From defining rules for ensuring transmissions get to where they need to go to and creating the "SOS" alert signal used in Morse code, the ITU has long played a key role in how we use technology to exchange information and ideas.

In the Internet Age, the ITU's role of establishing standards for video and audio data formats used for streaming, teleconferencing, and other purposes. For example, the ITU and the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) worked together to develop and publish, as well as to maintain, the various MPEG specifications, such as MPEG-2 (ITU H.262), AVC (ITU H.264), and HEVC (ITU H.265).