| ITU-T News |
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The close collaboration between
ITU-T and IETF achieves a single standard on the control of
gateway devices |
The ITU reached a milestone
on 15 June with the approval of an important new
Internet-related standard. At the meeting of ITU-T Study Group
16 held in Geneva, the ITU approved H.248, which is a gateway
control protocol used between a Media Gateway and a Media
Gateway Controller.
The approval marks the culmination of more than one year of
close collaboration between experts in the Megaco Working Group
of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) – the
international body responsible for Internet standards – and
ITU-T Study Group 16 towards achieving a single standard on the
control of gateway devices. H.248 will also be published as an
IETF Proposed Standard RFC (Request For Comments).
“Thanks to the close cooperation between experts in both
standards organizations, a major breakthrough towards a single
standard has been achieved for the benefit of the market,”
said Pierre-André Probst, chairman of ITU-T Study Group 16.
“We hope that this effort will pave the way for further
cooperation between IETF and ITU-T.”
Scott Bradner, Transport Area Director in the IETF and VP of
Standards in the Internet Society (ISOC), said “This is the
next in a continuing series of technologies that are benefiting
from the close cooperation of the IETF and the ITU-T in areas of
overlapping interest.”
The new standard permits control of gateway devices that pass
voice, video, facsimile, and data traffic between conventional
telephony networks and packet based data networks such as
commercial IP networks or the Internet. Connections through
these gateways allow callers from a normal telephone to make
voice calls over commercial packet networks or the Internet.
While in itself neutral to the call signalling protocols used to
control call set-up, H.248 is seen as an important addition to
the H.323 family of Recommendations, which have already been
widely adopted by the industry as the standards for multimedia
communications over the Internet.
Use of packet based networks for carrying voice and other
multimedia traffic is generating intense interest from both
Internet users and Internet service providers. Users and service
providers are excited by the prospect of new opportunities in
the telephony market, as well as the prospect of new services
based on the integration of voice, video, facsimile, data, and
web services. Industry analysts estimate that international
telephone traffic over Internet gateways will grow from a mere
1% of all traffic in 1997 to 25% by 2003 with a market value of
US$7 billion.
The H.323 family of standards already provides an extensive
framework for the provision of these new services; H.248 will
permit low-cost gateway devices for the first time to be
interfaced in a standard way with the signaling systems found in
conventional telephony networks.
For further information, please contact:
Mr. Pierre-André Probst
Chairman of Study Group 16
Tel: +41 22 797 66 00
Fax: +41 22 797 77 10
Email:
pierre-andre.probst@swisscom.com |
Mr. Fabio Bigi
Deputy Director, TSB
Tel: +41 22 730 5860
Fax: +41 22 730 5853
Email:
fabio.bigi@itu.int |
Mr. Glen Freundlich
Rapporteur
Tel: +1 303 538 2899
Fax: +1 303 538 3907
Email:ggf@lucent.com |
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