Standards — Enabling connectivity

Global international standards are key to cost-effective telecommunication development.

The ITU Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU–T) remains committed to serving the standardization needs of the global marketplace.

Many of the systems and services standardized by ITU–T are relevant to rural communications — particularly in the areas of network access, transport, service provision and interoperability.

ITU–T is focusing closely on multimedia, as this can be brought to rural areas via community access. The evolution of multimedia applications is assured by the ITU–T project Mediacom 2004, which also considers all aspects of security, and in particular the authentication and encryption required for telemedicine, telebanking and e-commerce transactions.

Wireless access, so essential to providing connectivity to rural areas, has created a need to adapt standards-setting activities of the existing telephone network to support the mobility of subscribers and terminals. These mobility studies are led by the ITU–T Special Study Group on “IMT–2000 and Beyond”.

With the growing use of IP-based networks to deliver multimedia services and with the spectacular growth of the Internet in developing countries, the interconnection of IP networks with the existing telephone network has also become a priority area for ITU–T. This work is assured by the ITU–T IP project, which coordinates all aspects of IP-related standardization, from signalling to transport, from numbering and addressing to security and from performance to operations and maintenance.

Several standardization areas are also specifically related to telecentres and rural communications. One area is the different access scenarios provided by the ITU–T “Access Network Transport” project, which describes the evolution of technologies such as ADSL — where very high data rates, as well as improved features and functionality can be provided over existing copper infrastructure. Another area is multimedia systems and services which provide authentication, privacy and encryption standards for applications such as telemedicine, e-commerce or distance-learning.

Finally, the work of ITU–T Study Group 3 helps developing countries keep pace with the rapidly changing international tariff principles, and therefore secure their market position under evolving conditions. For example, the cost models developed by the Tariff Group for Africa (TAF) enable African countries to calculate cost-based tariffs as required in the new international tariff principles, thus facilitating their negotiations with other operators.