1. Nairobi, Kenya, 26 July 2010 This Time for Africa Study Group 12 in a Nutshell Joachim POMY, Senior QoS Expert OPTICOM, Germany www.opticom.de ITU-T Workshop on Delivering Good Quality Telecommunication Service in a Safe Environment in Africa (Nairobi, Kenya, 26 July – 27 July 2010 )

2. Nairobi, Kenya, 26 July 2010 2 Where it All Begins: Real Communication Situation

3. Nairobi, Kenya, 26 July 2010 3... and where Technology comes to Play: Employing a Telecommunication System

4. Nairobi, Kenya, 26 July 2010 4 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 www.itu.int/ITU-T/studygroups/com12/index.asp

5. Nairobi, Kenya, 26 July 2010 5 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 www.itu.int/ITU-T/recommendations/index_sg.aspx?sg=12

6. Nairobi, Kenya, 26 July 2010 6 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

7. Nairobi, Kenya, 26 July 2010 7 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.

8. Nairobi, Kenya, 26 July 2010 8 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).

9. Nairobi, Kenya, 26 July 2010 9 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)

10. Nairobi, Kenya, 26 July 2010 10 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)

11. Nairobi, Kenya, 26 July 2010 11 Groups overseen by SG12 CarCom Focus Group Hans Gierlich, Chairman QoS Development Group Luis Cardoso, Chairman Regional Group for Africa Daniel Waturu, Chairman

12. Nairobi, Kenya, 26 July 2010 12 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 super- wideband 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?

13. Nairobi, Kenya, 26 July 2010 13 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

14. Nairobi, Kenya, 26 July 2010 14 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 Rapporteurs meetings, workshops and other ITU-T Study Group 12 events. Encourages African countries to contribute to the development of new/revised ITU-T Recommendations.

15. Nairobi, Kenya, 26 July 2010 15 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 ITU- T in matters relating to QoS standards

16. Nairobi, Kenya, 26 July 2010 16 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

17. Nairobi, Kenya, 26 July 2010 17 Evolution of Voice Quality Impairments

18. Nairobi, Kenya, 26 July 2010 18 Study Group 12 Recommendations (1) Of importance for the African Region: E.801: Framework for Service Quality Agreement E.802: Framework and methodologies for the determination and application of QoS parameters G.107: The E-model: a computational model for use in transmission planning G.108: Application of the E-model: A planning guide G.109: Definition of categories of speech transmission quality G.113: Transmission impairments due to speech processing G.114: One-way transmission time

19. Nairobi, Kenya, 26 July 2010 19 Study Group 12 Recommendations (2) Of importance for the African Region: G.131: Talker echo and its control G.1000: Communications Quality of Service: A framework and definitions G.1010: End-user multimedia QoS categories G.1011 (draft): Reference guide to Quality of Experience assessment methodologies G.1020: Performance parameter definitions for quality of speech and other voiceband applications utilizing IP networks G.1050: Network model for evaluating multimedia transmission performance over Internet Protocol P.505: One-view visualization of speech quality measurement results

20. Nairobi, Kenya, 26 July 2010 20 Study Group 12 Recommendations (3) Of importance for the African Region: P.561: In-service non-intrusive measurement device – Voice service measurements P.562: Analysis and interpretation of INMD voice- service measurements P.563: Single-ended method for objective speech quality assessment in narrow-band telephony applications P.800: Methods for subjective determination of transmission quality P.800.1: Mean Opinion Score (MOS) terminology P.805: Subjective evaluation of conversational quality P.862: Perceptual evaluation of speech quality (PESQ)

21. Nairobi, Kenya, 26 July 2010 21 Study Group 12 Recommendations (4) Of importance for the African Region: P.1010: Fundamental voice transmission objectives for VoIP terminals and gateways P.1110: WB hands-free communication in motor vehicles Y.1221: Traffic control and congestion control in IP- based networks Y.1530: Call processing performance for voice service in hybrid IP networks Y.1541: Network performance objectives for IP-based services Y.1542: Framework for achieving end-to-end IP performance objectives Y.1543: Measurements in IP networks for inter-domain performance assessment

22. Nairobi, Kenya, 26 July 2010 22 Hot Topic in SG 12: POLQA - Rec. P.863 (0)

23. Nairobi, Kenya, 26 July 2010 23 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 TNOOPTICOMSwissQual 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 todays 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

24. Nairobi, Kenya, 26 July 2010 24 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 will also offer 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"

25. Nairobi, Kenya, 26 July 2010 25 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 Im 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.

26. 26 Evolution of ITU-T Recommendations for Voice Quality Testing (P.86x - Full Reference MOS-LQO) 20102000 1996 Narrow-band (NB) 3.4 kHz Wide-band (WB) 7 kHz Super-wide-band (SWB) 14 kHz HD Voice 2005 PSQMPESQ PESQ MOS-LQO PESQ- WB POLQA ITU-T P.861 08/1996 (Withdrawn) Speech Codecs Fixed Delay ITU-T P.862 02/2001 Speech Codecs Variable Delay E2E Network Quality P.862.1 11/2003 P.862.2 11/2005 P.862.3 PESQ Application Guide 11/2005 P.863 (draft) 2010 Speech Codecs E2E Network Quality Variable Delay and Time Scaling Level & Linear Filtering Effects Acoustical Interfaces POTS and HD Voice (NB and WB/SWB) VQE Enhanced Networks Enhanced Accuracy of MOS Prediction Wide-band Extension to 7 kHz MOS Mapping for Mobile Network Benchmarking © OPTICOM GmbH 2010 – www.polqa.info POTS 3G 3.5G 4G/LTE2G VoIP NGN UC Evolution of Network Technologies available at the time of development, i.e. included use cases for each Recommendation

27. Nairobi, Kenya, 26 July 2010 27 Any questions ? Joachim Pomy Telecommunications & Int'l Standards Germany Tel.: +49 177 78 71958 Email: consultant@joachimpomy.de