I had missed the news, so others may have as well. Thank you, Dennis, for bringing this to my attention. The International Telecommunications Union has decided to make its inventory of Recommendations available for free, on a trial basis.
ITU Recommendations are the standards that define the way telecom networks interoperate. While compliance is not required, generally operators conform because it provides assurance of interconnectivity of networks on a worldwide scale.
There is a general belief that the strategic importance of making on-line access to ITU-T Recommendations free outweighs the costs (in terms of lost revenue) to ITU. This is seen as a way to increase the transparency of ITU-T work and encourage wider participation in ITU-T activities. It is also believed that this policy will help increase developing countries’ awareness of pertinent issues and help to promote the participation of academia in ITU-T work.
There are more than 3000 Recommendations, on topics such as service definition, network architecture, security, optical transmission systems, next-generation networks and more.
You can access the ITU recommendations database here.