Pipeline Publishing, Volume 5, Issue 2

	This Month's Issue:
	The State of Standards

Standards: By the Book

By Tim Young

There was a time when standards, beyond proprietary, in-house standards, were unnecessary in the telecommunications world. With just a few companies controlling the entire industry, who needs interoperability or uniformity? However, the world is growing and standards are essential to manage that growth and provide a framework on which that growth can occur. Standards are, without a doubt, the cornerstone of any industry that desires to grow beyond a collection of monopolies to become a truly innovative and competitive environment.

There are a number of organizations that play with standards in the telecom space, including the IEC, ISO, ATIS, the TMForum, to a certain extent, and more. One organization dedicated to standards in the telcom space is the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). In approaching the concept of standards, we opted to take some time to speak to Reinhard Scholl, the Deputy to the Director of ITU's standardization arm - ITU-T.

So why, exactly, is standardization necessary in the telecom space? "From the 30,000 feet view, standards are important," says Scholl. "Think of a world in which there was no definition of a meter, though I suppose in your case it would be a foot or a yard..." And, of course, one has to chuckle at this. Even the standard standard isn't... standard. There's variation among even the most

Even the standard standard isn't... standard. There's variation among even the most common and universal of standards. There's the rub.

you can make a call anywhere in the world and someone on the other end just picks up a telephone."

A Profile in Standardization

What sorts of standards does the Geneva-based ITU-T promote? "Everything within the ICT (Information and Communications Technologies) domain," says Scholl. "Two examples: We standardized the country codes (for international calling). It's a very simple standard, but a very important standard. We also created the xdsl standard." (Though

common and universal of standards. There's the rub.

All the same, Scholl continues, saying, "The world would collapse without standards. When I give talks, I ask what people consider the most impressive, most mind-boggling projects that mankind has ever undertaken. People may talk about the moon landing or the mapping of the human genome. But there is a project that you could arguably rank even higher, and that's the international telephone network. It's amazing that today

that's certainly not the full scope of ITU-T standards. Any iPod owner should be familiar with the ITU-promoted MPEG-4 format standard.)

Like many other standards bodies in the telecom space, the ITU-T is focused on the possibilities and perils associated with next-gen networks. "As telecommunications networks continue to move away from traditional circuit-switched networks and into packet-based

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