusing on the sometimes conflicting goals of privacy and security.

Download Technology Watch report on Lawful Interception

Interview with Malcom Johnson, Director, ITU, Telecommunication Standardization Bureau. Malcom Johnson talks about the increasing emphasis on green ICT and ICT standards for climate change.

Watch now.

The Regional Development Forum for the Americas Region closed 20 May 2008, in Brasilia, Brazil. The Forum, was jointly organized by ITU-T and ITU-D,  in cooperation with Inter-American Telecommunication Commission (CITEL), and hosted by ANATEL, Brazil. 

More than 200 participants attended, from 17 countries in North, Central and South America as well as the Caribbean. 

At the opening ceremony, the chairman,  H.E. Ambassador Ronaldo Sardenberg, President of Anatel, Brazil, confirmed the  Anatel’s interest in increasing its cooperation with  ITU and other regulatory agencies . He stressed the importance of the Forum in terms of preparing for WTSA-08 and discussing the “standardization gap”. He pointed out that the capacity to participate in the standardization process is of fundamental importance to decrease this standardization gap between developed and developing countries.

In his speech Mr. Clovis Baptista, Executive Secretary of  CITEL underlined the great impact that the information society has on society. The information society responds to society’s needs and helps people build on progress, he said. Baptista also reported an increase in the number of available services within the Americas region. A universal and suitable infrastructure is one of the objectives necessary to accelerate the process of American integration he said.

Director of ITU’s Telecommunication Standardization Bureau (TSB), Malcolm Johnson, thanked the Ambassador for hosting the event and  the cooperation of CITEL. He expressed his appreciation to countries in the Americas for their active support of ITU’s activities, especially its standardization work. He highlighted the importance of standards for international communications and global trade. Globalisation requires global standards, and a global standards body like ITU clearly has an increasing role to play, he said.

In his speech, Johnson also raised the serious problem of cost of participation, especially in meetings in Geneva, as well as the cost of membership, particularly for small start-up companies in developing countries. He said that there had been attempts to overcome these difficulties, and that the issues would be hot topics at the upcoming World Telecommunication Standardization Assembly (WTSA-08). Johnson said that he had long encouraged members to host meetings in the regions, and had recently established a fund to assist hosts with the cost of doing so, as well as for providing fellowships to attend the meetings. He also mentioned the invitation to hold an NGN Global Standards Initiative (GSI) meeting in the Americas region in September 2009. Moreover, he added that ITU-T has also been trialling new collaboration tools which will allow remote participation in ITU-T meetings.

 

ITU-T and IEEE Communications Society (Comsoc) have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) aiming to better collaboration between academia and the standards world.

The document was signed during the first ITU-T Kaleidoscope conference, Innovations in NGN - Future Network and Services by Malcolm Johnson, Director of the ITU Telecommunication Standardization Bureau, and Alexander D. Gelman, Director of Standards, IEEE ComSoc.

The objective of the MoU is to increase cooperation particularly in the area of events (e.g. workshops, seminars, symposia, forums and academic conferences) and publications.

The conference was the first in a series that aims at increasing the dialogue between academia, research institutes and ITU experts working on the standardization of ICTs. Held in Geneva, 12-13 May, it was attended by more than 220 participants.

Organized by ITU-T with IEEE ComSoc as Technical Co-Sponsor and supported by Cisco, Intel, the International Communications Foundation of Japan) and Sun Microsystems, the conference brought together the best academic minds from around the world to present their future visions for Next-Generation Networks (NGN).

Among over 140 papers submitted. 53 papers were presented and the best three were awarded prizes totaling $10,000 kindly donated by Cisco. These papers will be included in a future special edition of the IEEE Communications Magazine.

The winning papers were:

• Architecture and business model of open heterogeneous mobile network, Yoshitoshi Murata; Mikio Hasegawa; Homare Murakami; Hiroshi Harada; Shuzo Kato.
  
• Differential phase shift quantum key distribution, Hiroki Takesue; Toshimori Honjo; Kiyoshi Tamaki; Yasuhiro Tokura.
  
• Open API standardisation for the NGN platform, Catherine Mulligan.

In addition to the prize pool 16 entrants received a Young Author Recognition Certificate, a recognition ITU will continue to give in future.

The conference highlighted technologies, services and applications that will capitalize on the NGN infrastructure as well as looking beyond NGN. It covered multidisciplinary aspects related to the deployment of NGN, including analysis of regulatory and societal challenges.

Attendees agreed on the the importance of strong collaboration between ITU-T, academia, and research institutes, which would be to the benefit all. The many academics in attendance expressed the importance of the role of universities in the standardization process. One issue discussed was the lowering of the ITU membership fee for such organizations, a topic that will likely be discussed at the coming WTSA-08 .

Building on the success of the first Kaleidoscope event, a second conference is planned for 2009.

A live audiocast, and archived audio of the conference can be accessed here.

A standardized language-independent way to identify a next-of-kin (or other emergency contact) in a mobile handset's directory, in case of an emergency, has been adopted as a new clause in ITU-T Recommendation E.123.

Emergency rescue workers searching for contact information for the next-of-kin to an injured person have had no globally understood way of identifying that person's details.

The directory of the injured person's mobile handset is typically used, since it usually contains the names and numbers of next-of-kin. However, without a standard way to distinguish these contacts from all other entries in the directory it is difficult for emergency workers to identify who to call.

A system does exist but works only for readers of latin scripts. In 2005, an English ambulance paramedic, Bob Brotchie, proposed a world-wide introduction of an easy-to-find listing of phone numbers to be called "In Case of Emergency" (ICE) in the mobile phones of victims of accidents etc.

ICE spread across Europe from the mid 2000's and started to grow into North America. In a very short time ICE became a standard phrase used by safety advice agencies and emergency services all over the English-speaking world. The United Nations issued a guidance note to its entire staff making them aware of the programme.

