Workshop on "Apportionment of Revenues and International Internet Connectivity"

Convening Letter (TSB Circular 222)

On-line registration

Standardization Committee for Vocabulary, 11 January 2012 face-to-face meeting

Registration

ITU Workshop on "Cloud Computing and Smart Grid", Geneva, Switzerland, 9 January 2012

On-line registration

Convening Letter (TSB Circular 241)

ITU Workshop on "Cloud Computing and Smart Grid"

ITU Workshop on Standards and Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) Issues, New Delhi, India, 19-20 December 2011

Convening Letter

On-line registration

ITU Workshop on Standards and Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) Issues

ITU Workshop on Digital Signage, Tokyo, Japan, 13-14 December 2011

Convening Letter (TSB Circular 227)

On-line registration

ITU Workshop on Digital Signage

ITU Kaleidoscope: The fully networked human? - Innovations for future networks and services, Cape Town, South Africa, 12-14 December 2011

Convening letter (TSB Circular 172)

Online Registration Form

ITU Kaleidoscope

The fully networked human? − Innovations for future networks and services is the title of the fourth ITU Kaleidoscope academic conference.

A call for papers has been issued and invites submissions until 15 May 2011. 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 authors presenting a paper at the conference will receive Young Author Recognition certificates.

Organized by ITU-T with IEEE ComSoc as Technical Co-Sponsor, Kaleidoscope 2011 has been invited to the University of Cape Town, South Africa, 12-14 December.

Kaleidoscope 2011 will highlight multidisciplinary aspects of future information and communication technologies (ICTs) including future services and applications demand as well as social, economic and policy aspects of human-centric systems. In this environment, the user is placed at the center, and virtualized networks, other IT resources, services and applications are adaptively and automatically configured to support the users in carrying out their everyday life activities.

However, the shift to human-centric ICT also raises social, economic and policy issues, which need to be addressed, including access to ICT, safety, privacy, environmental sustainability, etc.

This year, in addition to an exhibition for local universities and the presence of high-level keynote speakers and invited papers, ITU Kaleidoscope 2011 will host the second Jules Verne’s corner, a special space for science fiction writers and visionaries.

Kaleidoscope events are peer-reviewed academic conferences that aim at increasing the dialogue between experts working on the standardization of ICTs and academia.

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

For additional information see the event webpage at: http://itu-kaleidoscope.org/2011.

An ITU tutorial on Standardization will follow this year's Kaleidoscope event − Beyond the Internet? − Innovations for future networks and services − Pune, India, 13 – 15 December 2010.

The event will be held at the same venue on 16 December 2010.

The tutorial will cover information on how standardization works as well as a simulation of a standards-setting meeting. Participants from academia and industry will gain practical and theoretical knowledge on international standardization. In interactive role plays, participants will learn the art of reaching consensus. More information on the tutorial is available at the Kaleidoscope web page (http://www.itu.int/ITU-T/uni/kaleidoscope/2010/tutorial.html).

The aim of Kaleidoscope conferences is to identify information and communication technologies (ICTs) for which the development of standards can turn innovations into successful products and services, but it is also an opportunity to share knowledge on international standardization processes, which becomes more and more important with the rapid evolution of ICTs.

During the Kaleidoscope conference two special sessions will also take place: Jules Verne’s Corner and Standards Corner. Further information on these special sessions will shortly be available at the Kaleidoscope web page: www.itu-kaleidoscope.org/2010

The http://www.itu.int/ITU-T/worksem/ict-auto/201003/*¹ concluded in Geneva, March 4 with participants calling for better cross-sector standards collaboration in order to facilitate the rollout of Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS).

Malcolm Johnson, Director of ITU’s Telecommunication Standardization Bureau: “There is a will from manufacturers to implement these technologies but thus far no real breakthrough in terms of standards needed to roll this out on a global scale. Global car manufacturers don’t want to create different versions of this technology for every different market. They don’t want regional or national standards, they want global standards and ITU and its World Standards Cooperation (WSC) partners ISO and IEC are willing and able to provide these for this global partnership.”

New services and applications may be the selling points that will win car makers an advantage in the depressed market. “Today's communication capabilities give cars the potential to foresee and avoid collisions, navigate the quickest route to their destination, make use of up-to-the-minute traffic reports, identify the nearest available parking slot, alert the emergency services, monitor air pollution, minimize carbon emissions, and provide multimedia communications,” said Johnson.

The involvement  of ITU, ISO and IEC is seen as critical to ease bottlenecks resulting – in part – from poor communication between overlapping sectors; automotive, ITS players,  telecoms suppliers and operators. One conclusion of an Executive Session was that competition between standards bodies was unwelcome.

A large amount of resources has been invested in research and development, but harmonization of the many standards that exist at a proprietary or regional level is missing. This lack of global standards is considered to be an impediment  to a large scale deployment of ITS services and applications. While most agree that the technologies are at an advanced stage of development, participants agreed that clearer views are needed on what standardization work is being done and where; user, regulator and supplier liability and privacy concerns; business and payment models; interoperability requirements and who owns them.

This – the fifth - Fully Networked Car workshop organized by the World Standards Cooperation (WSC), a partnership between ISO, IEC and ITU, was held on 3-4 March at the Geneva International Motor Show 2010 and focused on the latest developments in ITS technology including network requirements for electric cars. It represented a unique  opportunity to strengthen the dialogue between the ITS (Intelligent Transport Systems) key players, in particular with the motor industry.

Held during the 2nd Press Day and the first public day of the motor show, the event – attracting over 120 participants in 2010 - represents a matchless opportunity for experts and executives from the car industry, ICT community, governments, research and development institutes, academia to share their vision and strategies.

Speakers at a special Executive Session at the Fully Networked Car event included Christoph Huss, Vice President of BMW and President of the International Federation of Automotive Engineering Societies (FISITA), who gave the keynote address; Juhani Jääskeläinen, European Commission; Raymond Resendes, Chief, Intelligent Technologies Research Division, United States National Highway Traffic Safety Administration; Samuel Loyson, Orange, France; David Schutt, SAE International, USA; Yasuro Nakanomori, OKI, Japan; Russ Shields, Chairman, Ygomi and Reinhard Scholl, ITU Telecommunication Standardization Bureau.

In his opening remarks, Rob Steele, ISO Secretary-General, on behalf of WSC, said: "There is the need for standardization of essential technologies to provide the solid base for further innovation and the economies of scale for commercialization of technologies... Most interestingly of all, is the urgent need to consider the interoperability of all of this technology not only in the car, but in the wider infrastructure that is needed to support this revolution".

