India Takes Global Lead in Standards Development: Elected to Leadership in All 10 ITU Study Groups
Keeping in view India’s vision of being a technology leader and leading the standards development process at global level, India’s candidates were elected in leadership positions in all 10 Study Groups(SG) of International Telecommunication Unions’ (ITU) Standardization Sector (ITU-T).
While India retained Chair position in one group, it secured Vice-Chair positions in all other 9 Study Groups and the SCV Committee, thereby increasing its leadership positions in ITU-T from 7 in WTSA-2022 to 11 positions in WTSA-2024.
India is currently hosting the International Telecommunication Unions’ (ITU) World Telecommunication Standardization Assembly (WTSA) 2024 at Bharat Mandapam, New Delhi. It was inaugurated by the Prime Minister on 15th October and will continue till 24th October 2024. It is for the first time that WTSA is being conducted in the Asia-Pacific region and it would set the direction of standardization activities ITU-T and its work for the next four years (2024-2028). This year’s WTSA-24 witnesses more than 3700 delegates from over 160 countries, the highest ever for any WTSA assembly.
The ongoing discussions at WTSA focus on promoting standardization activities on emerging technologies and developing new ITU-T Resolutions on topics such as Digital Public Infrastructure, Artificial Intelligence, post-quantum cryptography, Metaverse, Over-the-top (OTT) services, Sustainable Digital transformation, etc., which would be pivotal in shaping the future of technology and ensuring a connected, secure, and inclusive digital world. The existing ITU-T Resolutions are also being updated. Once the roadmap is set during the WTSA-24, the standardization activities would be taken up by the various ITU-T Study Groups in the form of development of Standards and Technical reports. The work of ITU-T will be carried out through its 10 Study Groups.
Leadership positions: During the WTSA-24, participating countries elected leadership positions of the various Study Groups. India has significantly strengthened its position in the global telecommunication landscape, securing key leadership roles in all the ITU-T Study Groups. In the ongoing WTSA-24, India has garnered 11 leadership positions, including 1 Chair position for ITU-T SG 11 and 10 vice chair-positions as detailed below:
| S. N. | Study Group | Leadership Position | Chair/Vice-Chair |
| 1 | SG2: Operational aspects | Vice-Chair | Premjit Lal, DDG(IR), DoT |
| 2 | SG3: Economic & policy issues | Vice-Chair | Sathish Kumar MC, Deputy Administrator, USOF |
| 3 | SG5: Environment, EMF & circular economy | Vice-Chair | Neha Upadhyay, Director, TEC |
| 4 | SGC [Merger of SG9: Broadband cable & TV and SG16: Multimedia & digital technologies] | Vice-Chair | Avinash Agarwal, DDG, TEC |
| 5 | SG11: Protocols, testing & combating counterfeiting | Chair | Tejpal Singh, Advisor, TRAI |
| 6 | SG12: Performance, QoS & QoE | Vice-Chair | Abdul Kayum, Advisor, TRAI |
| 7 | SG13: Future networks | Vice-Chair | Abhijan Bhattacharyya, TCS |
| 8 | SG15: Transport, access & home | Vice-Chair | Sudipta Bhaumik, STL |
| 9 | SG17: Security | Vice-Chair | Preetika Singh, Director, TEC |
| 10 | SG20: IoT, smart cities & communities | Vice-Chair | Ravi A Robert Jerard, CMD, BSNL |
| 11 | SCV [Standardization Committee for Vocabulary] | Vice-Chair | Hemendra K Sharma, DDG(Media), DoT |
This is a recognition of the contributions of these experts in development of global standards and a major milestone in India’s Standardisation Journey.
About Study Groups
Study Groups are technical grouping of experts who work for developing international standards for telecommunications technologies based on the technical inputs received from members of ITU. Chairs and Vice Chairs of these Study Groups are elected from the ITU members during the WTSA. Area of work for the Study Groups (SGs) are as below :
SG2: Operational aspects
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| SG3: Economic & policy issues
Studying international telecommunication/ICT policy and economic issues and tariff and accounting matters (including costing principles and methodologies), with a view to informing the development of enabling regulatory models and frameworks. |
| SG5: Environment, EMF & circular economy
Electromagnetic fields (EMF), environment, climate action, sustainable digitalization, and the circular economy. |
SGC [Merger of SG9: Broadband cable & TV and SG16: Multimedia & digital technologies]
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SG11: Protocols, testing & combating counterfeiting
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| SG12: Performance, QoS & QoE
Development of international standards (ITU-T Recommendations) on performance, quality of service (QoS) and quality of experience (QoE). This work spans the full spectrum of terminals, networks and services, ranging from speech over fixed circuit-switched networks to multimedia applications over mobile and packet-based networks. |
| SG13: Future networks
Future computing, including cloud computing and data handling in ICT networks. This work covers network capabilities and technologies to support data utilization, exchange, sharing, and data quality assessment. It also covers computing-aware networking as well as end-to-end awareness, control and management of future computing, including cloud, cloud security and data handling. |
| SG15: Transport, access & home
Development of standards for the optical transport network, access network and home network infrastructures, systems, equipment, optical fibres and cables and the related installation, maintenance, management, test, instrumentation and measurement techniques, and control plane technologies to enable the evolution toward intelligent transport networks. |
| SG17: Security
Cybersecurity, security management, security architectures and frameworks, countering spam, identity management, the protection of personally identifiable information, operational aspects of data protection, open identity trust framework; and quantum-based security; and Child Online Protection. |
| SG20: IoT, smart cities & communities
Coordinated deployment of IoT and address IoT implementation challenges related to interoperability, big data, and architectural frameworks and requirements for supporting various IoT systems. SG20 standards that set the requirements for IoT deployment also help smart cities and communities to improve the efficiency of IoT systems and smart city platforms, break down data silos, facilitate seamless data sharing among various verticals, and enhance data processing and management capacity. |
| SCV [Standardization Committee for Vocabulary]
To address the need for a harmonized understanding of all terms and definitions used in standardization. |
About TSAG [Telecommunication Standardization Advisory Group]: TSAG acts as an advisory body and plays a crucial role in providing strategic guidance and oversight to the ITU’s standardization activities. It is called on to resolve coordination issues among the study groups, to expand electronic working methods for the ITU-T and to provide advice and procedures on relationships with other standards bodies.