GSO gets membership of the ITU
Starting from December 22, 2020. GSO has become a Sector Member in Telecommunication Standardization (ITU-T) of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) as a new achievement to be added to its previous achievements at the regional and international levels.
His Excellency Mr. Saud bin Nasser Al-Khasibi, GSO president, explained that this membership provides GSO and its Member States with many privileges, including access to the full range of meetings and activities of the Telecommunication Standardization Sector and participate in conferences, seminars, study groups, workshops, specialized studies and working groups. The most important thing is participating in the development of international standards from beginning to end. The membership allows GSO to participate in the meetings of ITU General Assembly, the (ITU) Plenipotentiary Conference, the ITU Advisory Group, and working groups related to intellectual property (IP).
His Excellency added that the GSO, through this membership, can participate in the process of developing international standards related to communications, contribute to the study work groups, giving its feedback on standard and technical working documents draft. It also includes participation in the consensus process and final decision-making regarding these standards, chairing the relevant working groups. This membership also gives the GSO access to information, meeting minutes, reports, resource databases, and international codes.
His Excellency indicated that this membership came after the continuous efforts of the GSO following its MOU’s signature with ITU on September 18, 2019, on the sidelines of the ISO Week 2019 held in Cape Town, South Africa.
Mr. AlKhusaibi, stressed the importance of this membership with the ITU as it is the United Nations Agency specialized in the field of information and communication technologies (ICT), consisting 193 member states as well as some 900 companies, universities, international, regional organizations, thousands of experts, professionals, and leaders in the global (ICT) ecosystem. (ITU) is also the inter-governmental body responsible for coordinating the shared global use of the radio frequency spectrum, promoting international cooperation in allocating satellite orbits, improving communications infrastructure in the developing world, and setting global standards to ensure the seamless interconnection of the range of communication systems.
He concluded that with this step, GSO has completing the framing of its strategic partnership with the three international standardization organizations: ISO, IEC, and ITU.
What’s worth mentioning that (GSO) is a Regional Standardization Organization. which was established by the resolution of the GCC Supreme Council (2001) and assumed its operation in (May 2004). The GSO’s mission is to assist the (GCC) to achieve the objectives set forth in its Charter and in the GCC Economic Agreement by unifying the various standardization activities and following up implementation and compliance with the same in cooperation and coordination with the standardization bodies in the Member States (NSBs) to develop the production and service sectors, foster the intra-GCC trade, protect the consumer, environment and the public health, enhance the GCC economy and its competitiveness and meet the requirements of Gulf Custom Union and Gulf Common Market.
GSO works on building and sustaining its relationships with its partners (NSBs, international and regional organizations, stakeholders, economic operators, governmental, industrial, service, and academic sectors, community and environmental bodies, and the consumers’ protection societies. GSO has a membership in several international and regional organizations and more than (62) MOUs and technical cooperation agreements have been signed, through which GSO works to enhance the positions of member states in Arab, Islamic, regional, and international standardization organizations to ensure the representation of member states in international and regional organizations and forums in a way that contributes to support and facilitate trade exchange and achieving compatibility and harmony in the field of standards, technical regulations, and conformity assessment procedures in line with the requirements of WTO, and in a manner that allows knowledge transfer, training, information exchange, experts and international good practices.