Information obtained from electronic devices as part of an in-vehicle network is critical to ITS (Intelligent Transportation Systems) services and applications, including emergency telecommunications. Currently, the way of extracting the vehicle information differs by manufacture, model and chassis type. Standards are being researched in the support of a Vehicle Gateway that will allow all consumer devices to work in harmony in all vehicles and with all infrastructures. Work on this in ITU is focused on a ‘Question’ within ITU-T’s Study Group 16. Contributions from ITU’s membership are being sought on a Vehicle Gateway platform for telecommunication/ITS services/applications.

Since ITS applications will have to rely mainly on existing infrastructure, NGN (Next Generation Networks) will play a key role for their deployment. This is currently considered in the framework of fix-mobile-convergence in ITU-T Study Group 13, ITU-T’s lead group lead on future networks. One of the sessions of the workshop recommended that a joint ISO / ITU-T group on in-vehicle architecture and protocols take the work forward.

Participants in one technical session at the workshop concluded that quality and naturalness of all speech services need to be increased to reduce driver distraction and seamless interaction. Agreement was reached that work on a standards-based framework for dialogue between user and device is needed, with the ITU-T Focus Group on Car Communications (ITU-T FG CarCOM) identified as the appropriate place for this work.

An electric future

Today, with the increasing deployment of electric vehicles, ICTs have a significant role to play in areas such as the careful management of battery status, warranty concerns and driver behaviour. Given the potential of these new technologies for both the automotive and the ICTs industries, it is essential for the different parties to understand the requirements for fully networked cars and agree on the solutions to be provided by the network platforms. In many cases existing telecoms infrastructure can be used.

As electric vehicles begin to find their way to our driveways and garages, knowing what is involved in charging their batteries becomes crucial. The development of smart power grids will also be vital to support the adoption of electric cars which according to some proposals can also act as storage capacity for electricity. The scale of this challenge was highlighted in one of the presentations to the workshop, citing work under way in the United States.

In the US, the electric grid is owned and operated by over 3100 utilities, using equipment and systems provided by thousands of suppliers, delivering power to hundreds of millions of users and billions of end devices. The transformation of this infrastructure into an “energy Internet” is a huge undertaking requiring an unprecedented level of cooperation and coordination across the private and public sectors as well as across industry sectors. A robust, interoperable framework of technical standards is the key to making this possible.

ITU is responding to this challenge by the formation of a new ITU-T Focus Group that will help develop the necessary global standards to hasten this move to Smart Grids. The newly formed group will look at the networking between use of current control, metering, charging and electricity distribution systems.
____________________________________________________________________________________
¹ New title for the event following agreement of Geneva Motor Show to support the event for next three years

ITU-T Workshop on "The impact of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities on the work of the ITU-T"

Geneva, 2 November 2009

Registration form

See ITU-T SG 16 Collective Letter 4 for more information.

More information

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.

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

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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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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 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.

Click here for a document detailing some ITU-T highlights for 2007.

A new report from ITU-T shows how Information and communications technologies (ICTs) contribute to global warming, but also how they can be used to monitor climate change, to mitigate its effects, to improve energy efficiency and to reduce carbon emissions in other sectors of the economy. The report -- ICTs and Climate Change -- is the third in the new series of Technology Watch Briefing Reports, launched by ITU-T in October 2007. It has been submitted to TSAG for further discussion at its upcoming meeting, 3-7 December. It is planned that an ITU symposium on this topic will be held in 2008.

Since 1970, the production of greenhouse gases has risen by more than 70 per cent, and this is having a global effect in warming the planet, causing changing weather patterns, rising sea-levels, desertification, shrinking ice cover and other worrying long-term effects. The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) foresees a further rise in average global temperatures of between 1.4 and 5.8 degrees centigrade by 2030. Climate change is a concern for all of humanity and requires efforts on the part of all sectors of society, including the ICT sector. Although ICTs contribute only an estimated 2.5 per cent of total greenhouse gases, this share is set to grow as usage of ICTs expands globally, growing at a faster rate than the general economy.

ICTs are thus part of the cause of global warming, but they can also be part of the solution, for instance through the promotion of carbon displacement technologies. ICTs are also vital in monitoring the spread of global warming. One specific contribution ICTs can make is through the substitution of travel by electronic forms of communication, such as telephone calls, email or video-conferencing, all of which benefit from ITU-T¡¯s standardization work. In particular, high-performance video-conferencing, or telepresence (the topic of the second Technology Watch Briefing Report), can give the impression of 'being there, without going there'. Furthermore, ITU-T itself is also contributing to a greener future through its decision to make ITU-T Recommendations freely available online. In the mid 1990s, more than one million publications were printed by ITU but, with free Recommendations now available in electronic form, this has been cut to just a few thousand that are still printed, and carbon emissions from transport of printed copies and CD-ROMs has been greatly reduced.

Imagine a future in which cars will be able to foresee and avoid collisions, navigate the quickest route to their destination, making use of up-to-the-minute traffic reports, identify the nearest available parking slot and minimize their carbon emissions. Indeed, imagine a future where cars can largely drive themselves, leaving their passengers to use the free time to watch the sports game on live TV.

All of these possibilities already exist within the laboratories of car manufacturers and some are already available commercially. But they rely on communications links that must be increasingly high-capacity and long range to deal with the full range of requirements of future transport users. The generic technology they use is called Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS). The requirement for future standards in the ITS field is to be able to provide multiple services, over multiple different platforms, that will work in different countries (as vehicles can easily cross borders), while maintaining a simple-to-use interface that requires minimum intervention from the driver.

This, then, is the rationale behind an ongoing effort, launched by the International Organisation for Standardization (ISO) in 2003, under the auspices of Working Group 16 of ISO Technical Committee 204, and promoted by the more recently created industry association - The CALM Forum - to develop a new family of ITS standards with the overall branding of Continuous Air-interface, Long and Medium range (CALM).

A new ITU-T Briefing Report on CALM has been released as part of the Technology Watch function, which evaluates its potential as a new area for ITU standardization work (for instance, integrated with Next-Generation Networks) and its likely implications for developing countries. The report notes the work currently going on in ITU on ITS, including the forthcoming Fully Networked Car III workshop, to be held on 3-5 March 2008 in Geneva. It is planned that this will be the first of a series of new Briefing Reports looking at emerging new technologies.

Technology Watch report on CALM.pdf (165.36 KB)

ITU is holding a workshop - Making accessibility a reality in emerging technologies - at the second meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Rio de Janeiro, 13 November, 1430-1600.

