Zim hosts ITU meeting
Business Reporter
Members of the International Telecommunication Union from across the world have started arriving in Victoria Falls for the ITU-T Study Group 13 meeting. The meeting, which started on Monday and ends on Friday next week, will be officially opened by the Information Communication Technology and Courier Services Minister Kazembe Kazembe.
Study Group 13 has led ITU’s standardization work on next-generation networks (NGNs) and now caters for the evolution of NGNs, while focusing on future networks and network aspects of mobile telecommunications.
Broadly speaking, NGN refers to the worldwide move from circuit-switched to packet-based network. Circuit switching provides the basis for traditional telephone networks while packet switching break streams of data into smaller blocks of data. Each of these small blocks are then sent independently over a shared network.
The migration to NGNs has reduced service providers’ capital and operating expenses and enable the rollout of a rich variety of services.
As is common practice in ITU-T, reduced energy consumption was a priority addressed early in the development of NGN standards and in this respect they have proven far superior to traditional networks.
NGNs have been critical to fixed-mobile convergence and telecom-broadcasting convergence exemplified by such innovations as Internet Protocol Television.
NGNs are also underpinning the convergence of ICT and other industry sectors, such as the automotive industry in support of intelligent transport systems.
The SG13 is presently focusing on future networks that are expected to enjoy early realisation sometime around 2020 in prototyping or phased deployments.
Cloud computing is an important part of SG13 work and the group develops standards that detail requirements and functional architectures of the cloud computing ecosystem. SG13’s standardisation work also covers network aspects of the Internet of Things (IoT), additionally ensuring support for IoT across FNs as well as evolving NGNs and mobile networks. Cloud computing in support of IoT is an integral part of this work.
Meanwhile POTRAZ will be taking advantage of its presence in Victoria Falls to embark on a consumer education and awareness campaign at Chinotimba stadium this Saturday.
The roadshows which have been attracting thousands of consumers are popular because of their edutainment format.
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