ITU Approves Voluntary 'Big Data' Standards

The International Telecommunications Union has approved its first-ever standards for handling Big Data in the cloud, which it defines as "the capabilities to collect, store, analyze, visualize and manage varieties of large volume datasets, which cannot be rapidly transferred and analyzed using traditional technologies."

The voluntary deals with Big Data's other big V's: volume, variety, velocity, veracity and value.

The goal is to create standard terminology and approaches to data handling and security to help support the creation of new Big Data services and technical standards.

According to ITU, the new voluntary standards "describe the meaning of Big Data and the characteristics of the Big Data ecosystem from a standardization perspective...outline how cloud computing systems can be leveraged to provide Big Data services, assists industry in the management of large datasets incapable of being transferred and analyses using traditional data-management technologies."

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.