Subject: RE: Last Call: CR-LDP Extensions for ASON to Informational

From: "Lin, Zhi-Wei (Zhi)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 23 Jan 2003 10:53:36 -0500

Hi Christian,

This is one of the processes within the ITU-T standards body. The documents that is submitted into these documents can have multiple levels of "status". I'm not sure what the process is within the UK, but I have some idea of the process within the USA. Maybe Stephen Trowbridge or others more familiar with the procedures can comment (I typically try to stay away from these and stick my head into the technical stuff).

The lowest status is that a document is sent by a company. In this case only that company is known to support this. A document may also have multiple company names as contributors, in which case these companies are active proponents.
The next level status is a country document. A country document (e.g., USA or UK) means that the document has undergone a national standards process, and that ALL the companies represented within that country will support the position stated by the document.

This is of course much different from the IETF process, where all documents are by individual basis (theoretically it should not even have company affiliation but only represents the views of the individuals in the author list, but of course practically most people who attends and submits documents are actually representing a company view)...please don't flame me, just giving an observation based on my limited exposure to the IETF process...

Hope this helps

Zhi

-----Original Message-----
From: Christian de Larrinaga [mailto:[email-masked]]
Sent: Thursday, January 23, 2003 10:17 AM
To: Lin, Zhi-Wei (Zhi); [email-masked]; [email-masked]; Wijnen, Bert
(Bert); Scott Bradner (E-mail); [email-masked]
Cc: Stephen Shew (E-mail); Lyndon Ong (E-mail); Malcolm Betts (E-mail);
Lam, Hing-Kam (Kam); Alan McGuire (E-mail); [email-masked];
Dimitrios Pendarakis (E-mail)
Subject: RE: Last Call: CR-LDP Extensions for ASON to Informational

Lin Zhi-Wei

You mention a UK national position paper. Can you give me the references and
what made this "national"?

many thanks,

Christian de Larrinaga

> A clear U.K. national position paper was
>contributed to the meeting currently underway
>(delayed contribution 483), supporting that all
>three of the ASON signaling Recommendations
>should be put for consent at this meeting.
>Hope this helps...
>Zhi

---

From: Stephen Trowbridge <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 23 Jan 2003 09:29:29 -0700

Christian,
Zhi has captured the essence.
ITU-T has several classes of membership:
- The highest, since ITU is an organization under the umbrella of the United
  Nations, are "member states". This consists of the 190 or so countries that
  are members of the United Nations. In study groups that deal with regulatory
  and tariff issues, the governments are often sources of some of the material
  to be considered. In a more technical study group (like Study Group 15),
  governments tend to fill the role of determining if there is consensus of
  industry within the country, and forwarding that as a national position.
- The next class of membership is Recognized Operating Agencies. These are
  network operators.
- The next class (equivalent in rights to the operators) is called Scientific
  and Industrial Organizations. While any such organization can join, these
  are generally equipment or component vendors.
- The final class are called "Associates", who pay a lower level of dues to
  participate in a single Study Group.
Each country can determine their own national process through which national
positions are determined. In the US, it is customary to take proposed national
positions first to a related US standards organization (ANSI committee T1X1
for most of ITU-T Study Group 15) to develop the industry consensus, and then
to a US State Department committee (US Study Group B is the one which feeds
Study Group 15) which generally (not always) follows the recommendation of the
US standards organization in whether something should be forwarded as a national
position under the "member state" membership. Since in most cases, the national
standards organizations have looked at these documents first, the meetings of
the US State Department committees tend to be relatively short (1/2 day or so,
often by conference call).

As far as I understand the UK process, they have a national committee per
ITU-T Study Group which can approve national positions when there is industry
consensus. Since the UK does not have similar national standards organizations,
they must also look into the technical details of the contributions. This
results in a longer meeting (I think a couple of days, from what I have heard)
to develop any UK national positions for ITU-T Study Group 15.

Getting a national position in countries with significant industrial participation
is no small feat, so contributions such as this are generally taken very seriously.
Hope this helps.
Steve

---

From: Eric Gray <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 23 Jan 2003 12:33:27 -0500

Stephen,

    As a clarification question, what typically is the role assumed by the
class of member that includes scientific and industrial organizations?

---

From: Stephen Trowbridge <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 23 Jan 2003 15:49:32 -0700

Eric,
I'll restrict my answer to the role in a purely technical study group (like
Study Group 15). The answers vary when getting into work that deals with
tariff & regulatory matters.

In these study groups, virtually all of the input contributions (which are
written and submitted in advance of the meeting) are submitted by the two
classes of members:
- recognized operating agencies
- scientific and industrial organizations
Those who wrote the contributions are generally the ones who also attend
the meetings to present the contributions and negotiate for agreements for
text based on those contributions to be included in the draft Recommendations
under development.

In a technical study group, generally even contributions that appear to
come from governments (because they are submitted by a member state) were
actually authored by delegates from either recognized operating agencies
or scientific and industrial organizations who are based in countries that
have a national process whereby national positions can be forumulated and
agreed between the industry members within that country. The interest of
governments in purely technical study groups tends to be that:
- what gets put forward as a national position is reasonable
- that even individual company contributions from within a country do
  not contradict previously agreed national positions.
- not enforceable, but I think many governments prefer that their
  country delegates do most of the squabbling amongst themselves in
  a national forum instead of at ITU-T.

In terms of approvals, everyone gets a voice at approval meetings. Nearly
everything that is approved is unopposed (difficult to believe with the
diversity of interest represented at these meetings, but we actually
accomplish this almost all of the time). If push comes to shove (this
almost never happens) and there is a need to approve something in
spite of objections, only the voices of the administrations (governments)
count. As most administrations will abstain if there is disagreement
among the operators/scientific&industrial organizations within their
countries, an individual company cannot stop approval. Since everyone
know that going in, they are looking for something that can be agreed
unopposed, and that a single company at the end of the day cannot
stop something, everyone goes in with a view toward cooperation and
compromise, and agreements are reached.

Hope this helps.
Steve