Highlights in February

Guy-Olivier Segond, former President of the State Council of the Republic and Canton of Geneva, appointed Special Ambassador for the World Summit on the Information Society

ITU made this announcement in a press release issued on 4 February 2002. Mr Segond is a prominent politician who, in the course of his various elective terms as a member of the Federal Parliament, as Mayor of Geneva and as President of the State Council of Geneva, has always been committed to international cooperation. With a keen eye on human rights, sustainable development and the digital divide, Mr Segond has participated in numerous conferences and meetings at which the focus was on putting new technology to work in the service of human development.

It was in that context that he co-chaired, together with President Alpha Oumar Konaré of Mali, the Bamako 2000 Conference. In addition, he played an active part in the high-level meeting of the Economic and Social Council devoted to new information and communication technologies, which contributed to the Millennium Declaration.

As Special Ambassador for the Summit, the first phase of which is to be held in Geneva from 10 to 12 December 2003, Mr Segond will be responsible for high-level contacts with governments and with agencies of the United Nations system aimed at sensitizing them to the importance of the Summit. In addition, he will be responsible for contacts with leaders in the private sector aimed at securing their involvement in the preparatory work for the Summit on both the content and financial levels.

Vladimir Petrovksy, Geneva’s number one diplomat, bids ITU farewell

On 15 February 2002, Vladimir Petrovsky, Director-General of the United Nations Office at Geneva (UNOG), bade ITU farewell. On this occasion, ITU Secretary-General Yoshio Utsumi awarded Mr Petrovsky the ITU Silver Medal in recognition of his support and dedication to the work and activities of the Union. Mr Petrovsky, who retired at the end of February after 45 years in world diplomacy, was known to the Geneva diplomatic community as Diplomat number one”. Mr Petrovsky lauded ITU for the leading role it played in deploying the Geneva Diplomatic Community network (GDCnet) to link the Geneva-based permanent missions and international organizations. He went on to thank Mr Utsumi for his steadfast commitment to extending the benefits of information and communication technologies to the whole world. The “future belongs to ITU”, Mr Petrovsky said with regard to the World Summit on the Information Society. Read our Exclusive interview with Vladimir Petrovsky in a future issue of ITU News.

ITU sets new standard for digital wideband speech coding

Known as Recommendation G.722.2, the new standard, which ITU approved recently, is expected to improve quality for wideband voice applications and services across a wide range of communication systems and platforms. Several important applications are envisaged for the standard. These include: voice over the Internet protocol (VoIP), third generation (3G) mobile communications, PSTN high-quality audio-conferencing and business applications (both in point-to-point and multi-point situations), streaming audio and speech, ISDN wideband telephony, and ISDN video telephony and videoconferencing. Recommendation G.722.2 is also referred to as the Adaptive Multi-Rate Wideband (AMR-WB) codec. Experts from around the world collaborated in the definition, selection and testing of this new codec, and have stated that they are proud to offer a single standardized solution that can be used across several industries.

The standard has been selected by the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) as the Wideband codec for GSM and 3G wireless W-CDMA applications. This marks the first time that both wireless and wireline services may be able to adopt the same codec. Experts say that the AMR-WB codec is a breakthrough in speech quality. Wideband speech coding, using an audio band of 50 to 7 000 Hz, is said to offer major subjective improvements in speech quality compared to traditional narrowband telephone speech (200 to 3 400 Hz). A bandwidth of 50 to 7 000 Hz improves the intelligibility and naturalness of speech, adds a feeling of transparent communication and eases speaker recognition.

ITU approves new Question on digital cinema

On 7 February 2002, administrations of ITU Member States decided to approve a new study Question on digital cinema broadcasting. Digital cinema is a new service using advanced television technology to emulate the cinema experience by means of electronic delivery of programmes for collective viewing on screens of cinema-like size in cinema-like environments.