The ITU gets its fingers into almost everything that touches telecom...which for them now includes the internet. So it's no wonder that the ITU is lobbying for digital signage standards and also publishing its own thoughts on digital signage.
An ITU-T Technology Watch Report gives an overview of digital signage technologies and their major applications, assesses the latest trends in DOOH and outlines the need for interoperable standards for digital signage products.
ITU-T Study Group 16 has already started work on a Framework for Digital Signage Services. Recognizing that a useful foundation has been laid for the similar IPTV application space of IPTV, much work remains to be done in order to achieve an all-embracing digital signage suite of standards. This suite, as envisioned by ITU, would also include screen-media formats and associated advertising units, network requirements, security and privacy enhancing solutions, test cases, etc. Extensive collaboration with the digital signage industry and its interest groups should contribute to taking the next steps without duplication of effort.
ITU-T Study Group 16 wants a particular focus on identifying links to related technologies (e.g., IPTV, cloud computing) and on leveraging the full potential of the medium: interactivity, pervasiveness and context awareness, and its integration into the Internet of Things.
Like in IPTV, ITU-T thinks it should consider organizing similar events (as in IPTV) to demonstrate seamless global interoperability of digital signage products of different vendors.
Some more of the ITU's thinking is summarized below...
"Digital signage incorporates different technologies relying on a set of standards: displays, network infrastructure for content delivery, communication protocols, and software and hardware for management and playback of content. Propelled by advances in the field of display technologies (e.g. touch-screen), radio-frequency identification (RFID) and near-field communication (NFC), personalization of content and user interaction become increasingly relevant. Other trends include customized application programming interfaces (APIs) and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) models that allow digital signage network operators to set up their networks and control and monitor campaigns via a remote location or the web.
The fact that most digital signage solutions are proprietary systems impedes the integration of various applications across different networks or vendors. As long as products from different vendors do not interoperate, it will remain challenging and costly to build and expand large-scale digital signage networks."