By Emmanuel Elebeke

COMBATING counterfeit Information and Communication Technology, ICT, devices in the market could be a tough challenge . Nigeria has been looking for ways to mitigate but indications are that it may no longer be business as usual in the coming months. This is as the International Telecommunication Union, ITU,says it has taken a step further to address the growing challenge.

ITU says that it plans to address the global challenge through the deployment of Digital Object Architecture, DOA, during the next protocols and test specifications meeting coming up in Geneva, 22 to 29 April 2015.

It says the plan was part of the advancement in ITU discussions towards the event. According to the world body, the mandate was drawn from resolution 188 reached recently on ‘Combating counterfeit telecommunication/information and communication technology devices’ adopted by the ITU Member State at one of its plenaries in Busan, Korea.

Recall that ITU hosted an event on Combating counterfeit and substandard ICT devices at its Geneva Headquarters, in November 2014. According to the ITU, the meeting was held to take stock of the global challenges posed by counterfeit and substandard ICT products, the role to be taken up by ITU and the way to improve global coordination in this field.

The group at the conference focused on combating counterfeiting in ITU-T “Guidelines for implementations of signalling requirements and protocols, and for addressing counterfeited ICT devices” with a technical report issued at the end of the event. During its April 2015 meeting, stakeholders are expected to discuss ITU membership contributions to develop a work plan to address combating counterfeiting of ICT equipment.

Meanwhile, the ITU has stated that plans had been concluded to commence a demonstration on “A solution to combat Counterfeiting of ICT products based on the Digital Object Architecture (DOA)” at the April meeting. The objective of this event, it said is to show how a DOA based solution may be implemented to combat counterfeiting of ICT products. Using DOA, it is said that the demonstration will showcase features allowing the full supply chain tracking and tracing from the manufacturer to the retailer of mobile devices.