ITU V.92 and V.44 Voiceband Modem Standards Take Another Significant Step Forward

Geneva, 4 July 2000 – The ITU agreed on three important new standards for voiceband modems in Edinburgh, Scotland, last week, at a meeting of the ITU-T Working Party 1/16 responsible for modem specifications.

Building on the success of the now ubiquitous V.90 Recommendation for modems at data rates up to 56kbit/s, important enhancements have now been agreed in new Recommendation ITU-T V.92. The enhancements are:

• an increase of more than 40% in the maximum data rate towards the network to a new maximum of 48 kbit/s on the best connections;
• significantly quicker start-up times on recognized connections, and;
• the ability to put the modem ‘on-hold’ when the network indicates that an incoming call is waiting.

These enhancements will give significant benefits to the modem user with improved access to interactive services, and the option of exploiting voice response facilities associated with Internet browsing.

The Chairman of ITU-T Study Group 16, Mr Pierre-André Probst noted "These important new features will further improve the Internet users experience by significantly reducing connect times and providing improved access to new Internet services."

The meeting, jointly hosted by industry leaders 3Com, Conexant Systems, Lucent Technologies and Motorola, also initiated approval of a new Recommendation on data compression techniques in V.44, and a Recommendation V.59 which defines new procedures for facilitating modem and connection fault-finding.

The new data compression Recommendation is based on the LZJH compression algorithm developed by US-based Hughes Network Systems and gives an improvement in compression of more than 25% beyond the existing Recommendation V.42bis, and a data compression ratio in the region of 6:1 for a typical Web browsing connection. The net result is data throughput rates in excess of 300 kbit/s compared with typical values of 150-200 kbit/s today, thus significantly reducing download times and speeding up web browsing. These rates are still below those available from emerging DSL technologies, but have the advantage of not requiring any special installation on the part of the network provider, leaving upgrades to the direct control of ISPs and users.

“Much attention is going to DSL technologies these days, but the voiceband modem will remain the pre-dominant worldwide access technology for many years to come and these important new Recommendations will help users to get the most from this technology” said John Magill, the Chairman of the ITU-T Working Party 1/16.

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The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) is a global organization where the public and private sectors cooperate for the development of telecommunications and the harmonization of national telecommunication policies.

With the first approval phase of the three standards now completed, the work programme is on target for final approval at the next meeting of Study Group 16 in November 2000 at which time these standards will come into effect if unanimously adopted.