The third meeting of ITU-T Study Group 12 (Performance, QoS and QoE) in the 2009-2012 study period, convened by TSB Collective letter 3/12, took place in Geneva, from 18 to 27 May 2010. The number of participants (114) was as strong and diverse as ever, involving about 30 countries, with several new countries and companies attending .

42 contributions and over 130 TDs were received, of which about 50 involved liaisons, reinforcing SG12 lead ITU-T role regarding Performance, QoS and QoE.

The meeting ran paperless as announced in the above-mentioned Collective letter.

New, revised and deleted study Questions

New Question Q.18/12: Conferencing and telemeeting assessment

The goal of this Question is to develop both subjective and objective assessment strategies as well as requirements to be recommended for providing high-quality conferencing services to customers. Instead of spreading the topic across several Questions in principle dealing with sub-aspects of this topic, we believe that creating a standalone question will both provide better visibility of the topic and enable a more efficient handling by having interested people discuss such matters at a common place. The Rapporteur for this new Question will be Gunilla Berndtsson from Ericsson, Sweden.
This new Question is allocated to Working Party 1/12.

Revision of Question 11/12 and deletion of Q.10/12

Since the Rapporteur of Q.10/12 "Transmission planning and performance considerations for voiceband, data and multimedia services", was absent for the second consecutive meeting and no Contribution was solely addressed to this Question, it was agreed to merge this Question with Question 11/12. The text and the title of Question 11/12 were revised. The new title is: “Transmission planning, interworking and traffic management for networks supporting voice, data and multimedia services”.

Revision of Question 13/12 and deletion of Q.2/12

There were no contributions and no Rapporteur for Q2/12 “Multimedia performance considerations for IP gateways”, and following a decision taken at the November 2009 WP3/12 meeting, it was agreed that in such a case Q2/12 would be terminated, and the main study points incorporated into Q13/12.

Interim activities

Rapporteur’s meetings

Six questions requested interim Rapporteur’s meetings, these requests were agreed.

Interim Working Party 2/12 meeting

An interim Working Party 2/12 meeting will be held on 17 September 2010 in Berlin, in order to agree on the document “P.NBAMS Call for Model Submission” under Q.14/12 and consent draft new Recommendation P.OLQA on Objective Listening Quality Assessment under Q.9/12.

Results of the meeting of Working Party 1/12

The foreseen evolution of activities is to consider bandwidth extension and binaural perception and this is reflected in the work plan of Q 4, 5 and 6.

Revision of recommendations P.311 and P.341 to incorporate IP terminals began and will continue by correspondence until next SG12.

The development of artificial noise-fields in laboratory conditions with the goal to populate the new recommendation P.TBN will be carried on through teleconferences until next SG12 meeting.

Use of speech instead of artificial test signals was strongly supported and speech material in different languages would be collected. An expert group has been settled and the discussion on creating test signals will be carried on over email discussion. Moreover, an interim meeting of Q6 will take place 26, 27 October 2010. 3GPP SA4 was informed on the on going work on test signals.

Results related to Recommendations

• An automated double talk analysis procedure was approved as new Appendix III of P.502.
• An addition in implementer's guide to P.830 was approved to clarify the current procedure using for testing speech codecs with regards to music on hold.

Other results

• A work item was created in Q.3 on Universal Headset/Headphone Interface solution for Wireless Digital Terminals focusing on the electro-acoustic performances
• Test plans for G.718 decoder-side post-processing and for Super wideband stereo/mono extension to G.722 and G.711.1 were provided to SG16. Two interim meetings of Q7 are foreseen to analyse the results of testing exercises.
• ITU-T supports the ETSI Workshop on QoS / QoE / User experience 21-22 September 2010, Sophia Antipolis, France

Results of the meeting of Working Party 2/12

Results related to Recommendations

• For P.NAMS, a new Model Requirement Document has been created and agreed by Q.14/12, which is the new entry point into the P.NAMS development work. This Document as well as the call for model submission with answers from proponents expected for June 28th, 2010 is attached to the WP2/12 Meeting Report.
• For P.NBAMS, a stable Terms of Reference (ToR) document has been agreed by Q.14/12. Furthermore, the draft work procedure discussed at the Q.14/12 Interim Meeting in Lulea in March 2010 has been agreed, and is summarized in the meeting report of Q.14/12 from the current meeting.
• The presented final results of the P.OLQA selection process confirmed that three models (Opticom, SwissQual and TNO) have passed the previously agreed selection criteria. Already from the beginning of the discussion there was strong demand to recommend only a single unique model in the future Recommendation P.OLQA. This demand was served, because all three proponents have announced their collaboration and to merge their models to a single one. The three parties were requested to prepare a Draft Recommendation to be consented at a planned WP2/12 Interim Meeting in mid September 2010.

Related activities

The most recent meeting of VQEG was held in Boulder, Colorado in January 2010. The brief summary can be found in COM12-TD236. Most important for SG12 is the proposed treatment of the video bit-stream model. It should now be developed within SG12 with all its flavours.

In addition, information is given about rating scales for the so-called hybrid model in COM12-TD240.

Finally, ITU-R informs about the latest activities in low- and high-definition quality prediction models (COM12-TD230).

Results of the meeting of Working Party 3/12

Results related to Recommendations

Consent was reached on one new and two revised Recommendations:

• New Rec. G.1011 (former G.RQAM) “Reference guide to Quality of Experience (QoE) assessment methodologies”.
• Revised Rec. Y.1221 “Traffic control and congestion control in IP-based networks”
• Revised Rec. Y.1542 “Framework for achieving end-to-end IP performance objectives”

Other results

• The scope of new draft Recommendation Y.OAQoS “Operational aspects of end-end QoS” was agreed.
• A revised version of Recommendation Y.1541“Network Performance Objectives for IP-based Services” was prepared, clarifying how new applications will be considered for inclusion, and proposing review of some of the provisional aspects of the standard.
• A revised version of Recommendation Y.1540 “Internet Protocol Data Communication Service – IP Packet Transfer and Availability Performance Parameters” was prepared, adding the Stream-Repair parameters as normative text.
• An updated version of new draft Recommendation Y.154HN “Performance Parameters for Home Networks” was prepared, adding many passive and two round-trip parameters.
• An updated version of new draft Recommendation Y.156sam “Ethernet Service Activation Methodology” was prepared in response to comments from the meeting and a Liaison reply from MEF. Substantial new material was prepared and added.
• A new work area was initiated on guidelines for common IP/MPLS/Ethernet service classes to support interconnection between providers. Classes will be described by the packet transfer features they provide, and limited by the code-space available in 3-bit code-points.