ITU-T consents its first software-defined vehicle Recommendation, F.749.22

The International Telecommunication Union’s standardization sector consented a Recommendation setting functional requirements for software-defined vehicle services, the first document of its kind to reach that stage in its vehicular multimedia group.

The work item, numbered F.749.22 and previously carried as F.SDV-Reqts, was titled “Functional requirements for software-defined vehicle service based on vehicle gateway platforms.” The ITU work program recorded it as consented on July 17, 2026, under Question 10/21 of Study Group 21. It listed ETRI, South Korea, Daejeon University and China Unicom among the supporting members, named Sunghan Kim, Jungha Hong and Xiongwei Jia as editors, and recorded liaison links to two other ITU study groups and to COVESA.

Consent is not approval. The item runs under the alternative approval process, in which a consented text enters a last-call period before it can be approved and published.

The work program summary described a vehicle gateway platform as the system that carries data between a vehicle’s electronic control units and external networks such as cloud services, and said a software-defined vehicle depends on it because the vehicle relies on continuous data exchange and software updates.

Four other Recommendations from the same group were consented on the same date, covering bird’s-eye-view fusion data labeling, an AI-enabled vehicle voice assistant, driver distraction detection and automated parking.

ETRI said on August 6 that the Recommendation was the ITU’s first international standard for software-defined vehicles, and that one of its researchers had been appointed rapporteur of the group, ZDNet Korea reported. The work program entry does not use the word first.

Source: ITU-T work program, work item F.749.22. Announcement reported by ZDNet Korea, August 6, 2026.