Joint standards effort drives videoconferencing market
ITU and Internet2 standard gives scalability for network managers

Geneva, 12 September 2003 — ITU has announced a new standards suite H.350 that will drive the market for videoconferencing, by making it easier and less expensive.

H.350 gives IT managers the ability to manage large numbers of users by standardizing the way systems store address data. One reason that IT managers have resisted large-scale videoconferencing rollout is the fact that it has been difficult to effectively manage until now.

The standards suite allows users to search for and find a user’s video or voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) address just like you would find an e-mail address or telephone number today. Because it is standardized, enterprises can maintain this information with the confidence that it will work with multiple vendors’ equipment.

The work on the standard was started with the Internet2® Video Middleware Initiative Group, a joint effort between the Internet2 Middleware group and the Video Development Initiative (ViDe).

Tyler Johnson of ViDe explained, "ITU was an efficient and thorough venue in which to complete and ratify the work started in Internet2. We found ITU to be quite open to individuals in the academic community working to transfer technology from research networks to the commodity Internet. Moreover, ITU’s status in the United Nations System has become increasingly important because it helps to effectively balance the interests of nation states, private enterprise and individuals."

It will allow users to scale-up video and VoIP operations from a few hundred endpoints to full enterprise deployments without the need for additional systems administration. Service providers will be able to add value to their directory services by being able to provide video contact details. H.350 links account management and authorization automation to the enterprise directory using the lightweight directory access protocol (LDAP) closely related to ITU standard X.500.

H.350 supports H.320, H.323, session initiation protocol (SIP) and even non-standard protocols.

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