Standard Communications

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Standard Communications

• Toby JohnsonCommunications Officer,
  Telecommunication Standardization Bureau, ITU

Geneva, 15-16 December 2008
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Communications Breakdown

• There are some things customers probably dont
  need to watch being made The one we know about
  is sausage. The other is standards.
• David Coursey, Executive Editor, ZDNet

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Messaging
Without standards you couldnt make a telephone
call from one side of the world to another.
Without standards the Internet wouldnt
function. Standards connect the world
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Who are we talking to?

• Audience
• A message thats appropriate for one audience may
  not be appropriate for another
• The minutiae of the standards making process is
  about as interesting to most people as making
  sausages
• but to others its key
• Stakeholders
• Many peoples messages and interests to be taken
  into account

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Media outreach
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Media in context

• Journalists are human beings
• They dislike marketing jargon, too much
  technical detail
• Different types of media
• Specialist
• Trade focused
• National/Business
• Focused on issues, powerful, often non-specialist
• Online
• News driven, information hungry
• Regional
• Focused on local news, issues

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ITU-T has recently significantly updated its
website

• New homepage and site wide template
• 100 pages translated into six languages
• New pages for those new to ITU-T

• Newsfeed number one entry point to ITU-T web
• e-flash 3000 subscribers

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upped use of web 2.0 technologies
ITU-T and Wikipedia. Many entries updated
Newsfeeds picked up in media all around the world
Social bookmarking
ITU YouTube channel
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and feeds the press
Press Lunch, London June 2008 Journalists from
Led directly to BBC world service interview (and
other coverage)
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Academic outreach
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ITU-T uses traditional communications tools
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Outreach to developing nations
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Sarah, in Paris, copies a video clip encoded with
ITU standards for video compression to her
computer
H.264/AVC is the first truly scalable video
codec, for use in high definition TV to
videoconferencing and 3G mobile multimedia
Access passive optical networks
(PONs) Security X.509 is a key standard for
electronic authentication over public networks
Via broadband, standardized by ITU, Sarah uploads
the video to the server of her favorite
video-sharing site
Most cable modems are built to ITU-T standards
and ITU standards for DSL have helped telcos
maximise their infrastructure investment
ITU Standards in action..
Next Generation Networks refers to the move from
switched to packet based networks, promising
reduced costs for service providers and a richer
variety of services to consumers
Transport protocols and ITU standardized fibre
optics facilitate the upload to the server
Synchronous digital hierarchy (SDH) and wave
division multiplexing (WDM) are two technologies
in which ITU standards have played a leading
role. Standards for automatically switched
optical networks (ASON) are a current hot topic
In addition to transport standards, as her video
is viewed around the world, many other ITU
standards - such as those for access and
security - are used
Using a portable media player, Nanami in Tokyo
watches Sarah's video. ITU standards for NGN
herald this new era of connectivity
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We are here to help

• Media outreach
• Written material
• Press releases
• Newslog
• e-Flash
• Flyers, posters
• Speeches, presentations
• Public facing web pages
• Third party event identification

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This is the world thanks to ITU
a world without ITU
Now imagine
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Supplemental slides
toby.johnson_at_itu.int