Reinhard Scholl

Ladies and Gentlemen, colleagues and friends

 

On behalf of the ITU Secretary-General, Dr Hamadoun Touré, and the Director of the Telecommunication Standardization Bureau, Malcolm Johnson, I am very pleased to welcome you to this joint ITU-T SG 13 and ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 6 workshop on "Future Networks standardization".

 

There have been long standing ties between ITU-T study groups and JTC 1.

 

About 10% of all ITU-T Recommendations is joint work with ISO/IEC JTC 1, so-called “common text”. Detailed working procedures for the joint collaboration between ISO/IEC JTC 1 and ITU-T study groups are explained in a 50+ pages “Guide for ITU-T and ISO/IEC JTC 1 Cooperation” which was last updated in 2010.

Nevertheless, it was only a bit more than two years ago that the first ever joint ITU-T | ISO/IEC JTC 1 joint leadership meeting took place in Geneva, 4-5 February 2010. This was followed by a 2nd joint leadership meeting on the invitation by JTC 1 in San Diego, 6 November 2011.

 

Ties are getting stronger and stronger, as this workshop testifies.

 

During the 2nd joint ITU-T and ISO/IEC JTC 1 leadership meeting, discussions took place regarding future network(s), and activities in both JTC 1/SC 6/WG 7 (“Network, Transport, and Future Network”) and Q.21/13 (“Future Networks”) were presented. Although liaisons were exchanged between the two groups, interactions between them have been relatively low, and there was little effort by either of the groups to harmonize results.

 

So to avoid diverging standards between ITU-T and ISO/IEC JTC 1 standards which would certainly confuse industry, it was felt that a workshop between the two groups, ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 6/WG 7 and Q.21/13, would be very useful to understand the objectives of both groups and to explore where work could be done collaboratively, resulting perhaps in “common text” between the two organizations. This approach has for example been used in the context of cloud computing where the ITU-T Focus Group on Cloud Computing and ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC38/SGCC did have a joint meeting for sharing information about their respective progress.

 

ITU-T started a so-called focus group on future networks in January 2009. The objective was to share the discussion on Future Networks and ensure global common understanding about Future Networks with collaboration and harmonization with relevant entities and activities.” The Focus Group on Future Networks passed six deliverables to the parent study group (Study Group 13) to be turned into ITU-T Recommendations. The focus group concluded its work in December 2010.

“Future Networks”, the tile of today’s workshop, is also the title of ITU-T Study Group 13, the title of one of the six Working Parties of SG 13 (WP 5/13), and the title of one of the Questions of WP5/13, namely Question 21. It is also in the title of JTC 1/SC 6/WG 7.

 

Question 21 built its first Recommendations on future networks on the six output documents from the ITU-T Focus Group on Future Networks. By today Study Group 13 has approved four Recommendations on Future Networks including the milestone document ITU-T Y.3001 specifying the design goals and objectives for Future Networks, and a high level description of one of the strong candidate technology for Future Networks – virtualization (ITU-T Y.3011).

 

The workshop was proposed by France Telecom Orange (Olivier Le Grand) to Study Group 13 meeting of 6 February 2012. Both Study Group 13 and thereafter ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 6/WG 7 welcomed the proposal.

 

So a workshop steering committee with delegates got together from both sides to shape the programme. I’d like to thank in particular Olivier Le Grand and Leo Lehmann for pushing forward, together with Shin-Gak Kang, SC 6/WG 7 Convenor.

 

So today we have a full day’s programme that will identify key issues and future collaboration schemes.

 

I wish you an enjoyable and productive workshop.