Even though very useful, the acronym ICE is specific to the English language, and the letters ICE is of no use to people who can not recognize letters in the Latin script.

ITU believes that international standards must be useable by anyone, regardless of language or script, and has thus taken one step further by approving the standardized language-independent version of ICE using Arabic numerals (the digits 0 through 9) instead, since they are known by all users around the world.

The new clause in Recommendation E.123 proposes to store emergency contact numbers in the form "0nx", where "n" is a digit from 1 through 9 and "x" is any meaningful descriptive character string in any language or script (e.g. "Anna" or "Spouse"). In the handset's directory this would be displayed as "01Anna" or "01Spouse" enabling easy identification by the emergency services.

Nokia Siemens Networks, Microsoft and Cisco have contributed over USD 125,000 between them to  establish  an ITU fund to bridge the standardization gap between developed and developing countries.

ITU recently announced the fund that would be used to support forums , tutorials  and workshops, participation  of delegates from least developed countries in meetings, the hosting of meetings in developing countries, surveys and study programmes.   

Bridging the standardization gap means allowing easier participation in the standards development process which in turn allows developing countries to profit from access to new technology development and ensures that their needs are taken into account in the development of standards.

Rajiv Kapoor, Director Carrier Standards and Architectures, Cisco Systems, Cisco: “As a technology leader, Cisco is a longtime supporter of ITU activities in many fields and especially of projects aimed at bridging the digital divide. Increasing developing country participation in the standards making process is not a short term fix. It will give developing countries a voice in the development of next generation ICTs and sow the seeds of a truly equitable information society.”

Tom Robertson, General Manager for Interoperability and Standards at Microsoft: “Technical standards play a critical role in defining the technical and economic landscape around the world. All communities affected by standards should have a voice in their creation. We are strong supporters of bridging the standardization gap between developed and developing countries. The ITU fund represents important efforts being made to ensure that all countries have the opportunity to contribute to standards development. We look forward to supporting the ITU's efforts to resolve disparities and bring the potential of technology development to all communities. ”

Dirk Weiler, Vice President Standards and Fora at Siemens Information and Communication Mobile, Nokia Siemens Networks: “Technology is a way for the poor of the world to break free from poverty. We have identified participation in the standards making process as an important way to facilitate digital inclusion. The problem is that in the past developing countries have lacked the resources to access, implement and contribute to standards. This new initiative goes a long way to addressing the problem. We look forward to working with ITU on its continuing efforts to bridge the digital divide.”

Companies interested in making a contribution to the fund should contact Thierry Perewostchikow (thierry.perewostchikow[a]itu.int). The relevant Circular Letter can be found here.

 

 

 

ITU is hosting a workshop that will examine the critical issue of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) and ICT standards.

The one day workshop will be held at ITU headquarters, 1 July.

The event, aimed at intellectual property specialists and standards makers will discuss the inclusion of patented technology in standards and the patent policy approaches to address this. International experts from both the public and private sectors from around the world will help provide an overview of the issues and share their insights on present and future developments.

The exchange of ideas and experiences facilitated by this workshop will provide valuable insight and input that can help to guide future discussion of the related issues – both at the ITU and in other fora.

Press release on common patent policy.

More information and registration here.

Preparatory meetings for the World Telecommunication Standardization Assembly (WTSA-08) will take place in Brazil, Ghana, Uzbekistan, Syria and Viet Nam during the months leading up to the event in October. Alongside each event a Regional Development Forum addressing the standardization gap between developed and developing countries will be held.

WTSA is the quadrennial event that defines the future direction for the ITU’s Standardization Sector (ITU-T).

Regional organizations APT, ATU, Arab Group, CEPT, CITEL, RCC will host the meetings aiming to coordinate regional views on issues considered to be of particular relevance to each area, and develop common regional proposals for submission to WTSA-08.

The Regional Forums are aimed at encouraging greater understanding of, and participation in, the work of ITU-T. They will explain the status of the current hot topics under discussion in ITU-T, and how to become involved in ITU-T activities in order to champion the interests of each region in the development of international ICT standards.

For details see here.

The ITU/MIC Kyoto Symposium on ICTs and Climate Change closed 16 April with agreement that ITU should play a significant role in the global effort to combat climate change.

A number of actions were recommended for ITU. Among them was a task for ITU’s Standardization Sector (ITU-T) which was tasked with the development of an internationally agreed standard methodology to measure the impact of ICTs on climate change, both in terms of the direct emission of greenhouse gases, and the savings that can be generated in other sectors of industry through the application of ICTs.

Director of ITU’s Telecommunication Standardization Bureau (TSB), Malcolm Johnson, supported the meeting’s recommendation that an ITU-T Focus Group would be an appropriate vehicle to take forward this work. He said that he would propose the formation of a new group to ITU’s Telecommunication Standardization Advisory Group (TSAG) at its next meeting in July. However, to move quickly, he encouraged the submission of proposals on the terms of reference for this group, as well as initial proposals on methodologies, to: tsbtechwatch@itu.int.

Johnson also proposed that a draft Resolution would be presented at this year’s World Telecommunication Standardization Assembly (WTSA-08), in Johannesburg, October. The document is expected to outline ITU-T’s responsibility in identifying the role that ICTs should play in the mitigation and monitoring of climate change and target reductions for the industry.

Experts agreed that the chairman’s report of the Kyoto event provides an excellent start point for the Resolution which will be discussed in further detail at the second ITU symposium on ICTs and climate change, 17-18 June 2008 in London. More information is also available in the meeting summary and the ITU background report.

The chairman’s report of the Kyoto symposium will also be forwarded to upcoming meetings of the World Economic Forum, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) ministerial meeting in the Republic of Korea, the G8 meeting in Japan and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

The second ITU symposium on ICTs and climate change, will be held 17-18 June in London, hosted by BT. The London event will also be broadcast as a live Webinar. Register: [more information]

Presentations from Kyoto can be viewed here.

See also climate change news feed for more detailed reports on the Kyoto event.

