Standards to interconnect data imminent

By Evans Boah-Mensah

The new Study Group on Quality of Service of the World Telecommunications Standardisation Assembly (WTSA) of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) is scheduled to begin its first meeting tomorrow, which could see the approval of standards to interconnect data across telecom networks.

The standards for interconnected packet networks, when approved would allow telecom consumers the chance to make video calls and Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) as well as other data services to other consumers on a different telecom network.

The Chairman of the Study Group on Quality of Service, Kwame Baah-Acheamfour, who is the first African to chair a study-group at the UN’s ICT arm, explained to the B&FT in an interview in Accra ahead of the nine-day meeting said the proposal to standardize the way data is interconnected among telecom operators is one that could change the telecom landscape.

“This standard on interconnected packet networks was put forward by Rwanda and it was almost approved in the last Study Group meeting so it is due for approval in our meeting.

“What this standard seeks to do is that people are used to voice calls interconnected among the operators. But interconnecting data between operators is virtually non-existent. That is why data like MMS cannot be sent to other subscribers on a different network.

“Some people too cannot make video calls across different networks even though on their networks they could do that.

“So once this standard comes on stream, people can be technically comfortable that these are acceptable standards and triggers that they can be able to work with and that will make it easier to interconnect data.

“That is one of my fancy standards that I would want to see approved at the meeting,” he said.

Mr. Baah-Acheamfour, who is also the Principal Manager of Regulatory Administration at the NCA, said standards that would be approved at meeting are recommendations to policy makers and regulators to adopt and enforce in their jurisdiction.

He said the new Study Group, which has a four-year mandate will attempt for the first time try and test the standards that will be approved at the meeting to know how it works in an effort to bridge the standardization gap between the operators and policy makers.

“We are going to try for the first time to allow standards approved to be tested and that is something no study group has done before.

“People don’t see how the ITU standards are implemented so if there is an ITU standard, people who come to the study group meeting only know of the numbers of the standards. They don’t know what systems it works in.

“So we are going to do a trial exhibition for the first time at the ITU on our standards and that will give people in the study group the opportunity to display the standards that they have implemented in their systems, services, terminals and networks so that people will appreciate how the standards work and that will help to bridge the standardisation gap,” he added.

Mr. Baah-Acheamfour said several other standards would be approved at the meeting, most of which are being pushed through by telecom operators from Europe, Asia and the Americas.

He therefore called on telecom operators on the continent to deepen their participation in the Study group’s work in order to sustain demand for telecom services and also improve on quality of service.

“It would have been better, if our operators were part of this study group. They cannot just put their questions to the Group through the NCA.

“They should be part of the discussions and deliberations because when we put their question out there; whether or not we get a satisfactory answer, we cannot follow up because we are not the operators and can’t feel how they feel.

“Unfortunately, operators in Africa do not participate in the quality of service meetings. But the operators in Europe do. Meanwhile the European operators are the ones who have subsidiaries operating here (in Africa) so there is a disconnect.

“The operators in Africa don’t find the quality of service meetings important but the operators in Europe and Americas do. So it is an irony that the two biggest African network providers are not part of the quality of service.

“So it is up to them to really get beyond what they are used to and contribute to the work of developing and implementing standardization,” he said.

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