Robert Shaw: ITU News

Phasing out the old and phasing in the new...

Mon, 21 Jul 2003 19:14:30 GMT

Readers will have noticed I've been "on vacation" for a long time and this blog hasn't been updated. The reason is that the ITU Strategy and Policy Unit is now rolling out its own newslog (RSS feed here) with a broad range of categorization so that individual topics can be subscribed to based on the readers particular interests. As of today, here are the current categories and related RSS feeds but except for the first feed which is Everything [RSS], it's a taxonomic work in progress and still subject to evolution:

Everything [RSS]
Africa [RSS]
Americas [RSS]
Asia-Pacific [RSS]
Broadband [RSS]
Competition Policy [RSS]
Country Case Studies [RSS]
Grid Networks [RSS]
ICT Policy and Develpment [RSS]
Indicators and Statistics [RSS]
ITU News [RSS]
Internet Names and Addresses [RSS]
- ENUM [RSS]
- IPv6 [RSS]
- Internationalized Domain Names [RSS]
Mesh Networks [RSS]
Mobile [RSS]
Open Source [RSS]
Presentations and Speeches [RSS]
Publications and Reports [RSS]
SPAM [RSS]
Ubiquitous Networks [RSS]
VOIP [RSS]
Wireless Networks [RSS]
Workshops and Symposia [RSS]
World Summit on the Information Society [RSS]

I'll try and migrate some of the more interesting content over when ever I find the time but for now it's goodbye to the old and hello to the new as the Strategy and Policy Unit migrates to a new local Radio Community Server.

EC's Objectives for WSIS

Fri, 23 May 2003 19:54:46 GMT

The European Commission has set out its objectives for the World Summit on Information Society.

J.202: ITU's Java-based standard for interactive TV

Wed, 23 Apr 2003 05:11:06 GMT

The Age has an article on ITU's new Java-based standard for interactive TV, J.202 from ITU-T Study Group 9. See this earlier piece: ITU Approves Standard on Interactive TV.

Open Source ITU-T H.264

Fri, 11 Apr 2003 15:10:37 GMT

Further to "ITU-T H.264: Superior Video Codec Coming", it's nice to run across an open source H.264 project on SourceForge.net.

ITU Approves Standard on Interactive TV

Thu, 10 Apr 2003 15:52:05 GMT

ITU Opens Up World for Interactive TV Providers. The International Telecommunication Union announces the approval of a new standard that allows content providers to roll out value-added interactive TV (iTV) services to any network without modification. The standard (Recommendation ITU-T J.202) defines the interfaces that designers use to produce content (Application Programming Interfaces — API) and gives guidelines for their use. It has the backing of the broadcast industry as well as key manufacturers of TV equipment and set-top boxes. ITU-T J.202 consolidates the work of other standards makers illustrating ITU-T’s position as the pre-eminent body for coordination of Information Communication Technology (ICT) standards. J.202 was standardized in ITU-T Study Group 9. The standard consolidates efforts from the Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB), Association of Radio Industries and Businesses (ARIB), Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC), and Open Cable Applications Platform (OCAP).

Daum: Korea's Top Web Portal

Thu, 10 Apr 2003 10:11:32 GMT

The Republic of Korea has the highest broadband penetration in the world (see page 6 of this recent report issued by ITU (PDF)). The corresponding ITU country case study discusses Daum, Korea’s top portal web site. Some 90 per cent of all Korean Internet users log onto Daum. Around 450 million pages of Daum’s content is viewed on an average day ranking it as one of the top Intenet portals in both pages per user and session time in the world.

Promoting Broadband Networks

Mon, 07 Apr 2003 10:55:36 GMT

The ITU is hosting a workshop this week on the different strategies used by ITU Member States, at both local and national levels, for promoting the deployment and use of broadband networks. The key research question is why some economies have been more successful than others and whether this success can be replicated. In preparation for the workshop, the ITU Strategy and Policy Unit has now posted its workshop background paper (PDF, Word) as well as Country Case Studies for Canada (PDF, Word), Iceland (PDF, Word), Japan (PDF. Word), Republic of Korea (PDF) and Hong Kong, China (PDF).

