Archived Newsroom • Press Release |
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Tech industry calls for vertical sector participation
in standards development
CTOs’ recommendations will guide ITU work
Dubai, 26 November, 2012 – Chief Technology Officers (CTOs)
from leading multinational ICT companies have charged ITU to develop mechanisms
that better integrate the needs of ‘vertical’ sectors in ITU’s international
standardization work.
Acknowledging increasing industry convergence powered in large part by ICTs,
CTOs affirmed the need for working methods that better engage vertical market
players and so enable such innovations as e-health, e-learning, intelligent
transport systems, mobile money and smart grid.
The call was a key outcome of ITU’s annual
CTO
meeting, which assembled 21 private-sector executives under the
chairmanship of the Director of ITU's Telecommunication Standardization Bureau
(TSB), Malcolm Johnson, to discuss ITU’s role in the standardization ecosystem
and the associated priorities of ITU-T.
Dr Hamadoun I. Touré, Secretary-General, ITU: “Standards power a
smoothly-functioning global ICT network that supports health, education,
literacy, democracy, commerce and entertainment… and almost every other vertical
sector. We must ask ourselves whether the vast array of forums and consortiums
proliferating in the ICT sector today is the most efficient way to address a
market that continues to grow in sophistication and complexity.”
CTOs also emphasized the need for collaboration between the mobile and
transport and access standardization communities. This, they said, will be
crucial to ensure a coordinated approach to the development of optical transport
standards supporting the rollout of mobile broadband beyond 4G. In addition,
they proposed smartphone security standardization as a new ITU-T study area, as
well as the expansion of ITU-T’s work on software-defined networking (SDN).
Also discussed was the possibility of a release-based approach to standards
delivery where the coordination of work in a number of standards development
organizations (SDOs) and industry forums is needed. Packaging standards into
‘releases’ would give a greater synchronization of SDOs’ work. CTOs identified
ITU-T’s ongoing cloud computing work and work taking place within ITU-T’s Focus
Group on M2M Service Layer (FG M2M) as potential subjects for pilot projects to
evaluate the effectiveness of this approach.
The CTO meeting communiqué submitted to ITU’s
World
Telecommunication Standardization Assembly (WTSA-12) offered
continued support for ITU’s efforts to bridge the standardization gap and better
integrate the needs of developing countries.
For more information, please contact:
Sarah Parkes
Chief, Media Relations and Public Information, ITU
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Toby Johnson
Senior Communications Officer,
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