Since May 2004 intense work has taken place in ITU, towards the development of standards that will define services, network and systems architecture in the next generation of IP enabled communication systems, or next generation networks (NGN).

The objectives of the workshop are to report the progress of ITU’s work on NGN and explore specific issues that impact both the ITU and the IETF in order to better understand the work underway in the two organizations and to identify areas where action can be taken to make further progress.

Houlin Zhao, Director of the ITU’s Telecommunication Standardization Bureau notes that, "We have made tremendous progress, thanks to the support of ITU members and members of other standards developing organizations such as IETF, ETSI¹ and ATIS². The momentum that this work has achieved will allow the ICT industry to develop a raft of new products and services on a much more powerful and dynamic infrastructure based on globally accepted standards."

Six sessions will each be co-chaired by an ITU representative and a representative from IETF. One area to be addressed is the concept known as "nomadicity", which will give fixed line and mobile users completely seamless communication. Simply put this means the underlying technology will be invisible to the user in a multi-service, multi-protocol, multi-vendor environment. The increasingly important topic of security will also be examined, along with signaling, QoS, requirements and functional architecture, network management and the evolution from the traditional ‘circuit switched’ network.

The workshop, the second on NGN in 2005, is an example of how ITU engages all interested parties in work towards the development of worldwide standards for NGN. In this way, industry demands for the efficient and swift completion of the specifications that will define the way that NGNs work will be met.

The event will also serve as an important meeting point for ITU’s Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T) and IETF management.

Global networking company Cisco Systems has agreed — using ITU's voluntary contribution mechanism for donating funds beyond membership fees — to contribute to NGN activities in general, including this and a future workshop.

To register as participant, click here. For media registration, contact the Press Office at +41 22 730 6039 (phone) or by email (click here)

For more information please contact:

Mr Toby Johnson
Communications Officer
ITU Telecommunication Standardization Bureau
Tel: +41 22 730 5877
Email Contact

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