Fears that a set of next-generation network transport specifications developed by ITU-T could cause interoperability problems have been allayed.

The IETF and ITU will work together to extend IETF MPLS functionality to address the needs of the transport network. The work will move forward recognizing that the sole design authority for MPLS resides in the IETF, and the domain of expertise for Transport Network Infrastructure resides in ITU-T SG15.

ITU-T has been developing extensions to Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) MPLS to address the requirements of the transport network (T-MPLS). However, concerns were raised by the IETF that the approach taken by the ITU-T was incompatible with widely deployed - MPLS - technology. These concerns have been allayed with the agreement that the IETF and ITU-T will work jointly on the development of a transport profile for MPLS technology which will now be referred to as “MPLS-TP”.

The Joint Working Team (see previous newslog entry) consisting of experts from the IETF and ITU-T has recommended that IETF MPLS technology should be extended to meet the requirements of the transport network. The proposal is based on technical analysis that showed that the IETF MPLS architecture can be extended to provide the functionality required by the transport network as defined by ITU-T's Study Group 15. The ITU-T has accepted this proposal and the IETF will develop a transport profile for MPLS (MPLS-TP) with input from ITU-T to ensure that the requirements of the transport network are fully addressed. Details of the proposal and the technical consideration are available here.

Malcolm Johnson, Director, ITU Telecommunication Standardization Bureau said, "Given the complexity of today’s networks it is inevitable that we will, from time-to-time, see divergent approaches. What is important is that we quickly agree on a way forward. The experts in the joint group have worked hard to find a cooperative solution rather than going our separate ways. This is an excellent result and bodes well for the future collaboration between ITU and IETF".”

Russ Housley Chair of the IETF, "I am very optimistic about the outcome, and I see this as a significant milestone in the cooperation between the ITU-T and the IETF."

 

Six new standards enabling a more secure ICT environment have been approved by ITU. Experts say that the standards represent an important achievement reflecting the needs of business in establishing risk management strategies and the protection of consumers.

Three ITU-T Recommendations cover a definition of cybersecurity, a standardized way for vendors to supply security updates and guidelines on spyware. While the other three focus on countering the modern day plague of spam by providing a toolbox of technical measures to help consumers and service providers.

Malcolm Johnson, Director, ITU Telecommunication Standardization Bureau: “In the real – non-virtual – world risk management is well understood and so the infrastructure has been developed to protect against theft, fraud and other kinds of attack. The virtual world should be no different. And standards can provide the backbone for this risk-management infrastructure.”

Standards give businesses the systematic approach to information security that they need to keep network assets safe. The adoption of multiple – proprietary – approaches is, experts agree, an inherently more vulnerable approach.

Recommendations on spam are a direct response to a call from the World Telecommunication Standardization Assembly (WTSA), the quadrennial event that defines study areas for ITU-T. Members asked that ITU-T define technical measures to tackle this plague of the digital world following growing global concern at additional costs and loss of revenue to Internet service providers, telecoms operators and business users.

Herb Bertine, Chairman of ITU-T’s Study Group 17 that looks at cybersecurity: “ITU-T is in a unique position given its international scope and the fact that it brings together the private sector and governments to coordinate work on standards and influence the harmonization of security practices worldwide.”

The Recommendations in brief

ITU-T Rec. X.1205 establishes a definition of cybersecurity noting that this understanding is needed in order to build a foundation of knowledge that can aid securing the networks of tomorrow. Network protocols, it says, were developed in an environment of trust but today cybersecurity threats are growing. ITU-T Rec. X.1205 provides a classification of security threats from an organization’s point of view. It gives a layered approach to security enabling organizations to create multiple levels of defence against threats.

ITU-T Rec. X.1206 is designed to make it easier for systems administrators to manage patches/updates from multiple software vendors. The work was driven by concerns that the number of different methodologies used to deliver software updates was becoming a headache for companies. The Rec. gives a vendor-neutral framework for automatic notification of security related information and dissemination of updates.

ITU-T Rec. X.1207 gives guidelines enabling users to identify spyware and for vendors to avoid their products being mistakenly identified as such. The Recommendation promotes best practices around principles of clear notices, and user’s consents and controls. Authors of the Recommendation say that it develops and promotes best practices to users on PC security, including use of anti-spyware, anti-virus, personal firewall, and security updates of software on client systems.

ITU-T Rec. X.1231 sets out the requirements for combating spam and will serve as the startpoint for all further anti-spam standardization work. It gives an overview of methodologies to counter spam and describes the general characteristics of spam whether for e-mail, SMS, VoIP or other emerging forms of spam. It also outlines key ways to counter spam, and a hierarchical model to establish an efficient and effective anti-spam strategy.

ITU-T Rec. X.1240 is aimed at end users and focusing just on e-mail spam, brings together various mature spam combating technologies in order that users can select the most appropriate.

ITU-T Rec. X.1241 promotes greater cooperation between service providers in tackling spam. In particular the document provides a framework enabling a communication methodology for alerts on identified spam.

ITU-T IPTV experts Ghassem Koleyni and Simon Jones will lead a live web seminar (webinar) on IPTV standardization, May 7 at 1600 CET.

Click here to register, for the webinar hosted by industry analyst Heavy Reading. By registering you will be able to listen to and take part in discussion as well as view presentation slides.

Koleyni and Jones will present standardization from an ITU perspective with experts from other standards bodies, including the DSL Forum and ATIS, explaining how they have worked with ITU to produce the first set of global IPTV specifications, available here. Malcolm Johnson, Director ITU Telecommunication Standardization Bureau said: “I encourage anyone involved in the deployment of IPTV services at any level to take this opportunity to learn about this important set of standards as well as quiz our experts on the topic.

