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New joint standards initiative on intelligent transport systems
Leading organizations pool resources to
address bottlenecks
Geneva, 18 April 2011
– Leading global standards organizations ITU and ISO have announced the creation
of a partnership in the burgeoning field of intelligent transport systems (ITS).
Industry experts who gathered for the recent ISO/ITU/IEC Fully Networked Car
event at the Geneva Motor Show agreed that the next twenty years will see a huge
shift towards ITS. Today’s communications capabilities give the potential for
vehicles 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, minimize their carbon emissions and provide multimedia
communications.
But while considerable resources have been invested in R&D, the lack of global
standards is widely regarded as a major impediment to large scale deployment of
ITS services and applications.
The involvement of international standards bodies is seen as critical to easing
bottlenecks resulting – in part – from poor communication between overlapping
sectors; automotive, ITS players, telecoms suppliers and operators. The new
Joint Task Force for ITS Communications will engineer better collaboration
between these sectors and pool resources within ITU and ISO, linking existing
work and avoiding duplication.
ITU and ISO both have a long history of work in ITS, and have maintained long
standing cooperation on the creation of standards in the field. The new
agreement cements this relationship, allowing for greater coordination of their
work programmes and harmonization of all outputs.
Dr Hamadoun Touré, ITU Secretary-General,
said: “There is a will from manufacturers to implement these technologies, but
as yet there has been no real breakthrough in terms of the technical standards
needed to roll this out on a global scale. Vehicle manufacturers do not want to
create different versions of this technology for every different market. They do
not want regional or national standards. They want global standards, and through
this initiative ITU and ISO are proving that we are willing and able to provide
them.”
Rob Steele, ISO Secretary-General, said: "There is a need for harmonization of
standardization of essential technologies to provide a 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 vehicle, but in the wider
infrastructure that is needed to support this revolution. The value of the
solutions proposed is magnified when they are globally relevant. In this,
customers of international standards care most about the benefits that
implementing international standards provide and industry should not and will
not wait while standards organizations fight amongst themselves, compete or try
to decide who will develop that standard. They want to be listened to and have
their needs for international standard solutions met."
ITU and ISO welcome participation in the Joint Task Force for ITS
Communications by the national and regional standards bodies working in ITS
and communications.
For more information, please contact:
Toby Johnson
Senior Communications Officer
ITU Telecommunication Standardization Bureau,
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