ITU’s standardization arm - ITU-T - has a long history of providing standards in the field of accessibility. It started in the early 90's with the international text telephone standard, ITU-T Recommendation V.18, which ties together text telephone protocols allowing different textphone types to communicate.

ITU-T’s accessibility experts have helped to incorporate accessibility needs into standards for multimedia, network interoperability, multimedia service descriptions and multimedia conferencing.

The latest work has focused on taking accessibility needs into account in the development of all standards. For this reason an ‘Accessibility Checklist’ has been created for the makers of standards to ensure that they are taking into account the needs of those to whom accessibility to ICTs are restricted, the deaf or hard-of-hearing for example. Experts say that such a list will help to ensure that accessibility needs are taken into account at an early stage, rather than ‘retrofitted’.

An area of current intensive standardization activity is that on the next generation network (NGN). Accessibility features have been included at the first stage of standards work where requirements are defined. However it is important that these needs are taken into account as work progresses.

This workshop, organized by ITU, as part of the Internet Governance Forum brings together experts from around the world to examine how best to take into account accessibility needs in emerging technologies.

Further information here (ITU page) here (IGF page).

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

For the third year running The Fully Networked Car is being organized by ITU, ISO and IEC, working together as the World Standards Cooperation (WSC). Taking place at one of the world’s leading automotive events, the Geneva International Motor Show, the event will comprise a workshop with demonstrations and will take place between 5 and 7 March 2008.

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, 16 November 2007. A new topic area for 2008 is ICT and the environment, suggestions for other topics can be found on the event's webpage.

This year’s event will feature a keynote speech from Max Mosley, president of the FIA (Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile) which is also the organizer of the Formula One World Championship).

ITU hosted a Workshop on Multimedia in Next Generation Networks (NGN), 10-11 September 2007, to discuss future multimedia services and applications. Among many presentations, Peer-to-peer (P2P) telecom solutions, by Ning Zong, research engineer at Huawei Technologies (China), considered the use P2P technology in the field of person-to-person communications.

It is only recently with the increased popularity of video sharing that P2P traffic has lost premier position in Internet use statistics to HTTP – web – traffic. Traffic generated by P2P applications now accounts for 37 per cent of Internet traffic.

Perhaps best known as the technology which enabled music file sharing, P2P technology can also enable applications such as video or voice over IP. The technology is deployed by Skype, which claims some 198 million registered users worldwide.

In contrast to the traditional centralized client-server approach, which requires a high level of investment in servers and bandwidth, P2P networks exploit connectivity between the individual participants of a network. Users (peers) virtually deploy their own network, and this can assist with scalability and roll out in developing countries.

One example of an application that exploits the potential of P2P to establish so-called ad hoc networks includes the One Laptop Per Child initiative which was launched during the Tunis Phase of the World Summit on the Information Society in November 2005. Another example comes from the Swedish company TerraNet, which has the vision of using real-time P2P technology to provide mobile communication without a regular mobile network by modifying users’ handsets to become base station antennae. TerraNet has launched field tests in Tanzania and Ecuador This model of deployment could represent an important advantage of P2P enabled VoIP over mobiles – especially in developing countries, where cost savings are a major drive for deploying NGN.

A prize fund totaling $10,000 has been kindly donated by Cisco to be awarded to the three best papers submitted to the upcoming Innovations in Next Generation Networks event to be held in May 2008.

The fund is announced in a third call for papers which has been issued to attract contributions towards a kaleidoscopic view of communication habits for the future.

The call for papers has also been updated to announce the availability of an online submission tool.

Cisco’s prize fund will be split into three: First prize, $5,000, second $3,000 and third $2,000. Innovations in Next Generation Networks is organized by ITU-T with IEEE Communications Society as Technical Co-Sponsor.

Those wanting to submit papers are asked to consider questions such as what services will emerge in NGN, how NGN will affect the marketplace for ICT, and how society will be affected. The event is the first in a series, under the banner “Kaleidoscope Conferences”. The events will increase the dialogue between academia and experts working on the standardization of information and communications technologies (ICT).

Deadline for the call for papers is 15 October 2007.

ITU-T has issued a call for papers for an event - Innovations in Next Generation Networks - to be held in Geneva, 12-13 May 2008. The event is the first in a series that will increase the dialogue between academia and experts working on the standardization of information and communications technologies (ICT). Awards will be granted to selected best papers, as judged by the organizing and programme committee. Details will be announced later.

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. The call for papers lists a number of suggested topics.

Innovations in NGN will bring together new and visionary ideas on the future of NGN. It will highlight technologies, services and applications five years from now that will capitalize on the NGN infrastructure and will lead us to the so-called ubiquitous network society in which information can be accessed anywhere, at anytime, by anyone and anything. The event will also cover multidisciplinary aspects related to the deployment of NGN, including analysis of the regulatory and societal challenges that the deployment of NGN will bring.

Recognizing that satellite systems could be an important part of emerging Next Generation Networks (NGN), an ITU-T Workshop entitled “Satellites in the NGN?” will take place 13 July 2007 in Montreal, Canada. Following the workshop, the third meeting of the Intersector Coordination Group on Satellite Matters (ICG SAT) will take place.

The objectives of the workshop, hosted by ATIS, include examination of the role of satellite systems in NGN, and development of a perspective on current and future NGN standards. Participation is open to all interested parties.

Sessions will give an overview of NGN, examine QoS and QoE (E for experience), IPTV and mobility support, network management and requirements for disaster relief.

The role of the ICG SAT is to monitor and coordinate the work programmes of the relevant Study Groups in ITU-R and ITU-T in relation to the use of satellites. It aims also to draw the attention of the relevant Study Groups to emerging technologies and perform gap analysis to identify new work areas.

ITU and the IEEE will hold a workshop on carrier-class Ethernet, 31 May - 1 June.Much work has been done in both organisations to progress Ethernet, developed as an enterprise technology, into a carrier service. The event will focus on opportunities for further collaboration. Long-recognized as the ubiquitous LAN technology, Ethernet is now seeing increased attention as a carrier-grade service. In part this is due to the convenience of being able to simply provide end-to-end service, but also carriers can realize savings both in terms of capital and operational expenditure.

Ethernet services are becoming popular because they allow carriers to offer considerably improved flexibility to customers through a much simpler and lower cost interface. Ethernet allows users to specify exactly how much bandwidth they want between the 10Mbit/s and 1Gbit/s range currently offered. Further, Ethernet provides reduced operation complexity and improved scalability for carriers. And as operators look to NGN and the use of the Internet Protocol (IP), Ethernet is seen as the best fit, especially given the rise of such services as IP VPNs, VLANs and dedicated Internet access.

