Theo Irmer, director of the Consultative Committee on International Telephony & Telegraphy told attendees at the International Communication Association conference in Paris that he favours the privatisation of its Standardisation Sector for Telecommunications. "If we are going to keep the global standardisation procedure under an international government body, we have to increase the involvement of the private sector," he declared in a speech entitled ‘Quicker, More Relevant World Standards’. Reform has already been undertaken, but it’s not the final step. Irmer noted that the current reforms have cut the time required for publication of a standard from the traditional four to five years to, at best, one year. But the continuing problem is that government administrators approving standards are no longer involved in the telecommunications industry, and according to Irmer, this severely limits their capacity to evaluate new technologies quickly.
