An international experiment deploying ITU-standardized IPTV technologies has taken place 6-8 February 2012. IPTV services were used to live-stream scenes from the Sapporo Snow Festival in Japan and to provide supporting Video-on-Demand (VoD) segments.

ITU Headquarters in Geneva received the stream from the head-end server in Japan, participating alongside organizations from Japan, Singapore and Thailand in what is the first transcontinental broadcast of a live event using IPTV technology standardized end-to-end by ITU. The connection uses native IPv6 from ITU Headquarters to Japan.

Proprietary IPTV services have hampered the growth of this exciting new market, and such experiments - together with ITU IPTV Interoperability events – are important steps towards broadening the IPTV market through globally-interoperable services. Standardized IPTV will lead to a whole new market for innovation, and ITU standards will ensure this market remains open, competitive and accessible to all.

First approved in 2009, Recommendation ITU-T H.762, a “Lightweight Interactive Multimedia Environment” (LIME) for IPTV services, is the standard with which Sapporo’s live-stream IPTV application complies. Hokkaido Television Broadcasting (HTB) developed this application, and is one of many broadcasters, manufacturers and research institutes involved in the IPTV experiments. The experiments have been organized by Japan’s National Institute of Information and Communications (NICT) and are being conducted over its IPv6 research network, Japan Gigabit Network-eXtreme (JGN-X).

Other ITU-T IPTV standards also formed part of the infrastructure: H.770 IPTV Service discovery, H.721 IPTV terminal for VoD and Linear TV, H.701 IPTV Error correction, H.750 IPTV Metadata and the Primetime Emmy Award winning H.264 Video compression codec. The experiments also used Openflow, PCE/VNTM and sa46t.

For more on ITU’s IPTV standardization work, please see ITU’s IPTV Global Standards Initiative here.

NGN GSI event: Co-located Rapporteur group Meetings, Geneva, Switzerland, 6 – 17 February 2012

Convening letter (TSB Circular 242)

On-line registration form

Convening letter (TSB Circular 221)

Online registration

Internet of Things Global Standards Initiative (IoT-GSI)

ITU-T’s Study Group 13 has consented new standards underpinning central elements of Future Networks (FNs); multiple virtual networks enabling a wide range of network services, and energy saving capabilities superior to those offered by traditional network technologies.
 
Future Networks (FNs) will provide revolutionary capabilities, facilities and services which will be difficult to support using existing network technologies. The number and range of network-based services is expected to explode in the near future, and a single network architecture will struggle to satisfy the requirements unique to each of these new services. Forming multiple physical networks will demand large outlays of capital for their installation, operation and maintenance. FNs thus need to realize diverse services through the creation of heterogenous network architectures overlaying a common physical network.

The new standards are Recommendation ITU-T Y.3011, “Framework of Network Virtualization for Future Networks”, and Recommendation ITU-T Y.3021, “Framework of Energy Saving for Future Networks.”

Recommendation Y.3011 provides a framework of network virtualization technology, a means allowing multiple virtual networks called Logically Isolated Network Partitions (LINPs) to coexist in a single physical network. Network Virtualization will create isolated, flexible networks supporting a broad range of network architectures and services. Their isolation will allow the satisfaction of services’ unique requirements, but also presents the opportunity to create experimental networks or test-beds where developers, providers and users can design and evaluate new services. The flexibility of these virtual networks is another key feature of Y.3011’s design, allowing the reconfiguration of networks to reflect the evolving characteristics of FN services and applications as they mature.

Environmental awareness is one of the fundamental objectives of FNs and energy-saving technologies form a crucial part of their development. Through their creation of network architectures for smart energy grids and ubiquitous sensor networks, FNs will do much to improve the energy efficiency of other non-ICT industry sectors. Their proliferation will however also increase the volume of energy demanded by FNs themselves. Y.3021 thus provides a framework to minimize the energy consumption of network facilities such as routers, switches and servers, as well as a method to manage the total energy consumption of FNs at all stages of their lifecycle.

To remotely participate in ITU-T Study Group 13’s workshop on Service Delivery Platforms (SDP): SDP for Telecommunication Ecosystems – from today’s realities to the requirements and challenges of the future click here. The live event will take place on Monday 17 October, starting at 0700 GMT at ITU headquarters in Geneva.

Participants can either use existing Adobe Connect logins or access the webcast by logging in as a ‘guest.’

For more information on Adobe Connect remote participation
http://www.itu.int/net/ITU-T/info/answers.aspx?Fp=faqs.aspx&Qn=90&ewm=True

The workshop will provide an overview of the telecommunication-oriented SDP technologies already in use, as well as the challenges presented by these existing technologies. Added to this will be a particular emphasis on the future of SDP, especially with regard to the standardization activities likely to arise in the future.

For more detailed information and to register, consult the workshop’s webpage:
http://www.itu.int/ITU-T/worksem/sdp/index.html

Telecompaper is reporting that Germany may have dropped its universal service plan, which sought to add a universal broadband service to the German telecom law change has been dropped. The plan had received a lot of criticism from network operators. German federal broadband operators association Breko welcomes the decision to drop the universal broadband service proposal and claims that a lot of regional network operators, who would not have survived the introduction of such service, will justify the trust they received.

