1. 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

2. 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.

3. 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

4. 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

5. 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

6. 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

7. 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)

8. 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;

9. 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

10. 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

11. 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.

12. Thanks for your attention