The event will start with an overview of the standards work from ITU-T and IEEE and will then drill down into detail with sessions focusing on: Ethernet based and Ethernet capable access networks; Ethernet network transport; Ethernet Bridging architecture; Ethernet OAM and management; Ethernet QoS, timing and synchronization. A closing session will bring together reports from all of the session chairs in order to identify the direction of future work.

A Seminar on Standardization and Development of Next-Generation Networks for the Arab Region, will take place in Manama, Bahrain from 29 April to 2 May (morning) 2007.

Hosted by the Bahrain Telecommunications Company (BATELCO), the event is organized by the Telecommunication Development Bureau (BDT) and the Standardization Bureau (TSB) of ITU.

The seminar will be followed by a Workshop on NGN Interconnection from 2 to 3 May 2007. The objectives of the seminar are two fold: first, to discuss the current trends, status and future evolution of NGN technology and standardization. Second, NGN regulatory and policy issues which will allow developing countries to exploit its full potential will be discussed.

The objective of the interconnection workshop is to look at the challenges for regulatory and policy frameworks associated with the deployment of NGN in the region. It will focus, in particular, on what kinds of interconnection arrangements make sense in an NGN world.

ITU-T will hold a Workshop on Multimedia in NGN, Geneva, 10-11 September.

Multimedia applications and services are migrating towards a single converged user-centric communications network. The “internet of things” represents one of the key challenges for NGN standardization.

This migration, or evolution, has been recognized in ITU-T and a number of initiatives have started for the development of global standards in specific areas like IPTV, GRID, networked aspects of identification (including RFID aspects), sensor networks and more.

An aim of the NGN is to provide the necessary service capabilities to support present and future multimedia applications and services.

This workshop will contribute to the NGN vision of supporting future multimedia services and applications, and will facilitate experience and knowledge sharing between the NGN community, multimedia service and application experts. The various sessions will identify future developments at the service and application level and their impact on NGN capabilities.

The workshop will investigate future trends driven by technology and business needs in the area of multimedia services and applications, including those resulting from fixed-mobile-broadcast convergence.

Reinhard Scholl, Deputy to the Director of the Telecommunication Standardization Bureau, ITU will speak at a seminar titled Global Standards and Developing Economies: Broadband Access and Infrastructure 9-10 May, Tunis, Tunisia.

The event hosted by the IEEE-Standards Association (SA) in collaboration with the Tunisian Ministry of Communication Technologies will bring together leaders from industry, government and international standards organizations to share their insights on how local entities can participate in and optimize global standards and best practices to help close the digital divide.

An in-depth introduction to international standards activities and highlighting of the scope of the IEEE and its relationships with ITU and other standards bodies will be given. Through interactive presentations, the seminar will provide an overview of the issues being faced by today’s policy makers and industry leaders and provide real world examples of how standards are making a difference in emerging economies.

In addition to discussion of broadband access and infrastructure standards via presentations and case studies, challenges and opportunities for developing countries regarding intellectual property rights (IPR) and standardization will also be addressed. For further information see here, or call the IEEE-SA Corporate Standards Office at +1 732 562 5342; E-mail cag-conference@ieee.org.

The Fully Networked Car workshop held during the Geneva Motor Show has closed today, Friday 9 March, with participants and speakers declaring the event a great success. 191 people participated in the event according to the organizers. 

Malcolm Johnson, Director of the ITU Telecommunication Standardization Bureau, underlined his commitment to working with other standards bodies at the opening of the recent Fully Networked Car event in Geneva. "We are now placing great emphasis on bringing together the various standards bodies to avoid duplication of effort and to address convergence in areas such as the one addressed in this workshop,” he said. “That is why I am so pleased to have had the cooperation of ISO and IEC in the organization of this workshop."

The workshop (accompanied by an exhibition on 6-10 March) was the latest initiative organized by the three partner organizations of the World Standards Cooperation (WSC): IEC (International Electrotechnical Commission), ITU (International Telecommunication Union), and ISO (International Organization for Standardization).

ISO Secretary-General Alan Bryden remarked: “Following the previous workshops that we have organized with IEC and ITU on health technologies and the digital home, this workshop on the fully networked car is another example of the initiatives we have taken in the area of converging technologies."

The workshop addressed the market for information and communication technologies (ICT) in motor vehicles, which represents an ever-increasing share of innovation and added value in the automotive sector. The “fully networked car", taking full advantage of ICT for vehicles and road transport systems, is expected to offer a range of benefits including improved safety, reduced traffic congestion and pollution, and a smoother driving experience.

The WSC event provided a forum for the key specialists in the field, from top decision makers to engineers, designers, planners, government officials, regulators, standards experts and others. It helped to identify how and which standards can speed the development of the fully networked car and its introduction into the market.

Participants at the Fully Networked Car Event.

The Fully Networked Car will review and examine the implications of the latest developments in the fast-moving market for information and communication technologies (ICT) in motor vehicles.

To guarantee a pass for the event to be held 7-10 March, at the Geneva Motor Show, register now. Entry to the event is without charge.

The workshop programme is now available featuring speakers from some of the biggest names in information and communication technologies (ICT) and the motor industry, including: Bosch, BMW, Cisco, Ford, France Telecom, Freescale Semiconductor, Head Acoustics, Hitachi, Intel, Motorola, On-Star, Orange, PSA Peugeot Citroen, Q-Free, T-Systems, Telecom Italia, Telecordia, Toyota, Vodafone and Ygomi. In addition to the packed programme an exhibition will allow visitors to see close-up some of the technologies being discussed.

ITU and the IEEE will hold a workshop on carrier-class Ethernet, 31 May- 1 June.

Much work has been done in both organisations to progress Ethernet, developed as an enterprise technology, into a carrier service. The event will focus on opportunities for further collaboration.

Long-recognized as the ubiquitous LAN technology, Ethernet is now seeing increased attention as a carrier-grade service. In part this is due to the convenience of being able to simply provide end-to-end service, but also carriers can realize savings both in terms of capital and operational expenditure.

Ethernet services are becoming popular because they allow carriers to offer considerably improved flexibility to customers through a much simpler and lower cost interface. Ethernet allows users to specify exactly how much bandwidth they want between the 10Mbit/s and 1Gbit/s range currently offered. Further, Ethernet provides reduced operation complexity and improved scalability for carriers. And as operators look to NGN and the use of the Internet Protocol (IP), Ethernet is seen as the best fit, especially given the rise of such services as IP VPNs, VLANs and dedicated Internet access.

