Status of international standardization in ITU-T - focus shift to IP

摘要

Considering the worldwide expansion of the Internet, standardization activity in the ITU-T for this study period has largely shifted to IP. ITU-T Study Group 11, responsible for signaling requirements and protocols, has been studying support of IP in PSTN/ISDN since the last study period. In this study period it finally approved a set of new Recommendations on BICC and IN that have capabilities of supporting IP in July this year. This article reviews history of standardization on the both protocols and briefly introduces the technologies that are available in the approved capability sets from the viewpoint of clarifying the meaning of these protocols in the evolution of network systems. It also takes a glance at the future trends of the both protocols.