The Board of the Network Interoperability Consultative Committee (NICC) met in January for the 42nd time.

The Board, under the Chairmanship of Prof. John O'Reilly, reviewed the work of the interest groups and the progress of the diverse studies being undertaken by the task groups. It was noted with some concern that the recent meeting of the Public Network Operators Interest Group had been poorly attended. Whilst this may be attributable to the difficulties of the present economic climate, companies need to recognise the importance of the work to the development of their businesses.

The Chairman thanked Roy Davies for his support over the past two years as NICC Technical Secretary - he has stood down to concentrate on other Oftel projects. The Board welcomed Keith Bowman, an experienced member of Oftel's technical team, who has taken over the role.

The UK-ISUP Administrative Working Group (AWG) reported that it has completed its review of milestones. It confirmed that although remaining committed to the roll out, milestones should be shifted to allow a slower migration with final withdrawal of the current interconnection standard (IUP) delayed until December 2010.

The Digital Subscriber Line Task Group's (DSL-TG) work on revisions to the Access Network Frequency Plans for both the BT and Kingston networks has now been completed. DSL-TG has been considering issues relating to the Radiocommunications Agency's enforcement standard for emissions from telecommunications networks (MPT1570) and associated activities in connection with the European Commission mandate M/313 to ETSI & CENELEC. The Board approved a proposal from DSL-TG that it should undertake a new study to investigate the possible impact of interference from DSL-like systems in private networks into public network circuits.

Work continues in a combined operators' and manufacturers' task group to revise the national transmission plan for public networks and the network code of practice for private networks.

The Business to Business Forum Interest Group (B2B-IG) reported a positive response at its workshop to initiate and gain support for work to develop standards, technology and architecture for wholesale gateway order systems between BT Group and other telecommunications providers.

The meeting concluded with a presentation on ENUM, which is a protocol that maps conventional telephone numbers to Uniform Resource Identifiers. The protocol enables the use of traditional telephone numbers in the context of different communications media, particularly those arising from the development of IP-based networks and may be considered analogous to number translation but in the wider environment which embraces IP addresses. Although final deployment is dependent on the development of databases, signalling arrangements and data management protocols, UK trials are in progress and an up-date is planned for the Board in July.

Interconnection specifications

The arrangement under which the specifications and other formal documents produced by the Interconnect Standards Committee (ISC) of NICC have been published by the British Standards Institution (BSI) as published documents has now been terminated. These specifications and documents can now be found, alongside other NICC documentation, on Oftel's website at www.oftel.gov.uk/ind_groups/nicc/public.

The NICC Open Forum 2002

The NICC Open Forum 2002 was held on Thursday 14 November. Nearly 100 delegates and speakers enjoyed a range of presentations which can be found at www.oftel.gov.uk/ind_groups/nicc/Public/open_forums/open_forum.htm. The theme and contents of the 2003 Open Forum are now being considered and the NICC Secretary would welcome suggestions for speakers and presentations.

Joining the NICC

Interested parties from the telecommunications industry are invited to join the NICC Task and Interest Groups by initially contacting the NICC Technical Secretary. There are no direct costs of membership of a NICC Group but considerable potential benefit. Membership is open to operators, service providers and manufacturers.

For general information about the structure and activities of NICC, please see www.oftel.gov.uk/ind_groups/nicc.

The NICC Technical Secretary is now Keith Bowman (tel: 020 7634 5348 / e-mail: keith.bowman@oftel.gov.uk@oftel.gov.uk).