The event will start with an overview of the standards work from ITU-T and IEEE and will then drill down into detail with sessions focusing on: Ethernet based and Ethernet capable access networks; Ethernet network transport; Ethernet Bridging architecture; Ethernet OAM and management; Ethernet QoS, timing and synchronization. A closing session will bring together reports from all of the session chairs in order to identify the direction of future work.

Representatives of the car industry joined with more traditional ITU-T members at the first meeting of the Focus Group From/In/To Car Communication.

The Focus Group meeting in Geneva, January, worked on specifications that will enhance communications in vehicles. Using as a starting point a specification developed by the German Association of the Automotive Industry (VDA) the Focus Group is looking to improve a draft Recommendation – P.Carhft – under development by ITU-T’s Study Group 12. The Focus Group concept allows for non-members, in this case the auto industry to participate.

A first priority is to deal with speakerphone audio quality, aiming to provide a specification that will help to improve the speech- and sound - quality between different devices. Second priority is requirements for headsets including wireless. Chairman of the group, Hans Gierlich of Head Acoustics noted also that a major problem for the car industry is car-to-car communications.

While first concentrating on narrowband speech (3.4kHz), the group will eventually move into better quality - wideband (8kHz). Input is also required in the area of testing for interaction between the network and hands-free terminals. In addition speech recognition will be addressed.

Participating companies included Alcatel-Lucent, Avaya, DaimlerChrysler, France Telecom, Harman/Becker, Head Acoustics, Mitsubushi, Nortel and Volkswagen.

A second FG meeting hosted by HARMAN/BECKER Automotive Systems is planned for March 15 in Ulm, Germany following the ITU, ISO and IEC event, The Fully Networked Car, Information and Communication Technologies in Motor Vehicles. The event taking place at the Geneva Motor Show will review and examine the implications of the latest developments in this fast-moving market. A significant value-add will be an exhibition showcasing the latest technologies in the field.

 

Following ITU-T’s Workshop on Digital Identity for NGN Geneva, 5 December 2006 a decision has been made to set up a Focus Group on Identity Management (IdM) under the parentage of Study Group 17.

Digital identity refers to the online representation of a user’s or network element’s identity and the identity of those that the user or network element interacts with. It does not mean the positive validation of a person. Information regarding device identities is becoming an increasingly valuable commodity, and as a consequence, its protection and management are vital to a healthy and inclusive digital world.

There are different approaches for representing identities and different identity management frameworks. The lack of a common view on digital identity and its management has so far resulted in incompatible applications.

The Focus Group will explore mechanisms that allow different frameworks to interoperate together. Experts said there is a need to identify current gaps in proposed solutions. For example, IdM solutions that involve the telecom network level and in general lower layers have not been addressed sufficiently, they said. The Focus Group will act as a platform for an exchange of information in order to bring about necessary harmonisation.

All standards organizations and developer forums involved in identity management worldwide, including institutes, forums, companies, experts and individuals regardless of whether ITU members or not are encouraged to participate.

The first meeting of the FG IdM is scheduled to take place at ITU Headquarters, in Geneva, from 13 to 16 February 2007.

The Focus Group "From/In/To Cars Communication" was established by Study Group 12 at its 5 - 13 June 2006 meeting.

The objective of the Focus Group is to develop a new set of requirements and specifications to help advance the work of the ITU-T SG12, mainly Questions 4/12 and 12/12, and to encourage participation in this activity of members of other standards organisations involved in car and Telecommunications/ICT industries, including experts and individuals who may not be members of ITU.

Focus Group "From/In/To Cars Communication" First Meeting:

Geneva, 26 January 2007

Focus Group "From/In/To Cars Communication" Home

The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), with the support of the ITU, will hold two workshops on Numbering and Convergence January 2007.

The announcement follows the development of a draft National Numbering Plan (NNP) (for industry consultation) as mandated by the 2003 Communications Act.

The first workshop Impact and challenges of implementing NNP will be held 9 – 10 January the second Challenges of convergence 11 January.

Aims of the event include allowing participants to: gain a better understanding of the draft NNP and associated new services; identify implementation impacts to the network and possibly proffer a common solution to the articulated impacts; reach a consensus on efficient techniques to implement the services / associated modifications and also on the NNP implementation schedule; participate in producing guidelines for an industry committee that will oversee the NNP implementation / transition plan.

Delegates are expected to include Telecoms Stakeholders such as Interconnection / Core Network Staff, Equipment Manufacturers / Vendors, Programmers / Installers, Consumer Advocacy Groups, Internet Groups, other Sector Stakeholders and Regulatory Agencies worldwide. Nigerian Network Operators are specifically encouraged to send delegates that have sufficient knowledge of their systems as decisions taken during the workshops may impact on their networks.

Telcordia is supporting the workshops with expert speakers. Opportunities are available for experts to serve as panelists for days: 1, 2 and 3 and also to facilitate breakout sessions for days: 1 and 2.

In addition, the event will provide a venue for local and international solution providers who are interested in showcasing state-of-the-art solutions on Numbering, Number Portability, ENUM, VOIP and Convergence.

Exhibition and sponsorship Opportunities are available, for further information on these or any other aspect of the events, please contact Mrs. M.K Onyeajuwa (telephone +234-9-6700630, +234-9-2340330 ext 1052, +234804419088, email nnp@ncc.gov.ng).

 

ITU-T will hold a Workshop on Digital Identity for NGN Geneva, 05 December 2006.

In the last few years, the need for digital identity has risen as a strong driving force behind network architecture design, service provisioning, and content handling, billing and charging. Digital identity is expected to be a powerful tool for users to access unlimited digital resources via a limited number of trusted relationships, and for providers to offer these resources across the different layers of communication systems, administrative domains and even legal boundaries. However, the lack of a common view on digital identity across these different layers has so far resulted in independently developed and therefore often inconsistent identity management frameworks as well as incompatible applications.

Key challenges towards the development of a more consistent approach are to tackle the conflicting requirements of privacy, identification and security. This workshop, a Joint ITU-T/EU IST Daidalos Project Workshop, intends to investigate different approaches, analyze gaps in today’s standards, identify future challenges and find common goals which will provide direction to the work currently being undertaken in the different projects and standards development organizations (SDOs).

 

ITU-T will host the annual Broadband Europe conference 11-14 Dec 2006.

BBEurope is an annual event which was initiated by the FP6-BREAD-project (broadband for all in Europe: a multi-disciplinary approach), part of the "BroadBand for All"-strategic objective of the European Commission.

Peter Van Daele, Project Leader BREAD: “The concept of “Broadband For All” refers to a situation in which broadband is not only available to every citizen, but is actually used by all of them. In that respect it is a more demanding concept than the traditional universal service obligation in telephony, which merely stipulates the availability, at certain conditions, of a given service. The usage of information and communication technologies via broadband infrastructures by all citizens is a policy objective because it is considered to be a key component of transforming Europe into a knowledge-based society, thus enhancing economic growth and increasing employment.”

