Emma Okonji
The International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the United Nations specialised agency for information and communication technologies (ICTs), that is driving global innovation in ICTs, has formed a new focus group to optimise the ‘testbeds’ for rolling out effective, sustainable fifth-generation (5G) infrastructure and services.
With 5G poised to ramp up digital transformation worldwide, global research communities are joining forces to maximise their collective return on testbed investments.
The new ITU Focus Group on ‘Testbeds federations for IMT-2020 and beyond, will responds to urgent needs to build a technical and business ecosystem for the sustainable development, evolution, and federation of testbeds, which is the physical and virtual laboratories and testing spaces for new and emerging technologies.
Announcing the initiative in a recent statement, ITU Secretary-General, Houlin Zhao, said: “The accelerating digital transformation of our economies relies on the combination of increasingly complex technologies in fields from 5G and the Internet of Things to big data, cloud computing and machine learning. This focus group aims to build new partnerships to help test labs making mutually reinforcing contributions to innovation, to everyone’s benefit.”
In Nigeria, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), had on December 13, 2021, auctioned two lots in the 3.5GHz spectrum band to MTN Networks Limited and Mafab Communications Limited, to enable them rollout 5G technology services in Nigeria in 2022.
One week after MTN was announced as one of the winners of the 5G licence, through the 3.5GHz spectrum auction, MTN finalised arrangements to launch its RCS Business Messaging (RBM) Services in partnership with Google and Dotgo.
Available on 3G and 4G networks, RCS is the default messaging standard for 5G networks. As of today, RCS is available globally with over 700 million monthly active users.
Google is a global technology solution provider, while Dotgo is a gupshup company and a leading cloud communications provider of RBM solutions.
RBM uses the rich and interactive features of Rich Communication Services (RCS)—the next generation SMS that allows sharing of audio, video, images, location, and a lot more—to enable branded business messaging.
Addressing the urgent need for broader 5G cooperation, Zhao said accelerating industry automation spurred by the COVID-19 pandemic, amplified the urgency to create the international cooperation framework for 5G testbeds.
Open to all interested parties, the focus group aims to build broader knowledge of the specialisations of different testbeds and identify opportunities for mutually beneficial interactions. It will also provide a platform to harmonise specifications for testbed interoperability, fostering and enabling high degrees of quality assurance and security.
Focus Group Chairman, Giulio Maggiore, from ITU member Telecom Italia, said: “Testing certain technologies and associated use cases requires an extensive set of components and resources that few test labs are able to host in isolation, and this is becoming especially apparent as we enter the 5G era.”
Addressing the growing complexity of emerging technologies like like 5G, Maggiore said testbeds that are run by industry and academia, would play an essential part in bringing game-changing digital technology breakthroughs to market.
The focus group is expected to report to ITU’s expert group on standardization for protocols and test specifications, ITU-T Study Group 11.
Its work is intended to build on the new ITU standard Q.4068 specifying open application programming interfaces for interoperable testbed federations, which defines a generic reference model for such federations and describes the foundational elements of this model.
According to Zhao, the first meeting of the focus group would be scheduled to hold online between 4-7 April 2022.
