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We encounter ITU global standards everyday without knowing it. For example, without ITU standardized networks you could not make an international telephone call, take a mobile communications device to another country and expect it to work, nor use the Internet for more or less any application anywhere. ITU standards are part of the hidden world of ICT, rarely seen but very much in evidence, assuring users of ICT services and platforms, the same experience, globally. ITU standards-based devices should work everywhere, and they provide a global market with economies of scale in production and deployment that give users real benefit.
Most – but not all – standards remain buried in complex technologies. But in one of the most high profile standardization initiatives to date, ITU has given formal backing to the Universal Charging Solution (UCS), an energy efficient charger design that will be applicable to all mobile phones in the future. As a result of one, single development, users will no longer need to throw functional chargers away, and buy new ones. A simple concept – standardized – means that tens of millions of consumers will save tens of millions of dollars, unnecessary landfill is markedly reduced, and energy efficiency for an entire sector in the industry is increased. It is a perfect example of how standards improve life. In a similar – green – vein ITU has standardized a way for ICT companies to report their carbon footprints, also providing tools that will enable the industry to quantify savings in green house gas emissions that can be enables by use of ICTs.
Setting the standard
Standards need standards-making bodies. The ITU is the pre-eminent standards making body in the world for the ICT industry. Within ITU, ITU-R and ITU-T are responsible for standards production, producing well over 200 separate standards – called Recommendations – annually. It has been a long term development. ITU can trace its formation back almost a hundred and fifty years to the days of international telegraphy when national administrations met to standardize and interconnect their networks, a unique initiative in international technical co-operation.
Since then, ITU has engineered standards in all key ICT sectors and has dominated the standards scene in most key areas such as telecom transmission in wireline and wireless technologies. ITU shorthand designations for standards enjoy instant recognition throughout the ICT industry – some have even become recognizable to the wider public.
ITU standards have been the starting point for entire new applications, companies and industries. Some such as ITU-T X.25 have been highly influential in data networking, while SS7 is the signaling system that facilitates all telephone calls and ITU-T H.264 effectively revolutionized the digital video industry –winning an Emmy award in the process. In the mobile space, IMT wireless standards worldwide, e.g. ITU-R M.1457, are formulated and ratified by ITU Study Groups. ITU work also extends to standardizing other resources, including numbering plans and the allocation of country code numbers that are used every day by millions of people. Moving forward, ITU and its Study Groups are engaged in many other tasks including next generation networks (NGN) , emergency telecommunications, broadband access, IPTV, home networking, cloud computing, smart grid, telepresence, identity management and 3DTV.
Nevertheless, standards making is a competitive business, and in the ICT world, there are estimated to be between 400 and 500 organizations at any one time developing technologies and related standards. ITU has formal relationships with many and will often work with national and regional standards organizations to give their work a global flavor. However, the proliferation of separate, and sometimes overlapping, activity has become a real problem for industry and users who need a coherent roadmap to implement new technologies. Even tracking new developments has become a major headache entailing significant business cost, and ITU is taking the lead in simplifying this landscape. In 2009, at a high level dialogue with Chief Technology Officers, ITU was tasked to assist in identifying key work programmes, overlaps and relationships across the standards world as the first stage of this process.
How to make a standard…
ITU assigns standards setting work to one of a series of Study Groups. A Study Group is able to draw on input from a wide range of stakeholders including governments but mainly private sector members, a unique feature of ITU. Decision making and agreement to produce standards (the ITU calls these Recommendations) is on a consensual and democratic basis, and is designed to be fast, flexible, transparent and accompanied by a clear and consistent intellectual property rights policy.
The independence of the ITU and consensus approach means that standards can be objectively formulated and optimized. All standards are checked for environmental sustainability considerations, in particular, the promotion of energy efficiency, as well as accessibility and potential security implications.
The Study Groups have the support of the ITU-R’s and ITU-T’s Secretariat, the Radiocommunication Bureau (BR) and Telecommunication Standardization Bureau (TSB). Advising the BR, TSB and Study Groups are the Radiocommunication Advisory Group (RAG) and Telecommunication Standardization Advisory Group (TSAG). Strategic and procedural aspects of ITU-R and ITU-T including Sector policy and Study Group organization and work programmes are decided by special conferences, the Radiocommunication Assembly and World Telecommunication Standardization Assembly.1.
Watching the future
The upsurge of technology has demanded a fast response from the standards community. ITU has made major efforts to streamline its approach, and an ITU Recommendation that may have taken four years to produce a decade ago can now – on average – be processed in as little as eight weeks. Meanwhile, ITU has proactively moved to examine the standards space and its evolution:
- Under its Technology Watch programme, ITU surveys the market to identify which areas of technology might require standardization in future. Typically, these would be rapidly evolving technologies of potential global importance but where there may be many possible – but not interoperable – solutions available. Recent examples would be cloud computing, and smart grids. ITU is conscious of the need to relate the standards environment to economic life and welfare. Reports issued through its Technology Watch have covered topics as diverse as Using Submarine Communications Networks to Monitor the Climate, Decreasing Driver Distraction, Biometrics and Standards, and ICTs and Food Security amongst many other issues.
- ITU’s Kaleidoscope events seek to engage with the academic community with a series of conferences around the world. Given that the concepts of innovative technologies are often developed in the academic world, ITU is increasingly looking to attract academics from the world’s universities and R&D institutions, fostering their involvement in the ITU Standardization process. There are numerous examples of this policy bearing fruit as many ITU-T Recommendations have been heavily influenced by academic involvement.
- ITU has formulated Focus Groups to act as cross-sectoral groupings where key organizations that traditionally have not been part of the ICT standards process can be involved. It is an important example of outreach where ICT standards will have big implications for other industrial and commercial communities and will need to be framed with them in mind. Currently, ITU includes Focus Groups engaging two global communities of high importance: the utility industry for smart grid technologies and the vehicle manufacturing industry for intelligent transport systems (ITS).
1Radiocommunication Assembly, RA-07, Geneva and World Telecommunication Standardization Assembly, WTSA-08, Johannesburg
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