The BREAD project has amongst its objectives to develop a holistic vision encompassing technical, as well as economical and regulatory aspects. Another important aspect is of identifying roadblocks on European, national/regional level and share visions and best practices on national level to EU level.

BBEurope brings together on an international level all the BroadBand players, researchers, service providers, content providers, operators, manufacturers, policy makers, standardisation bodies, professional organisations.

A diverse agenda will cover topics including NGN, IPTV, wireless access, powerline, security, QoS, and broadband in rural areas. The event will conclude with a panel discussion titled: Future Perspectives in Broadband. A ‘full preliminary’ programme is available from the event’s website, with the call for papers ending November 10 when a programme committee will make a final selection of the papers.

 

John MacDonald, a member of the ITU team that created the new VDSL 2 standard, will take part in an upcoming Webinar on this topic, Tuesday, November 21. The Webinar, the second on the topic that ITU has contributed to, will outline what VDSL2 is, which are its competitive differentiators and benefits, and how it allows service providers to compete with cable and satellite operators - by enabling the delivery of enhanced voice, video and data services over a standard copper telephone cable.

ADSL (Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line) is a product of ITU-T, ITU’s standardization arm, and is the world's most widely deployed broadband access technology. It has enhanced users' experience of the Internet, provided access to digitized content, and fuelled the delivery of streaming video and the development of online gaming by offering downstream data rates of up to 8 Mbit/s. Today, service providers must ensure their DSL offerings can compete against other market options from cable operators. One way to do so, is by offering services over VDSL2 (ITU-T Recommendation G.993.2) - very high-speed DSL - a new version of DSL, which gives service providers the ability to deliver even higher bandwidth and more enhanced services to consumer and business customers.

Delivering up to 100 Mbit/s both up and downstream, a tenfold increase over ADSL (Asymmetric DSL) VDSL2 provides for so-called fiber-extension, bringing fiber-like bandwidth to premises not directly connected to the fiber optic segment of a telecom company’s network. By deploying VDSL2 operators expect to be able to offer services such as high-definition TV (HDTV), video-on-demand, videoconferencing, high-speed Internet access, and advanced voice services. Importantly VDSL 2 offers carriers a solution that is interoperable with the DSL equipment many already have in place. In addition, VDSL 2 will work with both legacy ATM networks and next generation IP-based networks.

Register to take part in this online event here

 

An ITU-T and OASIS workshop on public warning, October, attracted 80 participants and saw agreement on a number of ways forward. The event signaled a further stepping-up of cooperation between the two organizations.

The OASIS Common Alerting Protocol (CAP), which was successfully demonstrated at the event, has been submitted to ITU for international standardization, officials from both organizations confirmed. Publication as an ITU-T Recommendation will help ensure that CAP is deployed worldwide giving technical compatibility for users across all countries. This action had strong support from the workshop.

The goal of public warning is to reduce the damage and loss of life caused by a natural or man-made hazard event. CAP allows a warning message to be consistently disseminated simultaneously over many warning systems to many applications.

Attendees, from policy makers to manufacturers to personnel involved in emergency management also agreed among other things to: “Coordinate actions among all relevant players to ensure that standards-based, all-media, all-hazards public warning becomes an essential infrastructure component through platforms such as the Telecommunications for Disaster Relief and Mitigation - Partnership Co-ordination Panel (PCP-TDR)”.

The workshop produced a number of other proposals, which will shortly be available from the event’s website.

In a separate announcement, OASIS said that it was happy to welcome ITU as an event supporter for its upcoming Adoption Forum, London, 27-29 November. ITU members are invited to attend the conference, titled Managing Secure Interactions in Sector Applications, at the reduced rate of EUR100 per day.

The announcements follow the June 2006 approval as internationally recognized ITU-T Recommendations of OASIS’ SAML as ITU-T X.1141 (Security Assertion Markup Language) and XACML as ITU-T X.1142 (Extensible Access Control Markup Language). See previous story.

 

With the second meeting of the IPTV Focus Group (FG IPTV) seeing a record number of participants and contributions, experts have declared satisfaction that work towards a set of standards for IPTV is well on track.

A recent report from industry analyst Gartner says that the number of households around the world subscribing to IPTV services offered by telecom carriers will reach 48.8 million in 2010. Buoyed by new service launches, IPTV subscribers will more than double in 2007 from an expected 6.4 million in 2006 to 13.3 million according to Gartner.

Experts agree that it is imperative that standards needs are met if these impressive figures are to be achieved.

A key achievement at the FG IPTV meeting in Korea was progress towards an standardized IPTV architecture: The group agreed that IPTV architecture shall allow for both NGN and non-NGN approaches to IPTV, and within the NGN-approach, include both IMS and non-IMS based approaches.

Ghassem Koleyni, chair of the group: “I am particularly happy that we have achieved so much progress in Working Group 1 (service requirements and architecture). The level of participation in this group is growing and progress is overall good. But requirements and architecture are of such fundamental importance that getting a fix on these points, at this stage, is very satisfying. In order to gain momentum here we will convene an electronic meeting looking specifically at requirements and architecture, 18-21 December.”

The Korea meeting agreed on the following definition of IPTV: “IPTV is defined as multimedia services such as television/video/ audio/text/graphics/data delivered over IP based networks managed to provide the required level of QoS/QoE, security, interactivity and reliability.”

The next face-to-face meeting of the FG IPTV is scheduled for 22-26 January 2007 at the Microsoft facilities , Mountain View, California, USA (Silicon Valley) at the kind invitation of Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions (ATIS).

The FG IPTV meeting was preceded by an ITU-T workshop. The event attended by over 400 and held in Seoul provided a view and examination of IPTV standardization, political and regulatory aspects, business models and various case studies as well as technical developments and service provider’s operational aspects. A roundtable discussion at the event concluded that global standardisation and interoperability are key for further development of IPTV worldwide. Other issues that might be further discussed at an international level, according to the roundtable’s twenty participants, include digital rights management (DRM).

 

ITU* together with partners ISO* and IEC*, will hold an event at the Geneva Motor Show, March 2007 to review and examine the implications of the latest developments in the fast-moving market for ICT in motor vehicles.

The Fully Networked Car, Information and Communication Technologies in Motor Vehicles, will comprise an exhibition which will run the length of the Geneva Motor Show, and a workshop which will take place between 7 and 9 March.

