International Telecommunication Union (ITU)
Address:
Place des Nations
1211 Geneva 20
Switzerland
Email: itumail@itu.int

Under the Constitution of the International Telecommunication Union, the purposes of ITU are:
- To maintain and extend international cooperation between all its Member States for the improvement and rational use of telecommunications of all kinds
- To promote and enhance participation of entities and organizations in the activities of the Union, and to foster fruitful cooperation and partnership between them and Member States for the fulfilment of the overall objectives embodied in the purposes of the Union
- To promote and offer technical assistance to developing countries in the field of telecommunications, and also to promote the mobilization of the material, human and financial resources needed to improve access to telecommunications services in such countries
- To promote the development of technical facilities and their most efficient operation, with a view to improving the efficiency of telecommunication services, increasing their usefulness and making them, so far as possible, generally available to the public
- To promote the extension of the benefits of new telecommunication technologies to all the world's inhabitants
- To promote the use of telecommunication services with the objective of facilitating peaceful relations
- To harmonize the actions of Member States and promote fruitful and constructive cooperation and partnership between Member States and Sector Members in the attainment of those ends
- To promote, at the international level, the adoption of a broader approach to the issues of telecommunications in the global information economy and society, by cooperating with other world and regional intergovernmental organizations and those non-governmental organizations concerned with telecommunications.

3 Sectors of ITU:

Radiocommunication Sector

is charged with determining the technical characteristics and operational procedures for a huge and growing range of wireless services. The Sector also plays a vital role in the management of the radio-frequency spectrum, a finite natural resource which is increasingly in demand due to the rapid development of new radio-based services and the enormous popularity of mobile communications technologies.
In their role as global spectrum coordinator, the Member States of the Radiocommunication Sector develop and adopt the Radio Regulations, a voluminous set of rules which serve as a binding international treaty governing the use of the radio spectrum by some 40 different services around the world. The Sector also acts, through its Bureau, as a central registrar of international frequency use, recording and maintaining the Master International Frequency Register which currently includes around 1 265 000 terrestrial frequency assignments, 87 096 assignments servicing 590 satellite networks, and another 46 179 assignments related to 3 163 satellite earth stations.
In addition, ITU-R is responsible for coordinating efforts to ensure that the communication, broadcasting and meteorological satellites in the world's increasingly crowded skies can co-exist without causing harmful interference to one another's services. In this role, the Union facilitates agreements between both operators and governments, and provides practical tools and services to help frequency spectrum managers carry out their day-to-day work.

Standardization Sector

The Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T) embodies ITU's oldest activity - developing internationally-agreed technical and operating standards (in ITU parlance, ITU-T Recommendations) and defining tariff and accounting principles for international telecommunication services. The work of ITU-T aims to foster seamless interconnection of the world's communication network and systems.
International standards for information and communication technologies (ICT) are growing in importance not only because of globalization but also because the ICT sector is one of the pillars in today's economy. Whether we exchange voice, data or video messages, communications cannot take place without standards linking the sender and the receiver such as SS7, E.164, JPEG, MPEG, H.323, TCP/IP, GSM, ADSL, etc. The telephone network, arguably one of the most complex projects ever undertaken, is based on a myriad of standards, and ITU's work was instrumental in its creation.
In the field of global information infrastructure, ITU-T is leading the way through standards development efforts aimed at defining the building blocks of a new broadband global infrastructure. The next-generation network (NGN) is a key area of study for ITU-T as operators around the world look to migrate to an IP-based infrastructure. The convergence between Internet protocol (IP), public switched telephone network (PSTN), digital subscriber line (DSL), cable television (CATV), wireless local area network (WLAN) and mobile technologies is a task that many believe is impossible without the development of global standards.

Development Sector

As we enter a new era based on the flow of digital information across high-speed global networks, telecommunications are rapidly growing from a service dominated by voice communications, to the fabric which underpins almost all economic activity.
Over the last decade, the electronic processing and exchange of information has come to dominate the world of business, making affordable and reliable access to telecommunication networks an essential element in the economic competitiveness of nations around the world. At the same time, the fast growth of online information resources like the Internet is creating a new world in which timely access to information is increasingly dependent on access to advanced telecommunication services.
For people living in the industrialized world, access to telecommunications is all too often taken for granted. Unfortunately, for the estimated four billion people living in the world's developing countries, the situation is radically different. At the dawn of the new millennium, pockets of humankind still have no access to even simple telecommunication services - a fact which continues to have enormous social and economic ramifications for many countries.
A lack of reliable access to basic telecommunication services currently affects around two-thirds of ITU's 189 Member States. It is the vital task of ITU's Telecommunication Development Sector (ITU-D) to help redress this imbalance, promoting investment and fostering the expansion of telecommunication infrastructure in developing nations throughout the world.