Busan, Republic of Korea, 22 October 2014
Opening Address
Mr. Jong Lok Yoon, Vice-Minister of Science, ICT and Future Planning,
Dr. Dong-Ho Cho, President of the Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences,
Dear colleagues,
Ladies and gentlemen,
I wholeheartedly congratulate you on the opening of the 5th International Conference on ICT Convergence, hosted by Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning, and organized by the Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences.
I would like to begin by thanking Dr Seong-Ho Jeong, ITU-T SG16 Vice-Chairman, and Professor at the Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Korea, for inviting ITU to participate in this event. It is a pleasure to be here with you today for ICTC 2014 with a very interesting theme, ‘ICT convergence towards hyper-connected society’.
Every year, ITU organizes a similar conference, the ITU Kaleidoscope, which brings together a wide range of views from universities, industry and research institutions, to identify emerging developments in ICTs, in particular the areas in need of international standards. I am very pleased that this conference also addresses these issues, in particular the impact of convergence – which of course is of great interest today.
Like ICTC, Kaleidoscope conferences are also technically co-sponsored by the IEEE and IEEE Communication Society along with the Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers of Japan.
The sixth edition, held last June in St Petersburg University, approached the topic “Living in a converged world — impossible without standards?” from a variety of perspectives.
ICTs are increasingly converging with different industries and social sectors. This is evidenced daily by innovations, such as e‑health, intelligent transport systems, smart grid, mobile money and smart water management.
The need for standards to enable interoperability and compatibility has never been more apparent. In the future, it will be difficult to find an industry or socio-economic activity that does not rely on the common backbone provided by ICTs. This places huge demands on ICT standardization.
Papers selected by Kaleidoscope are published in the IEEE Xplore Digital Library as well as in the Conference proceedings available on the ITU-T website. The best papers are evaluated for publication in IEEE Communications Magazine and other international journals.
The research results of K-2014 relate to a range of ITU activities, and a prize fund totalling 10,000 US Dollars was awarded to the authors of the three best papers, and Young Author Recognition certificates were issued in recognition of significant contributions from youth.
The winning paper, entitled “Towards Converged 5G Mobile Networks – Challenges and Current Trends”, analyses the expectation that the emergence of ‘5G’ mobile wireless systems will result from standards convergence, critiquing technical considerations spanning machine-to-machine communications, energy efficiency, complete ubiquity, and autonomous management.
The second best paper covers the topic “Dynamic mobile sensor network platform for ID-based communication”; while the third best paper focuses on ICT patents and home care.
An interesting keynote speech addressed the theme of the Internet of Nanothings. According to the author, Professor Ian F. Akyildiz (from the Georgia Institute of Technology, USA), nanotechnology is providing a new set of tools to the engineering community to design nanoscale components with unprecedented functionalities.
Networks of nanomachines (and nanonetworks) will enable a plethora of applications in the biomedical, environmental and industrial fields, among others, once a way is found to enable these machines to communicate.
Ideas presented at these conferences have invigorated our standardization work. Indeed, so many major transformations in the telecommunications industry have come from academic research, which is why I have always been very keen to increase the participation of academia in ITU’s work.
Building on the impetus of the Kaleidoscope conferences, the ITU Plenipotentiary Conference in 2010 established on a trial basis an ITU Academia membership category, which became available in early 2011.
This was a logical step forward, formalizing an already very healthy relationship, and it was very much spearheaded by ITU-T.
The Academia membership category is growing rapidly. We have welcomed 80 academic and research institutes to ITU, of which I am pleased to say 59 are members of ITU-T, and many are now actively contribution to our work.
Academic membership is available at a reduced fee of CHF 4000 and CHF 2000 for universities in developed and developing countries, respectively.
It is my hope that the current ITU Plenipotentiary Conference taking place here in Busan will confirm this membership category and give us an even stronger mandate to engage with academia and research institutes.
Now that ICTs are enabling the convergence of entire industry sectors, ITU needs to develop new relationships with many organizations and entities that have no historic involvement in ITU, such as the automotive industry, healthcare providers, utilities and financial institutions.
The world is becoming ever more connected, bound together by ICTs and the common platforms provided by technical standards.
Interoperability and compatibility, too, are ever more essential, so conformance to international standards is increasingly important, which is why I initiated the ITU Conformance and Interoperability programme in 2008.
The standardization world is in transition as convergence blurs the traditional demarcation lines between ICT standards bodies.
That is why closer collaboration and cooperation between standards bodies and the various vertical industry sectors, along with academia and research institutes, will become ever more crucial.
I believe that events such as the ICTC and ITU Kaleidoscope conferences will continue to make a substantial contribution to this effort and reflect the multi-disciplinary, all-encompassing future of information and communication technologies.
Once again, congratulations on the opening of the 5th International Conference on ICT Convergence.
Thank you and I wish you a very successful and enjoyable conference.
