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ITU-T
Further information is available on the Web site of ITU-T at www.itu.int/ITU-T/ Our questions were answered by Houlin Zhao, Director of ITU-T's Telecommunication Standardization Bureau (TSB).
How has your organisation been affected by the general trend of declining participation in standardisation activities? The membership of ITU-T continues to increase, last year we attracted 90 new members, that's a 25 per cent increase on the previous year. But in general there has been a decrease in member activity, but not I believe as much as has been seen in other organisations. This is mainly due to new members from the developing world, where the adoption of standards is seen as crucial as new infrastructure is rolled out. This is also the case for small and medium industries where adoption of standards is seen as critical. But, due to the economic downturn we have seen an inevitable decline in activity in the private sector. The downturn is, we believe, a short-term situation and has not affected in any way, the continuing good work of ITU-T members. If participation in your organisation's standardisation activities has declined, what are the reasons for this phenomenon? The work of the ITU-T continues. But, the general financial downturn has hit the telecoms sector particularly hard, with the knock-on effect that private-sector companies are scaling back all 'non-urgent' activities. We hope that this situation will be short-lived. How severe have been and will be the effects of diminishing interest in standardisation on global interoperability? Diminishing activity is an unavoidable result of the state of the global economy. It does not mean that the development of standards is any less important. The ITU-T has been particularly active over the period. Issues of interoperability have become more important as we move towards next generation networks, where an inherently more complicated infrastructure makes the need for standards even more important. ITU-T's work in the next generation space includes, the e-numbering (ENUM) initiative, IMT-2000 and the development of the Joint Video Team (JVT). ENUM allows a wide variety of devices to be contacted using one number. IMT 2000 is the umbrella organisation for development of the core network aspects of next generation mobile telephony, and JVT has been set up to develop better video coding efficiency. Is competition among standards bodies and for a good for the quality of standards, or is it rather damaging, to the expense of global interoperability? It is not good for standards bodies to work against each other. But co-operation between Standards Development Organisations (SDOs) is on the increase and ITU-T has been involved with a number of initiatives with other such bodies. I think we will see more of this in the future. I recently convened an unprecedented two-day meeting with two-dozen prominent representatives of well-known forums. I believe we managed to reach agreement on some very important principles on how ITU-T, forums and SDOs can efficiently collaborate in the future. Among other things we agreed, best practices for communication among ITU-T, forums and SDOs together with considered opportunities for partnerships between ITU-T and forums. ITU-T sees other forums and consortia as strategic partners. We are complementary to one another. On the other hand, ITU would like to encourage industry to bring their work to existing, rather than new SDOs, wherever possible, so that unnecessary overlapping of work can be avoided at an early stage. What have you done to attract more active participation in your standardisation efforts? ITU-T has a constantly evolving promotion policy. We have recently strengthened our in-house promotions team with a view to gaining coverage in a wider variety of media. ITU-T is also supported in this sense by ITU members. One of the most important things that we have to do is attract new members and to do this we have a number of initiatives in place beyond gaining press coverage. Regular meetings hosted in different countries around the world are attended by providers of services and systems ensuring that ITU-T is constantly in discourse with both industry and governmental bodies. We also do a lot of work to attract researchers and students, who are key to the future success of ITU-T. It is something that we are aware has been a problem in the past but something that we are taking very seriously now. Do you actively promote the adoption of standards of your organisation and how? See above Ever more fora are dealing with similar items. How could this be avoided? This is unavoidable, and not always a bad thing. In fact often other SDO's work is complimentary to the work of ITU-T. We believe that the ITU-T is uniquely placed as a standards organisation because its members are drawn from both the private sector and from governmental organisations. This is absolutely key to the adoption of global standards. This is of course in addition to the support that we have from ITU itself and collaboration with other SDOs. How can a better co-ordination between standards organisations and fora be achieved? See answer to question 4. What is the outlook on the future role of your organisation and on the future of standardisation and interoperability in telecommunications? I certainly hope that the ITU-T will retain its pre-eminent role in the development of standards for interoperability in telecommunications. We are approaching a very exciting time and all of our members are working flat out on the globalisation of standards that will bring about next generation networks. The telecoms industry depends on it. And representatives of every major manufacturer of network access equipment, and of most of the major telcos and governments around the world are members of the various study and working groups that are responsible for the development of these standards in ITU-T. Please send us your comments on this article. |
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