Standards Face-Off>
10/01/99 - Standards face-off -- The ITU Faces A Slew Of Competing Standards Organizations. Can They All Work Together?
Oct. 01, 1999 (LTH - CMP via COMTEX) -- Standardization ain"t what it used to be. Vendors and service providers no longer await the
blessing of standards bodies before bombarding the market with new and improved products. That"s largely due to the Internet, which
has redefined the software development cycle in rapid-fire Web time, often leaving standardized protocols in the dust. The International
Telecommunication Union (ITU) is coming to grips, albeit painfully, with this reality.
The ITU, a United Nations agency with more than 85 percent of its 188 members representing developing countries, appoints study
groups and task groups to do the high-stakes and often excruciatingly detailed technical work of making recommendations for
worldwide standards. That can be a slow, delicate process.
Perhaps too much so. The ITU, already hindered by bureaucratic and diplomatic necessities, hasn"t done itself any favors by letting
other, more aggressive standards groups shape the datacentric information infrastructure of the new millennium. The ITU"s critics are
getting louder, and examples of missed opportunities are growing. Just consider the rise of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF),
the Wireless Applications Forum (an industry association that developed a de facto standard for information on digital mobile phones)
and 3G.IP (a group of nine mobile telephony vendors and service providers that are working to use Internet protocol, rather than
circuit-switched, third-generation wireless infrastructure).
A turning point for the ITU"s changing role in the standards world may have come as the result of its handling of what eventually came
to be called the third-generation (3G) wireless telephony standards, an initiative that began in the mid-1980s (see "The Book of
Genesis").
Observers say the 3G standards battle left the ITU diminished in its standards-making role. One tell-tale sign was its recent agreement
to refer vendors and users to documents created by the Third Generation Partnership Projects (3GPP and 3GPP2, ITU organizational
partners that are helping produce 3G technical specifications) and Standards Development Organizations (SDOs, regional standards
bodies that also work on the technical specifications) on 3G wireless, rather than cut and paste these specifications into the ITU"s own
documents.
That"s unusual because the ITU"s standards recommendations previously have been published in self-contained documents, says
Henry Straube, chairman of the U.S. delegation to Task Group 8/1, an ITU group working on 3G, and an engineering adviser for the
planning and regulations division of the Federal Communications Commission"s (FCC) International Bureau. "The ITU is looking toward
the reality that these issues are so massive. It has adjusted to the fact that it probably wouldn"t be able to pull it all together," Straube
says.
The ITU also changed how it references standards documents to ensure it meets its deadline of finalizing 3G standards by the end of
this year. It lost its "legitimacy" with the IMT-2000 process, says Jim Takach, director of advanced programs for the CDMA
Development Group (CDG, Costa Mesa, Calif.), which works on code-division multiple access (CDMA) wireless technology. "I think it"s
a tough problem to solve now that a lot of this real harmonization work has taken place outside the ITU," he says.
What Next?
So where does the ITU go from here?
The ITU"s answer: It"s already on the right track. Anyone can point out deficiencies with the ITU and the way it handled the 3G
standards process, but IMT-2000 is a major step that couldn"t have been accomplished without the ITU, says Giuliano Rossi, head of
the ITU"s Study Group department in the Radiocommunication Bureau.
And each standards process is different, Rossi says, noting the unique situation surrounding 3G development-namely, that
second-generation (2G) wireless systems with many of the basic characteristics of the third generation were already in place when the
ITU solicited requests for proposals for 3G standards in April 1997. The reverse of the 2G wireless situation also happens, he says: The
ITU is sometimes ahead of the market in developing technology.
Further, the ITU"s Radiocommunication Assembly next year will consider whether to give its private company members a greater voice
in the standards-setting process. This is a particularly touchy area for the Radiocommunication Bureau. Radio regulations that
governments approve have the status of international treaties; injecting private, third parties into deciding an orbital position of a
satellite, for example, might jeopardize radio regulations and constitute an infringement of an international treaty, Rossi says.
So the ITU is working on making distinctions between such highly sensitive issues and separate radio applications, such as digital
coding, that have little or no regulatory implications, he says.
The ITU knows it must cooperate with other standards-setting bodies. This has become even more vital with the emergence of the
Internet and its demand for content, neither of which involves the ITU"s telecom expertise, says Brian Moore, a standards manager for
Lucent Technologies Inc. and chairman of ITU-T Study Group 13, which is responsible for general network and new system concepts
studies. "People don"t want to come to us because they believe the ITU cannot deliver the goods in the time they want," Moore says.
faster response
To overcome that perception, the ITU is forging closer ties with one of its biggest competitors, the IETF. And it is now using Internet
sites and e-mail to let participants see working documents online, thus speeding up its working practices, he says.
The IETF has a formal ITU liaison-Scott Bradner, who is senior technical consultant at Harvard University (Cambridge, Mass.), Internet
Society (ISOC, Reston, Va.) vice president of standards and IETF Transport Area codirector. There is also a PSTN/Internet Interfaces
Working Group chaired by representatives of AT&T and Lucent"s Bell Labs. "IP has to be carried over whatever access is available-be it
high-speed over copper or fiber or cable or mobile," says Moore. "Standards will increasingly be required to make sure that networks
provide end-to-end solutions that everyone wants, rather than solutions that won"t interwork."
Meanwhile, Harald Dettner, chairman of the 3GPP"s Technical Specification Group, Core Network, says the ITU is a bit too slow in
providing up-to-date technical standards but should play a role in developing the basic techniques that underpin those standards. After
all, the ITU developed the basic transport methods that are now essential to global system for mobile communication (GSM), Dettner
says. "Without the basics, it would have been impossible to have interoperation."
The ITU certainly has its believers, although most acknowledge it would do well to be more attentive to the private sector. In fact, its
prime function in the 3G process has not been to create a standard but to "prime the pump and pump the pump, get providers
interested in 3G, whet their appetites," says Mark Epstein, senior vice president for development at Qualcomm Inc. (San Diego) and a
member of the U.S. delegation that has participated in 3G activities for nearly a decade.
Ironically, the whole issue of 3G and global roaming could boil down to handsets.
That"s where the ITU-sponsored Software-defined Radio Forum comes in. The participating companies are working on standards for a
device that delivers a new generation of network services. This could be a phone, handset or terminal that queries a wireless network,
regardless of where that network is located, and configures itself to place calls. No vendor is likely to offer the same solution, so the
ITU is working on a standard for how the hardware interfaces with the networks.
This universal handset could handle all three 3G wireless modes, which would make economic sense, especially in low-income
countries that may use wireless as a method of fixed access to the telephony network, says the ITU"s Rossi.
Yet once again, the ITU may find its standards efforts were too late for the market. Dual-band phones already exist, and multimode,
multiband handsets that can access TDMA, advanced mobile phone service (AMPS) and GSM-based wireless systems from any band
ranging from 800 MHz to 2 GHz are expected to be on the market by 2000 or 2001.
The bottom line is that it"s a whole new ball game for the ITU, and its leaders are open to change. That may mean reengineering the
ITU"s study groups to better stay in line with the marketplace.
"The ITU finds itself in a very competitive environment," says ITU Secretary-General Yoshio Utsumi. "For this reason, some [ITU]
processes need to be revamped."
Sarah Parkes contributed to this story. |