We have already seen first generation IPTV services and as these mature we may see a change in regulation or market demand that will require interoperation between service and/or network providers. A potential outcome of this will be that a customer can go into shop, buy an IPTV box, call their network operator and sign-up and then access services from a range of third party service providers. It is to meet that need that the value of ITU’s work on standardisation will be realised. ”

If you can’t join the live event registration will give access to an archive file of the event.

Following an ITU-T workshop on accessibility last year at the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Rio, a Dynamic Coalition on Accessibility and Disability (DCAD) has been established by ITU-T. The DCAD will facilitate interaction between relevant bodies and ensure that information and communications technologies (ICT) accessibility and tools to facilitate it are included in the key debates around Internet governance.

DCAD aims to help build a future where all sectors of the global community have equal access to communications and online information as well as the ability to participate in IGF discussions and seminars. The initiative takes into account the fact that all communities can benefit from ICTs and improve their quality of life, a view supported by the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

The coalition is currently composed of eight organizations, and is open to any entity or individual working in the field. If you wish to be part of this effort please contact the Dynamic Coalition Secretariat.

Further information on ITU and ICT accessibility can be found here.

The first set of global standards for IPTV have been published in an online compendium.

The proceedings of the IPTV Focus Group (IPTV FG) are collected in an online document including a preface from the ITU Director of the Telecommunication Standardization Bureau (TSB) and the Chairman of the IPTV FG. They are the result of 20 months hard work by the Focus Group which has now been passed on to the IPTV-GSI (global standards initiative).

Malcolm Johnson, Director of the TSB says in the preface: “The results of the work of the IPTV Focus Group will lay the foundation for an area of ICTs that is predicted to attract up to 100 million subscribers in the next three years. It's easy to see why so many of the world's leading ICT companies have been keen to progress this work.”

As well as the 21 deliverables, the publication gives an overview of the Focus Group, its management team and the group's activities and achievements focusing on: architecture and requirements; QoS and performance aspects; service security and content protection; IPTV network control; end systems and interoperability aspects and middleware, application and content platforms.

The first ITU Symposium on ICTs and Climate Change (April 15-16 in Kyoto, Japan, co-organized and hosted by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC) will be available as a webinar in order that remote participants can see and hear presentations from wherever they are in the world.

Remote participants may also submit questions in real-time to: TSBSPD@itu.int.

To register:

•  for Day 1, 15 April click here.
•  for Day 2, 16 April click here.

Programme including bios and presentations (times in JST, London -8, New York -13).

System requirements

Live audio stream here.

ITU Background Paper on ICTs and Climate Change

ITU will host a tutorial on how to improve websites and meeting facilities, in order to meet the requirements for an accessible ICT infrastructure. The event will take place 22 April 0900 – 1300, at ITU headquarters in Geneva.

Accessible ICT is one of the key obligations of the United Nations Convention on Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Recently, a Joint Coordination Activity on Accessibility and Human Factors (JCA-AHF) has been established by ITU-T's Study Group 2 to coordinate standardization activities in the field. See previous story on ITU’s latest work in the field of accessibility.

The tutorial is aimed at ITU staff but open to staff of similar organizations working on public policy, web content management, web development and conference organization.

The event will provide a high-level overview of the delivery of accessible content on the web, including a discussion of the problems of inaccessible web content, markup of images, online forms and PDFs, as well as the solutions for addressing these barriers. Public policy benefits will also be addressed including the benefits of the accessible web for people without disabilities. Emergence of technical standards for the accessible design of ICTs will also be covered. Practical demonstrations of remote web captioning will be conducted and free resources for checking websites for accessibility will be highlighted.

See the event's website for more information. The tutorial is free of charge, if you need assistance to obtain access to the ITU premises in order to attend please contact the JCA-AHF Secretariat at: tsbjcaahf[at]itu.int

Press release.

An ITU event will bring together the best academic minds from around the world to present their future visions for next generation networks (NGN). The three best papers will be awarded from a prize fund donated by Cisco totaling $10,000.

Innovations in NGN, 12-13 May, Geneva is the first in a series of conferences under the banner ‘Kaleidoscope’ that will bring closer ties between ITU, academia and research organizations. The event, technically co-sponsored by the IEEE Communications Society attracted around 140 contributions with its initial call for papers. From this, 54 of the most visionary papers have been selected by a review panel of 140 experts from around the world for presentation at the conference. The event will also host the signing of a memorandum of understanding (MoU) between ITU and IEEE Communications Society.

Innovations in NGN will highlight technologies, services and applications five years and beyond that will capitalize on the NGN infrastructure and lead to the ubiquitous network society in which information can be accessed anywhere and anytime by anyone and anything. It will also cover multidisciplinary aspects related to the deployment of NGN, including analysis of regulatory and societal challenges.

Malcolm Johnson, Director of the Telecommunication Standardization Bureau: “Technology is a critical determinant of sustainable growth and poverty reduction. And, education is key to the accelerated development of information and communications technologies (ICT) and contributes to the increased use of these technologies all over the world. Without the involvement of the world’s universities and other academic and research institutions we would not have reached the level of innovation that we see today. The Kaleidoscope series is an excellent innitiative to capitalize on the fruitful relationship that we already have with academia and take it to another level.”

ITU has a long history of collaboration with academia and many standards (ITU-T Recommendations) have been developed with academic input. Some leading Study Group positions are held by university professors. The Kaleidoscope initiative will encourage a new type of engagement along the lines of an academic conference. Authors whose works are selected for the event’s proceedings will gain extra academic recognition by being published online by IEEE. The standards world will profit from new ideas for possible future development.

Innovations in NGN is to inspire contributions towards a kaleidoscopic view of communication habits for the future. We know what NGN is in terms of the underlying technology, but we don’t know what services will emerge, how NGN will affect the marketplace for ICT, and how society will be affected. This, first in the series of Kaleidoscope conferences is free for anyone to attend and will shed light on some of these questions as well as inspire debate and future work on the future of ICT and ICT standardization. Please register at www.itu.int/ITU-T/uni/kaleidoscope/.

