Lagos — The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) has approved new standards to provide access to a wide range of telecommunications services.

The approval was contained in a statement made available by the union to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) Wednesday in Lagos.

ITU Secretary-General Hamadoun Toure said the new standards would ensure worldwide compatibility, international roaming and access to high-speed data services for third-generation (3G) IMT-2000 mobile phone systems.

Toure said that Recommendation ITU-R M.1850 identified satellite radio interface specifications for IMT-2000 systems, meaning that one or more radio links could provide access to a wide range of telecommunication services.

"I praise the timely endeavour of the ITU membership, including government and industry experts, in developing these new standards," Toure said.

He noted that the advances would facilitate ITU's concerted effort to promote broadband access in rural and remote areas around the world.

He added that even as the satellite component of IMT-2000 continued to evolve independently, work was already in progress to develop the satellite radio interfaces for IMT-Advanced.

According to him, IMT-Advanced provides a global platform on which to build the next-generations of interactive mobile services that would provide faster data access, unified messaging and broadband multimedia.

"The satellite component of IMT-Advanced will be designed to cope with increasing demands from the rising number of users in terms of peak bit rate and aggregate throughput.

"And it will have greater flexibility to simultaneously support many different types of services," he stated.