THE ROLE OF TELCOR AT THE ITU'S PROCESSES FOR ASSESSING COMPLIANCE AND INTEROPERABILITY TESTING Ing. José Guillermo Valdivia Rojas Director of Control and Supervision TELCOR-Nicaragua January, 2012

TELCOR-NICARAGUA TELCOR is the regulator of telecommunications services in Nicaragua It is a member of ITU since 1926 Member of the regional organization COMTELCA Among its functions is to guarantee the quality and safety of all Nicaraguan telecommunications and to apply all national and international agreements.

BACKGROUND Nicaragua does not implement any process for assessing compliance or interoperability testing. Many regulators in the region of the Americas are in the same situation. This situation results in a number of problems with telecommunications systems

What happend? due to lack of conformity to standards or to lack of interoperability of equipment or services. We find the following situation. Terminals enter the market illegaly Questionable quality of network equipment The market is full of poor-quality of terminals equipment We find interconection problems among diffent operators

What are the problems that arise? Hardware Software Partial non conformity for expected functionalities Out of service Signaling Safety requirements Overhead configuration shorter equipment life

The main reasons are: No conformity to standards Poor interoperability equipment same vendor Poor interoperability equipment different vendor Poor interoperability same operator Poor interoperability different operator Inefficient application of the rules of homologation

This situation has effects on: Cost increase due to the need to replace some existing equipment or to buy additional equipment to solve problems Negative impacts on customers Negative image with respect to competitors Limited or no access to required services Delay in restoring Impact on effectiveness of services for civil society and emergency (for example public phones could not handle a three-digit numbering, wich are the emergency numbers)

Our Position Strongly support the program objectives of the ITU in reference to Resolution 76 of WTSA-08, which consist of: assist developing countries in capacity-building and training opportunities in conformity and interoperability testing; assist developing countries in establishing regional or sub-regional centres suitable to perform conformity and interoperability testing as appropriate;

What do we need? Implement the provisions of the resolution 76 of the ITU- T to increase the probability of interoperability between different manufacturers, suppliers and operators. The implementation of certification laboratories Need of developing countries to be assisted in deploying testing facilities and in capacity building opportunities in the regions  

ABOUT THE COUNCIL-09 We strongly support the provisions of Council 09 Creation of a conformance database Assist establishment of test facilities in developing countries Creation of human resources capacity building opportunities

In Summary We support all procedures that ITU-T is developing to carry out excellent conformance and interoperability of telecommunications systems. We believe that in developing countries should avoid these problems, affecting both operators and end users and the application of Resolution 76 of the ITU is a way to avoid many problems if we apply it immediately. Compliance testing, interoperability and database are indespensible tools to achieve our objectives.

Thanks for your attention