ITU-T is seeking sponsors to join Cisco, ICF and Sun Microsystems and help fund the various activities connected to the event including publication of proceedings, coffee-breaks and reception. For more details contact kaleidoscope@itu.int.

ITU together with G3ict is holding a joint Forum to review areas of challenges and opportunities for international ICT accessibility standards in light of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

The event will take place at ITU Headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland on Monday, 21 April 2008. See previous story on ITU’s latest work in the field of accessibility.

The Convention has been signed by an unprecedentedly high number of UN Member States in a relatively short time – 126 since 30 March 2007. This makes it all the more urgent to promote ICT accessibility standards that will support a better and faster implementation around the world of the many dispositions of the Convention regarding ICTs.

For the first time since the Convention was adopted by the UN General Assembly, an international group of experts from industry, standards development organizations, NGOs representing persons with disabilities, international development institutions, governments and academia will examine in detail its many implications for ICT accessibility standards. Proceedings will be edited to serve as a reference for future accessibility standards developments.

The event will review existing and in-progress technology standards and standardization of product development methodologies; discuss the role of public policy and procurement in support of standardization and the implementation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and identify follow-up actions to facilitate its implementation.

“Increase productivity, save time and money while reducing your company’s carbon footprint”; this is the ambitious sales pitch for a new family of tools that promise to offer the 3Cs - communication, collaboration and coordination - without the requirement for physical travel. For ITU-T, whose basic mission is to encourage collaborative work among a global membership on the development and adoption of international standards, remote collaboration is a daily necessity.

A new report, the fifth in a series of ITU-T Technology Watch Briefing Reports, describes how Remote Collaboration Tools can facilitate collaboration with colleagues, and support businesses in overcoming the geographical limitations of everyday work. Remote collaboration tools can be used alongside, or integrated with, traditional office applications (such as e-mail, word processing, spreadsheets) or as an enabler of collaboration, communication and coordination. Using online meetings, collaboration that might not have occurred otherwise (as a consequence of tight schedules, long distances, or the high cost of business travel), may now take place.

For developing countries, remote collaboration tools can thus be seen as a helpful instrument in overcoming the digital divide and for “Bridging the Standardization Gap”, an ITU initiative to facilitate the participation of developing countries in the standards development process.

Furthermore, replacing long-distance travel by online meetings makes remote collaboration tools a clean, green technology, which is particularly important in the context of current global concerns over climate change. In 2007, ITU-T organized and provided logistical and secretariat support for some 85 meetings/workshops, representing a total of 339 meeting days, as well as numerous smaller informal meetings, such as rapporteur groups of steering committees. Holding even a small number of those meetings online would reduce travel and therefore have a significant impact on ITU-T’s carbon footprint.

Two upcoming ITU Symposia on ICTs and Climate Change (April 15-16 in Kyoto, Japan, co-organized and hosted by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC) and 17-18 June 2008 in London, supported and hosted by BT) will be available as a webinar in order that remote participants can see and hear presentations from wherever they are in the world. Provision will also be made for remote participants to submit comments and questions.

Download Technology Watch report on Remote Collaboration Tools

The website for a new group to coordinate standardization activities on accessibility and human factors issues has gone live. The joint coordination activity on accessibility and human factors (JCA-AHF) is open to experts working in the field to improve access to the information society by people with varied capability of handling information and the controls for its presentation. Participation will be mainly by electronic means – to take part simply send a mail to tsbjcaahf@itu.int.

ITU has been active in accessibility and human factors for many years. Two of the best known standards are one relating to the designation of a “tactile identifier” - the number five on a telephone keypad - for easy identification for those with impaired sight (ITU-T Recommendation E.161) and a standard for text telephony (ITU-T Recommendation V.18). Recently accessibility guidelines have been drawn up to ensure that new standards are developed with the needs of those with disabilities taken into account (see previous newslog entry here).

JCA-AHF has organized a tutorial session on web design, web conferencing and real time web captioning to improve current ITU practices. It will be held in Geneva on 22 April. Details will follow.

For more detail on ITU-T’s work on accessibility see here.

Another ITU initiative related to the topic is the Dynamic Coalition on Accessibility and Disability which has been created under the Internet Governance Forum (IGF). See here. More details will follow.

When you enter a modern office building, such as ITU-T’s office in Geneva, it is quite common for the glass doors to open automatically and for lights to come on as you enter a darkened room. This “magic” is achieved by motion sensors. But entering a building in the future, you might be welcomed by name with a personal greeting and given security access suitable to your status (e.g., employee, delegate, newcomer). To do this without human intervention would require not only intelligent sensors but also perhaps ID tags and readers and interaction with a database.

In a new Technology Watch briefing report from ITU-T, the term “Ubiquitous Sensor Networks” (USN) is used to describe networks of intelligent sensor nodes that could be deployed “anywhere, anytime, by anyone and anything”. The technology has huge potential as it could generate applications in a wide range of civilian and military fields, including ensuring safety and security, environment and habitat monitoring, real-time healthcare, landmine detection and intelligent transport systems (ITS).

Sensor nodes may vary enormously in size, cost and complexity. Their characteristics are highly application-specific. Depending on the sensor type, the links between sensors may be provided by either wired or wireless communication. Energy-efficient operation is an important requirement for scenarios where sensor nodes are deployed in hazardous or inaccessible environments.

The variability of USN poses a challenge to researchers and a number of different standards development organizations (SDOs) are already engaged int this field. Within ITU-T, USN standardization is being carried out under the auspices of the Next-Generation Network Global Standards Initiative (NGN-GSI). The new report, the fourth in a series of ITU-T Technology Watch Briefing Reports, describes the different components of USN, notes the standardization work currently going on in ITU-T, and gives an overview of the different fields of applications of USN in both, developed and developing countries.

