This was an initiative of the T1 Committee of the United States who invited the other founding partner organizations ITU-T, ETSI and the Japanese TTC to the first ISC Meeting in Fredericksburg, VA.
The goal was set by the “spirit of Melbourne”, stemming from a CCITT Plenary Assembly, to find a way of co-operation between Participating Standards Organizations (PSOs) from different regions of the world in order to facilitate global standardization within the ITU (International Telecommunication Union).
After a few years, the ITSC, as a conference, became too big and was therefore reduced to GSC, the Global Standards Collaboration, with delegations limited to a reasonable size (10 maximum).
Around the same time, it was decided to expand the scope to cover Radio Communications with the addition of a parallel set of Global Radio Standardization (RAST) meeting, the first one being hosted by ETSI in Nice in October 1994.
GSC-16 was held in Halifax, Nova Scotia, from October 31 to November 3, 2011 hosted by the ICT Standards Advisory Council of Canada (ISACC).