ITU Workshop on
“Workshop on Practical measurement of QoS/QoE
Parameters for Regulatory Compliance”
(Cotonou, Benin, 16-17 July 2012)
Overview of
ITU-T Study Group 12 Activities
Joachim Pomy, SG 12 Rapporteur
Consultant, Opticom GmbH
Consultant@joachimpomy.de
Cotonou, Benin, 16-17 July 2012
Where it All Begins:
Real Communication Situation
... and where Technology comes to Play:
Employing a Telecommunication System
SG 12 Mandate
‘Performance, QoS and QoE’
Responsible for Recommendations on
performance, quality of service (QoS) and quality
of experience (QoE) for the full spectrum of
terminals, networks and services ranging from
speech over fixed circuit-based networks to
multimedia applications over networks that are
mobile and packet based. Included in this scope
are the operational aspects of performance, QoS
and QoE.
A special focus is given to interoperability to
ensure end-to-end users' satisfaction.
SG 12 is the Lead SG on QoS and Performance
www.itu.int/ITU-T/studygroups/com12/index.asp
SG 12 Recommendations
E.420-E.479, E.800-E.859
G.100-series, except G.160-, G.180- and
G.190-series
G.1000-series
I.350-series (including
Y.1501/G.820/I.351), I.371, I.378, I.381
P-series, except P.900-series
Y.1220-, Y.1530-, Y.1540-, Y.1560-series
www.itu.int/ITU-T/recommendations/index_sg.aspx?sg=12
SG 12 Leading Team
Chairman
Chuck Dvorak (United States)
www.itu.int/net/ITU-T/info/sg12.aspx
Vice Chairmen
Paul Barrett (United Kingdom)
Vladimir Efimushkin (Russian Federation)
Gamal Amin Elsayed (Sudan)
Hyung-Soo Kim (Republic of Korea)
Qi Feng (China)
Catherine Quinquis (France)
Akira Takahashi (Japan)
Hassan Talib (Morocco)
TSB Support
Judit Katona-Kiss, Counsellor
Sarah Scott, Assistant
SG 12 Key History Events (1)
Established in 1957
Separate SG 16 for Transmission Planning
Old SG 12 just did subjective testing & telephone standards
At CCITT Plenary Assembly in 1984, these SGs were
merged to form the present-day SG 12
During same time SG 12 had a Laboratory WP
Subjective & objective testing for loudness of telephones
In the CCITT Laboratory in Geneva - closed in 1988
Since 1986 Speech Quality Experts Group (SQEG)
To better provide the quality requirements and subjective
testing for speech coding algorithms standardized by SG 18
(later SG 15, now SG 16)
Key role in the standardization of all of the G.711-G.729
speech and audio codecs, and still exists as Q7/12.
SG 12 Key History Events (2)
Since 1997 Video Quality Experts Group (VQEG)
With a nucleus of subjective and objective video quality expertise from
SG12
SG12 still maintains close contact with VQEG
Since the early 1990s work in SG 12 has expanded
Into many new technology areas
ATM
VoIP
Multimedia
Digital wireless
IP QoS classes
Ethernet
IPTV, etc.
Network Performance
Resource Management.
Since 2008 SG12 was given responsibility for
Operational aspects of telecommunication network service quality
Responsibility for the QoS Development Group (QSDG).
WP Chairmen and Vice Chairmen
WP 1 Terminal and multimedia
subjective assessment
CHAIR: Catherine Quinquis (France)
VICE CHAIR: Qi Feng (China)
WP 2 Objective models & tools for
multimedia quality
CHAIR: Klemens Adler (Germany)
VICE CHAIR: Paul Barrett (UK)
WP 3 Multimedia QoS and QoE
CHAIR: Paul Coverdale (China)
VICE CHAIR: Akira Takahashi (Japan)
Joint Coordination Activities
Accessibility and Human factors (JCA-AHF)
Conformance and Interop. Testing (JCA-CIT)
Home Networking (JCA-HN)
Identity Management (JCA-IdM)
IPTV (JC-IPTV)
Management (JCA-Mgt.)
Network Aspects of Identification Systems
(including RFID) (JCA-NID)
NGN (JCA-NGN)
ICTs and Climate Change (JCA-ICT&CC)
Groups overseen by SG12
CarCom Focus Group
Hans Gierlich, Chairman
Driver Distraction Focus
Group
Scott Pennock, Chairman
QoS Development Group
Luis Cardoso, Chairman
Regional Group for Africa
Kwame Baah-Acheamfuor, Chairman
CarCom Focus Group
In car communication
Quality parameters & testing methods
Interaction of car hands free systems with radio
Requirements on sub-system level
Requirements and testing procedures for superwideband and fullband systems
Interaction with other audio components and
systems in the car
Special requirements/testing procedures for speech
recognition systems in cars
Quality models: what and how can be applied for
the car environment?