ITU-T H.264: Superior Video Codec Coming

Fri, 04 Apr 2003 12:17:45 GMT

At the next meeting of ITU-T Study Group 16, an important high-performance video encoding/decoding standard is likely to be approved, entitled Recommendation H.264, "Advanced Video Coding for Generic Audiovisual Services". H.264 is the result of work by the Joint Video Team (JVT) which combined the ITU-T Video Coding Experts Group (VCEG) and the ISO/IEC Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG). This article in vnunet.com discusses a possible application of the emerging standard, which includes videoconferencing, digital storage media, television broadcasting, and Internet streaming (also see this earlier vnunet.com article and CNET article. H.264 can deliver the same quality as MPEG-2 (e.g. used in DVD players) but with much less bandwidth.

ITU Overview and ENUM Presentation

Fri, 04 Apr 2003 07:58:36 GMT

Here's the presentation (PowerPoint, PDF) I made last week to the GAC at the Rio de Janiero ICANN meeting. It gives an overview of the ITU, changes in the telecom sector, its impact on the ITU, and ITU's activities related to IP-based networks and the Internet. I also made a presentation on ITU's perspectives on ENUM (Powerpoint, PDF) in an open ICANN session.

ITU brings Gigabit to your doorstep: all optical networks a step closer

Fri, 31 Jan 2003 11:50:38 GMT

ITU Press Release: Two new standards from ITU will allow service-providers to offer a raft of new services. In its capacity as world leader in optical network standards, ITU has agreed today on protocols for Gigabit-capable Passive Optical Networks (G-PONs) that are a further step towards all-optical networks. The ITU Telecommunication Standardization Sector lead study group on optical technology is ITU-T Study Group 15.

OAGI Joins ITU and other Standards Group in MoU on Electronic Business

Fri, 17 Jan 2003 07:56:25 GMT

OAGI, an XML business language standards group, recently joined four International Standards Organizations in a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on Electronic Business, which includes the IEC, ISO, ITU and UN/ECE [Boston.com].

"The purpose of the MoU is to minimize the risk of divergent and competitive approaches to standardization, avoid duplication of efforts and confusion amongst users," said Houlin Zhao, Director of ITU Telecommunication Standardization Bureau. "Under the MoU's Management Group, for instance, ITU technical groups will be able to share their agendas with OASIS technical committees to promote convergence where appropriate and advance the interests of the marketplace at-large."

Measuring ICT Deployment

Wed, 15 Jan 2003 08:10:12 GMT

ITU's annual World Telecommunication/ICT Indicators Meeting opened today. The meeting will cover topics related to the definition, collection, processing, dissemination and use of telecommunication/ICT indicators (statistics). The programme and list of documents is available.

Wi-Fi spectrum battle pits antiterrorism efforts against commercial growth

Wed, 01 Jan 2003 13:35:05 GMT

[Computerworld] Wi-Fi spectrum battle pits antiterrorism efforts against commercial growth: "The U.S. position paper, submitted to the ITU at its November meeting in preparation for the ITU's World Radio Conference (WRC) in June, which will make the spectrum decisions, endorses a global allocation for WLANs in the 5.150-5.350 band as long as radars are protected by a technique know as Dynamic Frequency Selection (DFS), which shuts down WLAN transmissions when a radar signal is detected."

ITU-T Approves J.122 relating to Broadband IP Services over Cable Networks

Fri, 20 Dec 2002 08:51:18 GMT

The ITU-T has announced (Word) the approval of ITU-T Recommendation J.122 (Second Generation Transmission Systems for Interactive Cable Television Services – IP Cable Modems). From the prepublished Recommendation J.122: "As cable operators have widely deployed high-speed data services on cable television systems, the demand for upstream bandwidth has increased, particularly with the popularity of more symmetric data applications. The current Recommendation has been created for the purpose of increasing channel capacity and improving noise immunity. The intended service will allow transparent bidirectional transfer of Internet Protocol (IP) traffic, between the cable system headend and customer locations, over an all-coaxial or hybrid-fibre/coax (HFC) cable network." Cablelabs has issued an associated press release:

"The new standard can be used as the foundation upon which IPCablecom IP-communication/telephony services can be offered. The standardization is remarkable due to the fact that work on the specification began less than 18 months ago. The rapid standardization is important to promoting worldwide adoption of this important technology."

