Some of you might note that it is not my first time to be with you.
Standardization is an important step towards building a harmonized economic market.
International telecommunication standardization plays a key role in making telecommunication accessible to all, thus fostering development and growth in all domains on a global scale. The main work of ITU-T is to foster global interconnectivity and interoperability of telecommunication and information services. Interoperability of networks and of applications is becoming an increasingly important aspect. The interaction of IP based networks and telecommunications networks for the purpose of gaining access to Internet, or other IP network applications, and the need for the interoperability of IP-based services and telecommunication services means providing real time Internet or other IP based multimedia services with the speed, capacity, ease of use, reliability and integrity of the public telephone networks in use around the world. These are aspects of telecommunication network standardization in which the ITU-T has an excellent track record.