ICT is a key area of focus for the automotive industry influencing vehicle development, the driver experience and the way that vehicles are now sold. ICT has the potential to vastly improve vehicle mobility and safety, while increasing comfort and enjoyment, but there are fundamental questions that need to be addressed.

Building on the success of two previous workshops the exhibition portion of the event will showcase the latest technologies in the field, while the workshop brings together all stakeholders to discuss the current state of this technology and to agree on how to achieve progress.

The Geneva Motor Show is one of the world’s leading automotive events and in 2007 will give seven hundred square metres of exhibition space to consumer or concept communication technologies for vehicles. This will include communication from/to the car, location-based services, multimedia entertainment, diagnostics, safety, e-call, and others.

Hans Gierlich of Head Acoustics and Chairman of the steering committee for the event, said: “The workshop will examine some of the challenges faced in linking the automotive and ICT sectors. There are many hurdles here and standardization will play an important role in smoothing the way forward for the industry.”

The goals of the workshop are to shed light on questions such as; how do we face the technical and engineering challenges; how do we make sure that the right standards are adopted to deal with the complexity of so many electronic components and what are the best ways to allow this market to develop its full potential?

This event is convened as part of the activity of the World Standards Cooperation (WSC) between ITU (ITU-T and ITU-R), ISO and IEC. More details can be found at the event’s website - itu.int/ITU-T/worksem/ict-auto/200703/. Exhibitor/speaker enquiries: tsbcar@itu.int, +41 (0)22 730 5808, 5882. Media enquiries: toby.johnson@itu.int, + 41 (0) 22 730 5877.

*The International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) and the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) group government authorities, representatives of industry, research institutes, universities and consumers, and other experts, to reach a consensus on worldwide standards in almost all realms of human endeavour, from aircraft and space vehicles to basic units of measurement and test methods. The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) is an agency of the United Nations which has among its aims the extension of the benefits of new telecommunication technologies to all the world's inhabitants and facilitation of the worldwide standardization of telecommunications.

 

 

ITU-T is hosting a workshop and demonstration together with OASIS on Advances in ICT Standards for Public Warning, 19-20 October.

In the wake of the Tsunami disaster that took place on 26 December 2004 and major natural catastrophes that hit in 2005 standards development organizations (SDOs) have stepped up work on public warning in concert with organizations dealing with disaster management, prevention and relief. Emphasizing the practical application of standardized public warnings, the workshop will review relevant work by SDOs, identify standardization gaps, and identify key players to collaborate on further work as needed.

The two-day event will feature an emergency management interoperability demonstration of the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) OASIS standard, as well as presentations by various players active in public warning and discussion of relevant technology issues that may also have public policy implications. 

 

ITU-T is hosting a workshop NGN and Grids in collaboration with the Open Grid Forum (OGF) in Geneva, 23-24 October 2006.

Grid computing enables organizations to pool IT resources across departmental and organizational boundaries in a secure, highly efficient manner in order to solve massive computational problems.

Next generation networks (NGN) offer increased quality and service features for users, independent of the underlying transport technology. ITU-T’s Global Standards Initiative on Next Generation Network (NGN-GSI) is well under way and is responding to urgent market needs for global NGN standards.

The workshop will explore how Grids will work in an NGN environment by bringing together experts from both communities.

The telco community is eyeing Grid development with interest. Telcos could use grids internally, for billing and simulations for example but new revenue streams can be foreseen in areas such as managed grid services.

One panel discussion and Q&A will pose the question: “What can Grids do for Telcos and what can Telcos do for Grids?” Other panel discussions will examine NGN management and security.

From a telecoms perspective there are some challenges such as QoS, how to control the network, how to manage dynamic provisioning and how to provide collision-free addresses (IPv4 <-> NAT). It is expected that all of these topics and more will be addressed.

A key result of the event will be a gap analysis of standards in the field and a better understanding of how grids can be catered for in ITU-T’s NGN Release 2. An action plan outlining what work needs to be done, and where can then be developed.

The African Advanced Level Telecommunications Institute (AFRALTI), and the ITU’s Center of Excellence, in association with the ITU-T, will run a three day workshop on telecommunication standardization, 25 to 27 October 2006. The workshop will be conducted at the TDM Training Centre in Maputo, Mozambique. A broad aim of the event is to give African regulators and operators an insight into the working methods of ITU-T and encourage greater particpation.

The event will explore topics including NGN, VOIP, issues of security related to these technologies, and their likely regulatory implications. Also covered will be the outcome of the last World Telecommunications Standardization Assembly (WTSA – 2004) held in Brazil in October 2004 and the implications on the structure and working methods of ITU-T, as well as what some of these decisions mean for Africa.

Introduction

Following the first couple of meetings under the auspices of the NGN-GSI and in line with the strategy of reinforcing the NGN work in ITU-T by means of co-location of Rapporteur group meetings, the next NGN-GSI event will take place at the ITU premises, Geneva, from 24 October (PM) – 3 November 2006.

This event will follow the ITU-T/OGF workshop "ITU-T/OGF Workshop on Next Generation Networks and Grids", which will take place at the same location on 23 – 24 (AM) October 2006. Information related to this workshop is contained in TSB Circular 95.

Objectives for this meeting

• to progress the draft Recommendations that are targeted to be consented in 4Q2006 and early 2007
• to progress other deliverables, e.g. Supplements

More details

NGN-GSI Home

Introduction

ITU-T is hosting a workshop NGN and Grids in collaboration with the Open Grid Forum (OGF) in Geneva, 23-24 October 2006.

ITU-T’s Global Standards Initiative on Next Generation Network (NGN-GSI) is well under way and is responding to urgent market needs for global NGN standards. NGN offers increased quality and service features for users, independent of the underlying transport technology.

Grids have been widely used in the scientific community. Increasingly, Grids are being deployed within commercial settings. The Open Grid Forum is actively reaching out to communities such as the Telco community to advance Grid adoption, interoperability and scalability. Different scenarios for Telcos can be envisioned: Telcos may 1) specialize in network SLAs that are optimally suited to Grids; 2) use Grids for their IT internal needs; and/or 3) offer Grids as a managed service to customers.

Objectives

• The joint ITU-T/OGF workshop will bring together the telecoms industry and the Grid community to:
• Review the present status of applications, services and business opportunities in Grid networks and NGNs.
• Discuss future evolution for Grids and NGNs both in terms of business opportunities and related technical requirements.
• Identify relevant existing international standards as well as gaps in the standardization framework for Grids and NGNs.
• Understand what additional features required by Grids should be considered in ITU-T’s NGN Release 2.
• Identify the impact of NGN on Grids.
• Contribute to the establishment of a roadmap for future standardization activities among major players.
• Prepare a coordinated action plan on urgent standardization issues between standards developing organizations and fora/consortia working in this area.

