At its second meeting yesterday, Committee 2 continued discussions on implementing results-based budgeting. The discussions focused on the priorities and objectives to be identified for the purpose of preparing the ITU-T budget, taking into account the strategic plan adopted by the Plenipotentiary Conference in 2002. In particular, participants started to review the strategic goals outlined in the Plan and translated them into more specific objectives that can be used for budgeting purposes.

Working procedures refined

Building on the success of WTSA 2000's proposals to increase efficiency in the production of ITU standards (ITU-T Recommendations), WTSA-04 delegates have agreed to the consolidation of the areas of work to be covered by study groups. As a result, an increased scope of study will be achieved with a reduction of some 20% in the number of Questions for more efficiency.

The work of WTSA’s Committee 4 reconfirmed the majority of the Telecommunication Standardization Advisory Group’s (TSAG) recommendations on restructuring. The life of many of the study groups that existed before the Assembly will extend into the next study period. Discussion, however, continues on the exact mandate of most, and whether or not Study Groups 11 (signalling) and 13 (architecture) will merge to form a new next generation network (NGN) group. For a number of delegations, the creation of an NGN group is an important step for ITU to take in order to both meet market needs and maintain ITU’s pre-eminent role in standards-setting. For others, the work carried out on signalling and interworking goes well beyond the requirements of NGN. And so for these people, it would be more appropriate to maintain both study groups and coordinate their work on NGN through other means such as remote collaboration or joint rapporteur groups. In a further move to increase the efficiency of ITU’s standardization procedures, the chairmen of the study groups have been empowered to hold co-located meetings to progress work in cases where subject matter is related.

Committee 3 in its second meeting continued intense discussion on ITU-T work methods. The group will also examine the conditions, rules and coordination arrangements with other relevant standardization organizations, and with forums and consortia.

ITU presents

A new feature of WTSA’s are the technical briefings that have been well attended introductions to different areas of technology. Wednesday saw briefings on international domain names and IPv6. Thursday’s sessions looked at next generation networks as well telecommunications for disaster relief and telemedicine.

Where to go from here?
Outlining an ambitious work programme

Committee 5 dedicated its first two meetings, held on 7 October, to the reports of study group chairmen. The reports gave an overview of the key achievements of the concluding study period and outlined the work it is proposed to carry out in the following term. A total of 982 standards were approved since the last Assembly representing 1 standard per working day.

Study Group 4 (telecommunication management) is proposing to lead the work on NGN management interfaces in collaboration with 7 other organizations and to develop a set of basic protocol-neutral information models. 

As part of its work on all aspects of electromagnetic effects of telecommunications, Study Group 5 (protection against electromagnetic environment effects) expects to include "home networks" in its future work programme. Home networks cover a number of different wireless technologies such as radio LAN and DECT and wireline technologies such as local area network (LAN) which interconnect a variety of in-home electronic and electrical equipment including TV, PC and household devices. The study group core competencies are also expected to be used for its future work in security and in mitigating electromagnetic problems that may prevent from successfully working in an ever increasingly complex variety of wireless and wireline systems.

The future activities of Study Group 6 (outside plant) are planned to cover cables used in buildings and home installations, standards for security and performance of cables as well as standards to foster the deployment of new services by different providers over the same cables. It is also proposed to develop standards to allow faster, more cost-effective and safer cable installation.

Study Group 9 (integrated broadband cable networks and television and sound transmission) whose work covers the transmission of voice, data and video IP applications over hybrid cable networks proposes to set standards to cover broadband wireless and to include the transmission of multimedia services. Work is also expected to include webcasting of TV programmes and advanced video codecs over cable networks, residential gateway for home networking, content protection and digital rights management for cable home networks and the next generation of set-top boxes to interoperate with other devices in the home including both IP and non-IP devices. It will also look into the transmission of large screen digital imagery for distribution purposes. Finally, a new work area proposed for the next study period is standards that will enable telecommunications for disaster relief over cable networks.

Study Group 12 (end-to-end transmission performance of networks and terminals) has identified a new topic, speech quality in motor vehicles. In this context, a workshop is planned to be held from 1 to 4 March 2005 at the Geneva Motor Show — one of the world's largest automobile events. The workshop will focus on the synergy between the information and communication technologies (ICT) and automotive sectors.

Access Network (optical access, DSL, home networking) as well as optical long-haul networks and their evolution towards the transport network infrastructure for next-generation networks (NGN) are seen to be the main focus of future work in Study Group 15 (optical and other transport networks).

Future work identified by Study Group 16 (multimedia services, systems and terminals) is expected to be three-pronged: convergence with broadcasting at the service and network levels, increased customer needs for higher bandwidth and terminal/service/users mobility (fixed/mobile convergence) and network capability for "e-everything". Study Group 16 is responsible for multimedia services, systems and terminals including e-commerce and e-business.

As lead study group for the security of communication systems in the past study period, Study Group 17 proposes to update Recommendation ITU-T X.509 which underpins all secure electronic transactions in cyberspace. It plans to address security threats, vulnerability and risk assessment as well as associated issues on privacy. In doing so, it will adopt a holistic approach covering the entire range of security issues, from prevention, protection, detection, response containment to restoration/recovery and forensics/attribution). It also plans to make strides in the development of two new languages (extended object description language (eODL) and user requirements notation or URN) to complement the ITU-T family of existing languages (abstract syntax notation one (ASN.1), specification and description language (SDL), message sequence chart (MSC) and testing and test control notation or TTCN)). Moreover, work on ASN.1 will expand to include web services.

Signalling requirements and protocols for convergence towards next-generation networks (NGN) and  interworking of existing protocols with SIP (session initiation protocol) and other IP-related protocols have been identified by Study Group 11 (signalling requirements and protocols) as key areas for future work while Study Group 13 (multi-protocol and IP-based networks and their internetworking) has identified NGN architectures and frameworks, profiling of existing specifications, project management as areas of future work along with support of IP-based services reference points for interconnection and emergency communications and  multi-protocol networks.

Special Study Group on the network aspects of IMT-2000 and beyond considers mobility to be a key dimension of NGN studies. The harmonization of IMT-2000 family members (mobility management and  increased interoperability and compatibility) is therefore proposed to be an important component of future activities. Other areas include the globalization of regional efforts and the promotion of convergence of mobile and fixed networks. Support for developing countries is a key element for future work.

The Focus Group on NGN provided a summary report of its activities concerning the architecture and mobility aspects of NGN and the foreseen evolution from existing fixed and mobile networks to NGN. Future work should deal with Release 1 of NGN currently under way which is expected to be completed by the end of 2004 and identification of the content of Release 2.

The Committee concluded today's work by adopting a draft Recommendation on network requirements and capabilities to support emergency communications over evolving circuit-switched and packet-switched networks.