CommsDesign also has a related piece.

ITU to hold Workshop on Member States' experiences with ccTLDs

Thu, 19 Dec 2002 11:03:35 GMT

ITU Media Advisory: ITU to hold Workshop on Member States' experiences with ccTLDs. More information and contributions to the meeting can be found here.

ITU-T H.264: Speedy Net video codec done, but late

Thu, 19 Dec 2002 07:16:49 GMT

From News.com, Speedy Net video codec done, but late: "The technical design of a compression technology that promises to stream video over the Internet at DVD-worthy speeds has been completed, according to the international standards team developing it. But the widely anticipated standard, known as Recommendation H.264 of the United Nations' International Telecommunication Union (ITU), won't be ready for public consumption until March--three months behind schedule." This work is done in ITU-T Study Group 16, the ITU-T Lead Study Group on multimedia services, systems and terminals.

ADSL Next Generation Advances at the ITU

Fri, 06 Dec 2002 09:52:47 GMT

ISP Planet has an article on the standardization work being done in ITU-T Study Group 15 on the next generation of ADSL standards (ITU calls them "Recommendations"). SG15 is the ITU-T's lead study group on access network transport and optical technology. These new SG15 recommendations are being approved under the ITU-T's fast-track approval process (AAP). Here are the Recommendations under AAP last call from from the last meeting.

Competition Policy in Telecommunications

Fri, 06 Dec 2002 09:29:02 GMT

On 20-22 November 2002, the ITU Strategy and Policy Unit hosted a workshop on Competition Policy in Telecommunications. The workshop offered an opportunity for competition and telecommunications policy-makers, national telecommunications regulators, user groups, experts and industry, to exchange information and experiences on the issue of competition policy and law in telecommunications regulation. The background and objectives of the workshop, workshop documents, which includes country case studies for Denmark (PDF), India (PDF) and the United States (PDF), presentations made at the workshop, as well as the Chairman's report (PDF) (recommended) are available on the ITU web site.

"The definitions of markets and dominance are key to the application of competition policy and law in telecommunications and other sectors. In the past, two principal approaches have been taken in defining relevant markets, one based on statutory service classifications commonly used in sector-specific regulation, and the other based on demand and supply substitutability, used in competition law. In the latter approach, a hypothetical monopolist test is typically applied as a tool to identify the range of services and the geographic area that constitute a market. Since markets evolve continually, there is a risk of obsolescence if market definitions are cast in legislation or regulations for the purpose of sector-specific regulation. In this regard, technologically neutral market definitions, such as those underlying the new European Union telecommunications regulatory framework are seen as more flexible than those of countries such as the United States, where traditionally different services, such as fixed, wireless mobile and cable services are regulated under different parts of the US Communications Act."

I discussed the new European Union’s telecommunication regulatory framework, which represents an attempt to move away from technology-specific and service-specific legislation, in this speech I gave in July 2002.

Open Source and Governments

Thu, 05 Dec 2002 11:26:29 GMT

Somebody once said that the open source movement is a modern-day equivalent of communal barn-raising. It's a surprisingly innovative force that policy-makers worldwide need to understand. Why has open source hit the radar scope of governments? The simple answer is that the public policy stakes have become much higher. The development of advanced info-communication networks is now a key policy objective for almost all governments around the world. Not only are these networks seen as an important determinant of national competitiveness in an increasingly globalized knowledge economy, they are also seen as offering new opportunities in areas such as education, health and social advancement. It’s no surprise that almost every government in the world has put a high priority on improving access to advanced info-communications technologies, promoting digital literacy and improved access to government public services (e-government). Not surprisingly, open source is increasingly seen as another tool toward this goal, in both developed and more particularly in developing countries. O'Reilly Network has recently published an interesting timeline from 1995 to the present documenting the use of open source software by governments around the world.

