International standards on universal personal telecommunications: state of the art and future projections

World-wide standards on UPT (universal personal telecommunications) are of paramount importance: fortunately UPT implementations are not yet in place, so that instead of traditional standardization, whose purpose is to strengthen existing practice or to effect variety reduction on existing products, for UPT there is prospective standardization, which anticipates the products appearance in reality. However, UPT embryos are around the corner, like the SIM (subscriber identity module) in GSM or such services as advanced freephone, advanced call forwarding, automatic credit card calling. Therefore, a good timing is critical for the forthcoming UPT standards. The authors analyze the situation in international standardization bodies starting from ETSI, where work on UPT is proceeding at a fast pace (a standardization for Phase 1 has been approved), continuing with CCITT, where UPT activities are somewhat hindered by their being spread across a number of separate groups, even though some of the members are extremely active in the field, finally looking at the USA situation