Many people in the telecommunication industry have pressed for the
ITU
to make its standards documents available free of charge. Well, the
long wait is over. Starting January 2, 2007 the ITU will make its
standards documents available to the public free of charge.
The same kind of change in policy took place at
ETSI several years ago.
Reportedly, making its standards available for free did not have a
negative impact on ETSI's bottom line. Rather, the free standards
helped to drive participation in the standards-making body, thus
compensating for any loss in revenue.
This move came after a very long trial wherein the ITU allowed a person
to register an e-mail address and download three documents free. This
trial demonstrated conclusively that there was a strong desire to
receive standards at no cost.
Since the ITU publishes some documents jointly with ISO, special
consideration will be given to those "common" texts, since ISO still
charges for its standards and is apparently heavily dependent on the
revenue from the sales of its standards. For such "common" texts for
which ISO charges a fee, the ITU will not release documents free of
charge until they are at least one year old.
Documents will be made available in PDF format, downloadable directly
from the ITU web site.