On that note, in October 2002, I participated in Georgetown University's Open Source Summit: Public Interest & Policy Issues, which was spearheaded by Dr. Linda Garcia and her smart group of students at the Communication, Culture & Technology Program at Georgetown. Across town, I see that as a follow-up to their October 2002 conference on Open Source for E-Government, the Cyber Security Policy and Research Institute (CSPRI) of George Washington University is organizing a conference on "Open Source for National and Local eGovernment Programs in the U.S. and EU" to be held in Washington, DC, USA, March 17 - 19, 2003. Here is the call for papers. Slashdot has a related thread.

In preparation for the 2003 World Summit on the Information Society, the ITU Strategy and Policy Unit maintains some ICT Success Stories pages which includes one related to e-government.

ITU and Cisco Systems to Expand Internet Training Centre Initiative

Wed, 04 Dec 2002 12:14:52 GMT

ITU Press Release: ITU and Cisco Systems to Expand Internet Training Centre Initiative.

ITU-T Workshop on Satellites in IP and Multimedia

Wed, 04 Dec 2002 09:39:26 GMT

The ITU-T, on 9-11 December 2002, is hosting a Workshop on Satellites in IP and Multimedia. An advance program is available.

ITU Asia-Pacific Telecommunication Indicators Report

Wed, 04 Dec 2002 09:20:41 GMT

Coinciding with ITU TELECOM Asia 2002, the ITU has published its 5th edition of the Asia-Pacific Telecommunication Indicators. A presentation (PDF) with highlights and extracts is available as is a related summary of the report. The report demonstrates the Asia-Pacific region has now become the world's largest telecom market. Asia-Pacific also leads in advanced Internet technologies such as broadband access and mobile data. The Republic of Korea and Hong Kong, China, are the top two economies in the world in terms of broadband Internet penetration. In mobile Internet, Japan and the Republic of Korea were the first two nations to launch third generation cellular networks commercially. The region also has the largest percentage of Internet users. These exploits corroborate the view that the global telecommunications epicentre is shifting from North America and Western Europe to the Asia-Pacific region. Also see the related ITU Press Release.

Latest news...

Tue, 01 Oct 2002 12:26:28 GMT

Readers will have noticed that I've been "on vacation" for a long time and this blog hasn't been updated. The reason is that I'm working on the implementation of a multi-author weblog that leverages the collective expertise of the staff in the ITU Strategy and Policy Unit and integrates with the ITU web publishing system. This is going to take some time but hopefully the results will be worth it. More news when it's available.

World Summit on the Information Society preparatory meetings

Thu, 04 Jul 2002 18:06:28 GMT

Updated: The ITU is taking the leading role in the organization of the World Summit on the Information Society, which will be held in Geneva in December 2003 and Tunis in 2005. The Summit is being held under the high patronage of the UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan. The anticipated outcome of the Summit is to develop and foster a clear statement of political will and a concrete plan of action for achieving the goals of a global Information Society. As part of the preparatory process for the Summit at the global level, three preparatory committee meetings are to be held. The first, PrepCom-1, is taking place this week in Geneva (1-5 July 2002) as described in this ITU press release. News highlights of the discussions at this preparatory meeting are made available at the end of each day: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, Day 5. The closing ITU press release Global Strategy for the Information Society Takes Successful First Steps can be found here.

Latest on MPEG-4

Tue, 02 Jul 2002 10:33:35 GMT

The Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) development of the MPEG-4 standard is widely seen as important to the availability of an open, cross-platform, interactive multimedia standard. For example, MPEG-4 functionality is being built into 3G mobile phones. For a detailed overview of MPEG-4, see here. The MPEG-4 Industry Forum (M4IF), who promote adoption of MPEG-4, held a workshop and exhibition last week in California. The keynote address, given by Rob Koenen, President of M4IF, provides an overview of the state of play of MPEG-4, including the thorny issue of licensing. The ITU Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T) and ISO/IEC recently announced that they had formed a joint video team (JVT) to produce a next generation video coding standard, which will become part of the MPEG-4 standard.