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However, if everyone were on board with standards, there'd be no problems. The quest for standards often gets relegated to the back burner by many companies. Why is that? "Today," Scholl says, "it seems that companies aren't always aware of the strategic advantage of standards. When they have to make decisions, they usually base it on how time consuming it is for someone to go to a meeting, and spend the time doing the work, and travel costs, and they don't always look at the overall costs that you would incur by not participating in standards work." And how much could standards save companies? "For the economy, overall, standards are a huge benefit," says Scholl. "There was a study done by the German national standards institute a few years ago that showed that the benefit of standardization was equivalent to 1% of the gross national product. Standards are as important as patents for economic growth."

It's a lack of priority given to standards work that prohibits some companies from spending more time on them, but that's not the whole story. There are some companies that prefer to push proprietary formats in lieu of adopting standards. What does one standards body think of that? "There might be wishful thinking among companies that they might be able to push their proprietary solution to the market, but in most cases it's just that: wishful thinking," says Scholl. "It's recognized that it's better to have a bigger cake that you share with others than to try to go with a proprietary solution."

However, the adoption of standards, worldwide, isn't simultaneous, nor are standards given the same level of priority in every corporate culture. Scholl says the ITU-T is working on that, as well. "A key phrase in our work is 'bridging the standardization gap,' which is the gap between developed countries and developing countries with respect to the resources they are able to invest in the standardization process. Currently, most of our members come from developed countries, but there is more interest from developing countries in getting involved in addressing the standardization gap."

Moving Forward

The benefits of standards, it seems, at least from the viewpoint of the ITU-T, are clear. They ultimately lower costs. They encourage competition. Standards bodies can use the conversation to address issues from global warming to accessibility.