Telecommuncation Standards Organizations

Standards such as SS7 adn ISDN does not happen quickly. They are the result of many years of research adn development conducted by standards committeees.These organization are ussueally composed of goverment agencies or industry represemtatives from manufacture and service providers

To understand various standards available today, one must first understand the purpose of new standards and how they are developed.There are two differents type of standards: de yure and de facto

The de jure standard is formed by committee.These standards take many years to develop because the proccess used in committees are long and bureaucratic.Nonetheless, many of standards used today are the result of standards committees

A defacto standard is the result of manufacture or service providers monopolizing a market.
De jura and de facto standards can be voluntary or regulatory standards.Voluntary standards are adopted by companies ona voluntary basis.There are no rule that say that all manufacture and srvice providers must comply with voluntary standards.However the advantages are many.Voluntary standards help ensure that everyone developing products for networking build their product for interconnectivity.Without this intrconnectivity and interoperability, only a few equipments would win the market-those with largest intall base

Regulatory standards are created by goverment agencies and must be confirmed to by the industry.These standards do not hold any major advantage to the service provider or the manufacturer but are in place in most cases to protect the customer

Regulatory standards are monitored by goverment agencies susch as the Federal Communication Commission (FCC).These agencies ensure the protection of public and other network users by enforcing standards covering safety,interconnectivity and in some case health (i.e, radiation emission from computer terminals and cellular phones)

SS7 network use standards from a variety of organizations and standards committee.Some of standards used in SS7 network were developed for other applications as well not specifically for SS7.
The following organization have written standards direcly related to SS7:

1.International Telecommunication Union_telecommunication Standarization Sector (ITU-TS)

2.American National Standards Institute (ANSI)

3.Cell Communication Research (Bellcore)

The following standards organization have contributed to the SS7 network with standards not written specifically for SS7 but used by equipment in the network:

1.Electronic Industries Association (EIA)

2.ATM forum

3.Federal COmmunication Commission (FCC)

4.Underwriters Laboratories (UL)

5.Canadian Standards Association (CSA)

6.International Organization for Standardization (ISO)