Download Technology Watch report on Ubiquitous Sensor Networks

Max Mosley, the head of Formula One’s governing body, the FIA, calls for accelerated standards development to support ICTs in vehicles for improvements in safety, and the mitigation and monitoring of climate change. Speaking at ITU’s annual Fully Networked Car event at the Geneva Motor Show, Mosley said that the leading edge expertise within F1 to develop “green” technologies could have applications beyond the sport, particularly in the area of fuel efficiency and monitoring of environmental impact. Most F1 teams have as many as 300 channels of information flowing between the cars and the pit crew and as the complexity of systems grow their interconnection will become critical he said.

Dr Hamadoun I. Touré, ITU Secretary-General, reminded participants that the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, has called climate change the “moral challenge of our generation”. He said: “With the Fully Networked Car we can provide traffic management, monitoring, and analysis, all of which will help meet the climate change challenge. Those who successfully meet this challenge will end up with a real competitive advantage in world markets.”

The new 2008 Honda Racing F1 “Earthdreams” car with Dr Hamadoun I. Touré, ITU Secretary-General; Max Mosley, President of the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) and Malcolm Johnson, Director of the Telecommunication Standardization Bureau, ITU.

Michel Mayer, CEO Freescale Semiconductor, a leading supplier of ICTs to F1 and one of the sponsors of the event, expressed concerns at the proliferation of proprietary standards and called for global standards bodies such as ITU to take a lead. He said that it is critical that further development be standards-driven.

The event also featured a keynote presentation from David Butler, Marketing Director, Honda Racing F1 Team, who emphasised how the powerful brand platform of F1 can present a global environmental message. The Fully Networked Car event had as its centrepiece the new 2008 Honda Racing F1 “Earthdreams” car.

A particular concern, according to experts, is in the areas of telematics and the application of intelligent transport systems (ITS) which participants at the Fully Networked Car agreed offer the best solution for a reduced carbon footprint from the global use of vehicles.

ITU will help to push this standards work and convergence between the ICT and automotive industries with initiatives such as its FITCAR (From/In/To Cars Communication) Focus Group, and the hosting of the Advisory Panel for Standards Cooperation on Telecommunications related to Motor Vehicles (ASPC TELEMOV). Also helping to step up this activity, Malcolm Johnson, ITU’s director of standards, announced that the Fully Networked Car event – already in its fourth year - will now become a regular fixture bringing together the two industries. The 2009 event is planned for 4-6 March. ITU will also be organising two ITU symposia on ICTs and Climate Change: in Kyoto, 15-16 April, hosted by the government of Japan; and in London, 17-18 June, hosted by BT.

Priorities identified for future standardization included: a common set of standards for the full range of nomadic devices; standards for software defined radios; standards to cope with the gap between the short lifecycle of mobile phones compared to the relatively long lifecycle of cars; and privacy, where there is a need for a common understanding about what data is reasonable to collect and retain.

The Fully Networked Car event brought together over 200 experts from the ICT and automotive worlds. It was organised by ITU with the support of ISO and IEC under the World Standards Cooperation (WSC) banner.

Enquiries to: Toby Johnson, +41 79 249 4868 or toby.johnson@itu.int.

More photos on Flickr

ITU experts have reported a good spirit of cooperation following a meeting with counterparts from the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) on the topic of T-MPLS, during February’s Study Group 15 meeting in Geneva.

The Ad-Hoc Group on T-MPLS met to iron out perceived inconsistencies between MPLS developed by IETF and T-MPLS developed in ITU-T. The meeting appointed Malcolm Betts as ITU representative and Dave Ward from IETF.

A joint working team (JWT) has been created with experts from ITU-T and IETF.

Previously the IETF requested that the ITU-T either: (1) Work in cooperation to extend the IETF's MPLS technologies through the IETF Standards Process or: (2) Decide to use its own Ethertypes and maintain separation of codepoints in the future, change the name of the technology so it is not easily confused with IETF MPLS and work independently.

The JWT will allow the IETF and ITU-T to work in close collaboration on T-MPLS to understand the implications of these options and facilitate the subsequent development of solutions that ensure that the required degree of MPLS/T-MPLS compatibility, consistency, and coherence, recognizing that the sole design authority for MPLS resides in the IETF, and the domain of expertise for Transport Network Infrastructure resides in ITU-T SG15.

It is expected that the group will use remote collaboration tools and make a decision on which way to progress by April 2008. See also previous newslog entry here.

MPLS is widely embraced in backbone networks as a way to speed up routers. Lately some have advocated its use further downstream in access networks, there have even been suggestions to extend this as far as customer premises. ITU’s work seeks to support this, but additionally to allow the seamless interworking between Ethernet and MPLS. This has been progressed in SG 15 through the completion of a new set of Recommendations for Transport MPLS (T-MPLS), a technology which uses a subset of the components defined in the MPLS Layer Network Architecture of Recommendation G.8110 to support packet transport applications that adhere to ITU-T layer network architecture principles. A T-MPLS layer network can operate independently of its clients and its associated control networks (i.e., multi-carrier or single carrier networks (MCN, SCN) and can carry a variety of client traffic types. This independence affords network operators the freedom necessary to design robust packet transport networks for their own use and to transport customer traffic. T-MPLS is designed to behave consistently with existing transport technologies, thus offering the operational characteristics, performance and reliability that network operators require from carrier-class technologies. The new Recommendations for this technology cover the T-MPLS layer network architecture (G.8110.1/Y.1370.1), interfaces for the T-MPLS Hierarchy (G.8112/Y.1371), and T-MPLS Equipment (G.8121/Y.1381).

Senior technical experts have laid down the gauntlet on energy saving in ICTs following a recent meeting in Geneva.

Following tutorials on power saving, at a recent meeting of ITU-T’s Study Group 15 (SG 15), experts agreed to work towards a proposed percentage reduction of power consumption in broadband technologies. The aim is for the agreed figure to form part of a Resolution from the upcoming World Telecommunication Standardization Assembly (WTSA-08). Reduction of power consumption should and can be done without the degradation of services according to experts. Presentations from the tutorials are available here.

The UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon has also underlined ITU’s role here saying: "ITU is one of the very important stakeholders in the area of climate change." ITU representatives made a statement at the UN Conference on Climate Change in Bali, Indonesia, illustrating how ICTs are both a cause and a potential cure for climate change.

Speaking during the event attended by over 100 representatives from the ICT industry worldwide for each of its three, hour-long sessions, Deputy Secretary-General of ITU, Houlin Zhao expressed appreciation that the meetings had proven so popular at such an early stage of the work. He pointed out that ICTs are responsible for 2.5 per cent of carbon emissions. This is roughly the equivalent of the airline industry and requires our urgent attention, he said.

The issue of power saving will be discussed within the wider context of climate change at Symposia on ICTs and Climate Change, to be held April 15-16 2008 in Kyoto, Japan, hosted by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC) and 17-18 June 2008 in London, hosted by BT. The events are part of a new initiative by ITU to better understand how ICTs can help mitigate and adapt to climate change as well as monitoring its impact.

Experts speaking at the SG 15 tutorials pointed to inefficiencies in terms of end-device power consumption level compared to the signal power. The deployment of broadband access networks is of particular concern as operators worldwide rollout this new technology that some predict will massively increase power demands.

Some simple measures, for example specifying power saving modes in network terminations such as: ‘asleep’, ‘standby’, as well as ‘on’ and ‘off’, were cited by speakers. It was also noted that next-generation networks (NGN) can lower greenhouse gas emissions by reducing network complexity, and introducing equipment that is more tolerant to natural climatic conditions and therefore does not require air conditioning. Smart buildings, energy supply and transport industries must all play their part in achieving greenhouse gas reductions.

A first and completed task of the ITU experts has been to create a power saving checklist for standards authors. Malcolm Johnson, Director of the Telecommunication Standardization Bureau, ITU congratulated SG 15 for responding so quickly to the request to address climate change. He urged all Study Groups to start the process of reviewing their Recommendations (ITU’s name for standards) according to the new checklist and assign appropriate metrics regarding reduction of greenhouse gases.

The checklist is intended to ensure that standards are drafted taking into account the most economic and energy-efficient solution. It is essentially, a set of questions relating to energy saving in networks. Experts propose that each new ITU-T Recommendation should contain a clause that identifies its impact on climate change and demonstrates ways that it contributes towards emission reduction, covering both production and the use of the equipment.

In order that this work is completed with the highest degree of efficiency there is broad consensus that ITU action has to be taken in partnership with all other bodies working in the field and that everything is done to avoid duplication of work.

ITU-T’s Study Group 16 has completed work on G.711.1 – the new scalable wideband extension of the voice codec used in the majority of fixed-line digital systems - ITU-T Recommendation G.711. G.711.1 will significantly improve voice quality in VoIP calls by offering wideband quality while keeping bitstream interoperability with the G.711 narrowband legacy codec. Wideband offers far greater audio quality by making voice sound more natural and by greatly improving both intelligibility and listening comfort. Wideband also allows service providers to offer a wider variety of services. Widely deployed this bitstream-interoperable wideband extension of narrowband codecs will allow smooth transition from narrowband (300-3400 Hz) PSTN quality telephony to high-quality wideband (50-7000Hz) telephony over IP networks as well as efficient deployment in existing infrastructures.

G.711.1 can operate either at 80 or 96 kbit/s in wideband, and at 64 or 80 kbit/s in narrowband. Furthermore, the 64 kbit/s core layer mode enables seamless interoperability with systems equipped only with G.711. Besides this backward compatibility, another key attribute is its embedded coding feature that allows dropping part of the bitstream/payload on-the-fly during a call by simple truncation of the embedded bitstream at any entity in the middle of the network such as a gateway or a signal mixer at multi-point control unit (MCU). This avoids network congestion and facilitates interoperability with G.711 legacy narrowband systems. Besides these two main advantages, G.711.1 has a very short delay and low complexity, it also supports partial mixing that drastically reduces MCU complexity and delay.

G.711's roots can be traced back as far as the 1970s, it has become truly the lingua franca of voice telephony. The new ITU-T Recommendation enriches the existing standard while ensuring backwards compatibility and interoperability.

The new standard will drive the market for wideband applications. Launched in 2006, wideband telephony over fixed-line broadband access is gaining momentum; wideband telephony over mobile will soon start following the 2008 Mobile World Congress announcement of wideband-enabled 3G phones shipping in the 3rd quarter of 2008. Wideband services are expected to be one of the driving factors in next generation networks (NGN).

IEEE Communications Magazine has issued a call for papers: ITU-T International Standards in Information and Communications Technologies. Contributions are solicited for an issue focusing on ITU-T's role in developing global standards for ICTs.

Contributions should include but are not limited to the following areas:

Overview of the ITU-T standardization mechanisms and process: Building consensus, alternative approval process (AAP), WTSA, TSAG, Study Groups, Focus Groups, IPR policy, the role of TSB etc.

• ITU-T Strategy
• Bridging the standardization gap
• Hot standardization topics in ITU-T including standards coordination aspects
  
• Access technologies
  
• Transport technologies
  
• Advanced Multimedia System (AMS)
  
• ICTs for climate change
  

The manuscript submission date is April 15, 2008 .

More details here.

ITU, together with Telcordia, are again collaborating to organize a multi-company interoperability demonstration featuring gigabit passive optical network (G-PON) equipment built according to the ITU-T G.984 Recommendation. Participating companies are now being finalized, with interested companies being requested to contact Rob Bond (rbond@telcordia.com), G-PON Pavilion Coordinator, by Monday February 25, 2008. Any optical access system, customer premises equipment, or G-PON device vendor with commercial products compliant with G.984 series Recommendations are eligible to participate.