More details

ITU-T Workshops and Seminars 

Introduction

ITU-T is hosting a Workshop and Demonstration of Advances in ICT Standards for Public Warning in collaboration with the OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) at the ITU headquarters in Geneva, 19-20 October 2006.

Objectives

The specific objectives for the Workshop and Demonstration are:

• To review progress concerning public warning since 2003, including the Tampere Convention.
• To demonstrate the availability and effectiveness of interoperable technologies based on the OASIS Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) content standard which is applicable to all alerts and notifications in disasters and emergency situations.
• To identify existing standardization gaps, including authorization and authentication of public warnings and the attendant implications for public policy.
• To prepare an action list for filling gaps and promoting public warning standardization, and identify key players that could collaborate in such work.

More details

ITU-T Workshops and Seminars

 

Introduction

At the kind invitation of the Tanzania Communications Regulatory Authority (TCRA), the International Telecommunications Union - Standardization Bureau (ITU-T) and the International Telecommunication Union - Development Bureau (ITU-D) are jointly organizing a Workshop on “Next Generation Networks” which will take place from 3-5 October 2006 inclusive, at the Markham Suites Hotels, Dar-Es-Salaam, in the United Republic of Tanzania.

The objectives of the seminar are twofold: first, to discuss the current trends, status and future evolution of Next Generation Networks technology and standardization, as being addressed by the ITU-T and share the experiences of NGN design, development and deployment. Central to these are: what areas of technology innovation hold the greatest promise for NGNs; what are the most innovative applications and services possible with NGNs? To this effect, issues revolving around NGN architecture, NGN technology and quality of service requirements, as well as evolution will be explored. Second, as NGNs are a major departure from the network today - these developments will likely change the ways of the telecommunication sector operates, NGN regulatory and policy issues for developing countries to exploit its full potential for development will also be discussed.

More details

ITU-T Workshops and Seminars

Introduction

This ITU-T IPTV Global Technical Workshop will review and examine IPTV standardization, political and regulatory aspects, business models and various case studies as well as technical developments and service provider’s operational aspects.

IPTV represents a convergence between the traditional telecommunication and broadcast industries. And, as with any convergence a lot of work is needed to ensure interoperability. Globally accepted standards are clearly a key enabler for this.

With many of the conditions necessary for IPTV rollout in place - global IP connectivity over managed broadband infrastructure with such guarantees as QoS and security, and broadband connectivity with enhanced network capabilities - there is a strong demand for standards to ensure smooth service rollout and interoperability. The workshop will provide a review of the current status of IPTV work as well as an examination of where to go next.

More details

ITU-T Workshops and Seminars 

A major event on the fast moving market of information and communication technologies in motor vehicles is being organized by the World Standards Cooperation, the entity comprising ITU, ISO and IEC, at the Geneva Motor Show in March 2007, one of the world’s leading automotive events. The event includes a workshop from 7 to 9 March 2007, accompanied by an exhibition that will run the length of the public days from 8 to 18 March, as well as the press days, on 6 and 7 March. Seven hundred square meters will be made available for the exhibition to showcase new products and concepts to an audience which includes high-level decision makers and media – in addition to the traditional audience of the motor show, an expected 800,000 visitors. The event will bring together the key specialists in the field, from top decision makers to engineers, designers, planners, government officials, regulators, standards experts and others.

More information on the Fully Networked Car Workshop and Exhibition

A new ITU-T Focus Group will develop standards for ICTs in cars, and a workshop on the same topic has been announced for March 2007.

The group, open to non-ITU members, and in particular aiming to attract participation from car manufacturers, will be called From/In/To Cars Communication and will, according to terms of reference agreed at the recent meeting of ITU-T’s Study Group 12 address:

• Hands-free communication in cars: Quality parameters and testing methods
• Interaction of car hands free systems with the radio channel
• Extension of the work to wideband car hands-free systems
• Special requirements/testing procedures for speech recognition systems in cars

Deliverables from the group will be submitted to SG 12 for formal approval as ITU-T Recommendations.

Jean-Yves Monfort, Chairman Study Group 12: “It is essential for all stakeholders to come to grips with these technologies that are having a profound influence on vehicle development, the driver experience and the way that vehicles are now sold. They have the potential to vastly improve vehicle mobility and safety, while increasing comfort and enjoyment, but they also raise some fundamental questions. What are the right business models in linking the automotive and telecoms sectors? How do we face the technical and engineering challenges? How do we make sure that the right standards are adopted to deal with the complexity of so many electronic components and to allow this market to develop its full potential? It is the goal of these activities, the formation of the Focus Group and the workshop, to provide some answers to these questions.”

ITU-T’s SG12 work in the field started following the 2003 ITU, Workshop on Standardization in Telecommunication for motor vehicles. The formation of the FG, will make it easier for car manufacturers, standards organizations and others to participate in the development of a new set of requirements and specifications to help advance the work of ITU-T.

The group, chaired by Hans Gierlich, Head Acoustics, will first meet January 2007, with a second meeting planned during the Geneva Motor Show, March 2007. The Motor Show will also host a workshop, convened jointly by ITU, ISO and IEC, The Fully Networked Car, Information and Communication Technologies in Motor Vehicles. The event will review and examine the implications of the latest developments in this fast-moving market. A significant value-add will be an exhibition showcasing the latest technologies in the field. The exhibition will run the length of the Geneva Motor Show, while the workshop will take place between 7 and 9 March.

 

As part of celebrations for the 50^th anniversary of ITU-T, you are invited to vote for the most influential standards work from ITU-T.

ITU work is behind many of the worlds most prevalent information and communications technologies. Choose here from our shortlist which you think has best shaped the ICT world of today, or feel free to suggest your own idea.

 

 

ITU-T is hosting a workshop NGN and Grids in collaboration with the Global Grid Forum (GGF) in Geneva, 23-24 October 2006.

ITU-T’s Global Standards Initiative on Next Generation Network (NGN-GSI) is well under way and is responding to urgent market needs for global NGN standards. NGN offers increased quality and service features for users, independent of the underlying transport technology.

Grids have been widely used in the scientific community. Increasingly, Grids are being deployed within commercial settings. The Global Grid Forum is actively reaching out to communities such as the Telco community to advance Grid adoption, interoperability and scalability. Different scenarios for Telcos can be envisioned: Telcos may 1) specialize in network SLAs that are optimally suited to Grids; 2) use Grids for their IT internal needs; and/or 3) offer Grids as a managed service to customers.

More information