Agreement reached on important new standard
for the control of Internet voice gateways

Geneva, 10 June 1999 — The ITU reached a milestone agreement last week in the definition of an important new Internet-related standard. At the meeting of the ITU-T Study Group 16 (Multimedia services and systems) held in Santiago, Chile (17-28 May 1999) at the invitation of the University of Chile, experts involved in multimedia communications over the Internet came together to agree the first stage of the approval process for the new standard, which has been referred to as H.gcp (Gateway Control Protocol) during its development phase.

The agreement also marks the culmination of several months of close collaboration between experts in the Megaco 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.

"The short timescales for this project and the close co-operation between experts in the ITU-T and IETF reflect the urgent need for a single standard in this area". said Pierre-André Probst, chairman of ITU-T Study Group 16, "we hope that this collaboration will lead to stability in a market where a number of incompatible protocols already exist."

Scott Bradner, Transport Area Director in the IETF and VP of Standards in the Internet Society (ISOC) said "this is an important new protocol and it draws upon the work of both standards organizations. Pooling expertise on this project will lead to the best overall solution in the shortest timescales."

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 the Internet. Connections through these gateways allow callers from a normal telephone to make long distance voice calls over the Internet or other packet networks. H.gcp 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 are excited by the prospect of lower cost long distance telephony, and service providers see new opportunities in the telephony market, as well as the prospect of offering new services based on the integration of facsimile, voice, video and data. 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; the new Recommendation will permit low-cost gateway devices for the first time to be interfaced in a standard way with the signalling systems found in conventional telephony networks.

Work on the new standard started at the September 1998 meeting of ITU-T Study Group 16 and, with the first approval phase now completed, the work programme is on target for final approval at the next meeting of the Study Group 16 in February 2000 at which time the standard will come into effect if unanimously adopted.

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