Read the hfull article at http://www.telecompaper.com/news/german-universal-broadband-service-plan-is-dropped

Study Group 13, responsible for Next Generation Networks (NGN), is hosting a workshop: Service Delivery Platforms (SDP) for Telecommunication Ecosystems: from today’s realities to the requirements and challenges of the future. Free of charge, it will take place on Monday 17 October at ITU headquarters in Geneva.

The workshop will provide an overview of the telecommunication-oriented SDP technologies already in use, as well as the challenges presented by these existing technologies. Added to this will be a particular emphasis on the future of SDP, especially with regard to the standardization activities likely to arise in the future.

For more detailed information and to register, consult the workshop’s webpage - http://www.itu.int/ITU-T/worksem/sdp/index.html.

ITU-T NGN-GSI Event : Co-located Meetings of Study Groups 11 and 13, Geneva, Switzerland, 10 – 21 October 2011

How to participate

Next Generation Networks Global Standards Initiative

A new study by Wireless Intelligence looks into the price elasticity of mobile pricing around the world, and has modelled price sensitivity across global mobile markets. The study found that, between 2001-2009, each US cent decrease in EPPM resulted in an average increase of 5.6 minutes calling time per month for every mobile user in the world. Total global voice minutes reached 1.6 trillion in 2010.

"While the last ten years have seen the number of global mobile connections grow fivefold, the actual usage of mobile devices has grown at a much faster rate," said Wireless Intelligence analyst and report author Calum Dewar. "The most significant factor in this relationship is the simultaneous decrease in call prices." The report highlights a number of other factors behind rising levels of mobile usage, including increasing competition between operators, new pricing strategies, and fixed-to-mobile migration.

The decline in prices was found to be more of a factor in rising mobile usage in the developing world, where MoU has more than doubled since 2001 to 295 minutes per user per month in Q4 2010 – now almost at the same level as the developed world (298 minutes).

For more detail, see here.

Meeting of NGN-GSI - Next Generation Networks Global Standards Initiative

Mar del Plata, Argentina, 2–12 September 2009

Registration form

NGN-GSI Home

ITU has given first stage approval (consent) to two new standards on fixed-mobile convergence (FMC). Operators offering FMC will be able to provide both services with a single phone, switching between networks on an ad hoc basis.

Experts say that the standards are an important step in the ongoing study and development of next generation network (NGN) mobility support and FMC service and network capabilities.

Recommendation ITU-T Y.2018 describes a mobility management and control framework and architecture for NGN. The architecture supports IP-based mobility for user devices in the NGN transport stratum. Y.2018 defines a new component called MMCF (Mobility Management and Control Functions) which includes support for handling mobile location management and handover decision and control as well as the interaction with other existing NGN functional components such as NACF (Network and Attachment Control Functions), RACF (Resource and Admission Control Functions), service control functions and transport functions.

Recommendation ITU-T Y.2808 describes principles, service and network capabilities, and architectures for IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) based FMC. The Recommendation describes a network architecture that uses IMS to provide the same set of services to user terminals regardless of the use of fixed or mobile access network technologies, and ensures service continuity when the point of attachment of the terminal changes between different access network technologies.

The June issue of IEEE Communications Magazine carries a ‘feature topic’ on ITU’s Kaleidoscope event – Innovations in Next Generation Networks (NGN).

The magazine, also available online , carries the winning papers, as well as two invited papers from the first of ITU’s academic events.

The winning papers were:

• Architecture and business model of open heterogeneous mobile network, Yoshitoshi Murata; Mikio Hasegawa; Homare Murakami; Hiroshi Harada; Shuzo Kato.
• Differential phase shift quantum key distribution, Hiroki Takesue; Toshimori Honjo; Kiyoshi Tamaki; Yasuhiro Tokura.
• Open API standardisation for the NGN platform, Catherine Mulligan.

Organized by ITU-T with IEEE ComSoc as Technical Co-Sponsor and supported by Cisco , Intel , the International Communications Foundation of Japan and Sun Microsystems , the conference brought together the best academic minds from around the world to present their future visions for Next-Generation Networks (NGN).

Among over 140 papers submitted. 53 papers were presented and the best three were awarded prizes totaling $10,000 kindly donated by Cisco. These papers will be included in a future special edition of the IEEE Communications Magazine.

The second Kaleidoscope event - Innovations for Digital Inclusion - will be held in Mar del Plata, Argentina, 31 August – 1 September 2009.

Kaleidoscope events are a series of peer-reviewed academic conferences aiming to increase the dialogue between experts working on the standardization of information and communications technologies (ICT) and academia.

Kaleidoscope 2009 will feature original academic papers offering innovative approaches to digital inclusion. As before prizes totaling USD 10k will be granted to the best papers. In addition a young author recognition certificate will be granted to authors presenting papers whoare pursuing their studies and do not – at the time of the event - have a PhD.

Accepted papers will be presented during the event, published in the proceedings and made available through IEEE Xplore. The best papers will be evaluated for potential publication in IEEE Communications Magazine.

Kaleidoscope-2009 will analyze technologies, services and applications five years and beyond that will capitalize on NGN infrastructure and promote digital inclusion. The event will cover multidisciplinary aspects, including regulatory and societal challenges as well as analysis of standardization needed.

Innovative technologies will help bring the benefits of ICTs to all segments of the population, in particular those in underserved communities and developing countries. The event seeks to promote research that supports innovation in ICTs toward universal, sustainable, ubiquitous and affordable access by all.

For more information please contact kaleidoscope@itu.int.

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