QoS Development Group
Encourages wider participation in international QoS activities
Identifies and develop performance monitoring activities for
QoS
Identifies procedures & practices for inclusion in the ITU-T
Rec.s
Disseminates information relating to QoS techniques &
procedures
Development of coordinated approach to study of QoS
Pursues other activities which may improve international QoS
Regional Group for Africa (1)
Regional Group of SG12 on QoS for the
Africa Region
Encourages active participation of African
administrations, regulators and operators in
the work of ITU-T
Boosts discussions on QoS challenges facing
administrations, operators and regulators in
the continent.
Encourages participation of African countries in
Rapporteur’s meetings, workshops and other
ITU-T Study Group 12 events.
Encourages African countries to contribute to
the development of new/revised ITU-T
Recommendations.
Regional Group for Africa (2)
Regional Group of SG12 on QoS for the
Africa Region
Encourages the African countries to actively
participate in the Quality of Service
Development Group (QSDG) and other QoS
related meetings
Ensuring that ITU-T provides relevant
information on QoS standards applicable to
telecommunication networks, including test
equipment for QoS monitoring and measuring,
and assists in their implementation
Acting as liaison body between African telco
administrations, operators, regulators and ITUT in matters relating to QoS standards
Regional Group for Africa (3)
Regional Group of SG12 on QoS for the Africa Region
Development and introduction of new technologies are
demand driven
Ideal situation would be to have phased introduction of new
technologies in order to give time for industry and consumers to
assess their performance
This would allow administrations to adopt the appropriate
regulatory approaches such requiring operators to customize
QoS/QoE offering for different tariffs
However this is not the case presently as technologies keep
emerging daily
However regulation may be needed where the market competition
fails to resolve issues such as QoS/QoE
There are examples where some mobile operators have resorted
to massive deployment of half-rate codec to overcome capacity
issues resulting in poor QoS (MOS values)
Due to the above and many other reasons Africa needs some
minimum level of QoS/QoE in the form of a “Guidelines” where
different countries can refer to when preparing their respective
QoS/QoE KPIs
Evolution of Voice Quality Impairments
Hot Topic in SG 12:
POLQA™ - Rec. P.863 (1)
New POLQA standard winner of rigorous technical competition
Carried out by ITU-T to define technology update for PESQ/P.862
PESQ was state-of-the-art in almost any telecom service globally
POLQA - “Perceptual Objective Listening Quality Assessment” - offers
new level of benchmarking capability
to determine the voice quality of mobile network services
POLQA unified solution by OPTICOM, SwissQual and TNO
was selected as the winning approach
the underlying algorithms were subjected to extensive tests
over 45,000 speech samples from a broad range of targeted usage
scenarios
wide array of tests covers the entire range of today’s telephony quality
over the last ten years test and measurement vendors have widely
adopted ITU-T Recommendation P.862/PESQ (“Perceptual Evaluation
of Speech Quality”) and there are now more than 20.000 installations
worldwide
recently developed speech codecs for 3G and 4G, and new techniques
for delivering an enhanced voice quality experience have generated
strong demand for an update to this industry standard
POLQA is the answer the industry has been looking for
Hot Topic in SG 12:
POLQA™ - Rec. P.863 (2)
POLQA coalition formed by OPTICOM, SwissQual and TNO is the outcome
of the competitive standardization process run by the ITU-T
An expert group within ITU-T spent more than four years evaluating
various candidate algorithms to find a suitable successor to older
standards
An enormous amount of effort has gone into ensuring POLQA works
quickly and accurately
For example, more than 100,000 samples of mobile and VoIP phone calls were
used to train and optimize the POLQA algorithm
POLQA is superior to existing standards, and clearly has overcome all known
issues and limitations of PESQ
The limitations of existing standards that are now addressed by POLQA
CDMA
Chinese 3G TD-SCDMA
POLQA offers immediate, strong support for testing of new wideband
4G/LTE networks delivering HD-quality voice services
Tests carried out during the POLQA evaluation included future technologies
such as
Unified Communications
Next Gen Networks
4G/LTE
HD Voice, i.e. "wide-band" and "super-wide-band"
Hot Topic in SG 12:
POLQA™ - Rec. P.863 (3)
TNO's Senior Researcher Dr. John Beerends, who
introduced the first perceptual speech quality
metrics to the ITU-T in 1996 and was co-author
of the PESQ standard stated:
We received a clear message from the telecoms
industry, demanding a uniform successor of the PESQ
standard, and I’m delighted that the rigorous testing
that has gone into this evaluation shows clearly that the
jointly-developed POLQA solution will be superior to
existing and alternative approaches.”
More information on POLQA can be found in the
technical white paper “POLQA: The Next
Generation in Voice Quality Testing” available for
download from http://www.polqa.info.
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WTSA 2012
Changes are to come
New Study Questions
New Members of the Leading Team
Sure Assumption, however
Performance, QoS and QoE of continued
importance to the global community
and tus to the ITU
Any questions ?
Joachim Pomy
Telecommunications & Int'l Standards
Germany
Tel.: +49 177 78 71958
Email: consultant@joachimpomy.de