The interoperability demonstration featured in the ITU G-PON (G.984) Pavilion at NXTcomm 2008 may include both traditional FTTP-focused G-PON technology, as well as emerging applications such as G-PON fed xDSL services, Enhancement band operation (G.984.5), and G-PON Reach Extender demonstrations (G.984.re). More information is contained in the ITU G-PON Pavilion fact sheet.

The quadrennial event that defines the future direction for the ITU’s Standardization Sector (ITU-T) – the World Telecommunication Standardization Assembly (WTSA) – will take place for the first time in Africa in 2008. It will also be the first chaired by a woman (Ms Lyndall Shope-Mafole, Director-General of the South African Department of Communications), and for the first time is preceded by a Global Standards Symposium (GSS). WTSA-08 will be held 21 - 30 October 2008, at the Emperors Palace, Convention Centre, Johannesburg, South Africa.

An official ‘Circular’ letter has been issued encouraging Member States and ITU-T Sector Members to participate in discussions on the future structure of the Sector: the study groups (including regional tariff groups under Study Group 3); and the Telecommunication Standardization Advisory Group (TSAG). WTSA-08 will also be unique in that the term limit for chairmanships agreed at the WTSA-2000 will apply for the first time and many of the current chairmen and vice-chairmen will retire. Although this will mean the loss of much experience, it does offer the opportunity to consider a major restructuring of the Sector. Member States and ITU-T Sector Members are therefore advised to await the outcome of the next TSAG meeting in July, when a new structure for the Sector should be clearer, before submitting candidatures for chairmen or vice-chairmen.

The Global Standards Symposium (GSS) will be held at the same venue on 20 October 2008. It will see leading figures in the telecom/ICT field, both from government and the industry, give their vision of the future, and suggest ways of increasing the involvement of developing countries in the development and implementation of standards (bridging the standardization gap). Additionally the event will examine global ICT standards challenges, such as accessibility, climate change and collaboration among standards development organisations (SDOs). Although not formally a part of the WTSA-08, the GSS will provide a report to the WTSA for information and action as appropriate, giving participants a unique opportunity to provide input to the event that decides the future direction for ITU-T.

ITU will team up with ISO and IEC for a third time in 2008 to present the Fully Networked Car. The three organisations working together under the World Standards Cooperation (WSC) banner will host the workshop and exhibition at one of the world’s leading automotive events, the Geneva International Motor Show.

Key for 2008 is the question: How can ICTs in vehicles help mitigate and monitor climate change? The Honda Racing F1 Team has kindly agreed to display, as the key feature of the exhibition, its new 2008 F1 “Earthdreams car” to give special emphasis to the environmental theme. Experts believe that more sophisticated traffic management and driver assistance systems can help reduce the environmental impact caused by motoring.

2008 will see a keynote speech from Max Mosley, president of the FIA (Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile), organizer of the Formula One World Championship.

In general, the event, 5 - 7 March, will focus on information and communication technologies (ICT) in motor vehicles and specifically standards that will facilitate the convergence of these industries.

ICT in vehicles represents a significant value-add for consumers in terms of safety, comfort and mobility. Predictions for the size of the market run into billions of dollars and stakeholders agree that standardization is key to the development of new technologies and that coordination between the traditionally remote vehicle manufacturing and ICT industries is crucial.

The Fully Networked Car brings together experts ranging from top decision-makers to engineers, designers, planners, government officials, regulators, standards experts and analysts. The workshop programme features speakers from some of the biggest names in the ICT and automobile industries. The panel of high-level global experts that will frame the major issues and engage the audience in discussion on this important topic come from companies including: BMW, Connexis, Fiat, Ford, Freescale Semiconductor, Honda, Intel, Motorola, Oracle, SVOX, Telefonica, Telcordia, Toyota-InfoTechnology Center, T-Systems, Volvo and Wavecom.

Among other topics to be discussed are the radio spectrum used for car-to-car and car-to-infrastructure communications; the convergence of telematics and infotainment and systems and standards related to safety.

In the context of ITU-T's efforts to address climate change issues, Study Group 15 will hold three tutorials on energy saving techniques during its February meeting.

A checklist for developers of standards is already under development in SG 15. The technologies considered in the list include optical transport networks and access network transport technologies such as digital subscriber line (DSL) and Gigabit-capable Passive Optical Networks (GPON). Together these technologies represent a significant consumption of energy worldwide. The idea is that the checklist is applied before the work commences, during the work and after the completion of the work. The use of the checklist should ideally be complemented by involving energy efficiency experts and users in the process.

The tutorials to be held 13, 14 and 15 February will look at the checklist as well as topics such as energy efficient Ethernet and opportunities and techniques for power saving in DSL and PON. A general introduction to the issues surrounding ICTs and climate change, (to be addressed in two upcoming ITU Symposia on ICTs and Climate Change), and an update on the outcome of the UN Climate Change Conference in Bali, December 2007, will be included.

ITU has issued a call for papers/speakers for its upcoming Symposia on ICTs and Climate Change, to be held April 15-16 2008 in Kyoto, Japan, hosted by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC) and 17-18 June 2008 in London, hosted by BT.

The events are part of a new initiative by ITU to better understand how ICTs can help mitigate and adapt to climate change as well as monitoring its impact.

Reinhard Scholl, Deputy to the Director of ITU’s Telecommunication Standardization Bureau has taken a seat on the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) board.

Annually, in rotation, ETSI, ITU-T and W3C appoint one non-voting liaison (TLG, Technical Liaison Group) to the ICANN Board. ICANN is responsible for the global coordination of the Internet's system of unique identifiers. These include domain names (like .org, .museum and country codes like .UK), as well as the addresses used in a variety of Internet protocols.

At ICANN’s 30th International Public Meeting in Los Angeles, Internet pioneer Vint Cerf's term as Chairman of ICANN’s Board came to an end. He was succeeded by Peter Dengate Thrush, a New Zealand lawyer and former President of InternetNZ.

The news follows a recent announcement on collaboration towards standards for the multilingual Internet made during the Internet Governance Forum.

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