Recommendations for the Global Information Highway: A Matter of Standards

Ken Krechmer, Fellow, International Center for Standards Research University of Colorado at Boulder; Communications Standards Review

1/01/2005
(Original Publish Date: 1995)

The Global Information Highway (GIH) is society's vision for the telecommunications systems that may one day provide nearly unbounded personal communications. To make this vision practical, telecommunications standards which define compatibility within the GIH and at the access points are necessary. These telecommunications standards become a form of laws, not governmental or physical, but related to both. These laws control the ways to access and implement the GIH. A variety of standards organizations define these telecommunications standards.The laws of the GIH are too important to society to be created only in the technical fora of standards organizations. Wider participation in the telecommunications standards making process is developing, and telecommunications standards organizations are expanding their focus to help implement society's new vision. But much more remains to be done to create a broad consensus that could further define and carry this early vision of the GIH forward to actuality.