European Telecommunications Standards Institute membership

The European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) is an independent, not-for-profit,

standardization Standardization or standardisation is the process of implementing and developing technical standards based on the consensus of different parties that include firms, users, interest groups, standards organizations and governments. Standardization ...

organization in the field of information and communications. ETSI supports the development and testing of global technical standards for ICT-enabled systems, applications and services.

Overview

ETSI was set up in 1988 by the European Conference of Postal and Telecommunications Administrations ( CEPT) following a proposal from the

European Commission The European Commission (EC) is the executive of the European Union (EU). It operates as a cabinet government, with 27 members of the Commission (informally known as "Commissioners") headed by a President. It includes an administrative body o ...

. ETSI is the officially recognized body with a responsibility for the standardization of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). It is one of the three bodies, the others being CEN and

CENELEC CENELEC (french: Comité Européen de Normalisation Électrotechnique; en, European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization) is responsible for European standardization in the area of electrical engineering. Together with ETSI (telecommun ...

, officially recognized by the

European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been des ...

as a European Standards Organization (ESO). The role of the European Standards Organizations is to support EU regulation and policies through the production of Harmonised European Standards and other deliverables. The standards developed by ESOs are the only ones that can be recognized as European Standards (ENs). ETSI develops standards in key global technologies such as:

GSM The Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) is a standard developed by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) to describe the protocols for second-generation ( 2G) digital cellular networks used by mobile devices such ...

™,

TETRA Terrestrial Trunked Radio (TETRA; formerly known as Trans-European Trunked Radio), a European standard for a trunked radio system, is a professional mobile radio and two-way transceiver specification. TETRA was specifically designed for use by go ...

, 3G, 4G, 5G,

DECT Digital enhanced cordless telecommunications (Digital European cordless telecommunications), usually known by the acronym DECT, is a standard primarily used for creating cordless telephone systems. It originated in Europe, where it is the common ...

™. ETSI’s standardization activities are organized around sectors: Home & Office, Better Living with ICT, Content Delivery, Networks, Wireless Systems, Transportation, Connecting Things, Interoperability, Public Safety and Security. Technical activities are carried out in the different ETSI technical groups (Technical Committee (TC), ETSI Project (EP), ETSI Partnership Project (EPP), Industry Specification Group (ISG), and Special Committee (SC). The organisation is located in

Sophia-Antipolis (wisdom), gr, (Ἀντίπολις, antipolis) ("opposite city" from its position on the opposite side of the Var estuary from Nice, also former name of Antibes, part of the technology park) , postal_code = 06220 (Vallauris), 06250 (Mo ...

, in the south of

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...

. The list of all ETSI technical committees, working and industry specification groups is accessible via th
ETSI Website

Membership

ETSI has more than 900 member organizations worldwide from 65 countries and five continents. Its community is diverse and includes all the key stakeholders of the ICT sector: private companies, research entities, academia, government and public bodies as well as societal stakeholders.

Small and Medium Enterprises Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) or small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are businesses whose personnel and revenue numbers fall below certain limits. The abbreviation "SME" is used by international organizations such as the World Bank ...

(SMEs) and Micro-Enterprises (MEs) represent more than a quarter of ETSI's total membership .The list of current members can be found on the ETS
website
There are different types of membership: * Members (located in a country within the CEPT area, including local subsidiaries of global companies) and associate members (located in a country outside the CEPT area) * Not-for-profit user associations, universities, public research bodies and Micro-Enterprises * Governmental organizations * Observers Membership contributions are calculated depending on the type of membership. Members' and associate members' contributions are calculated by class which is derived from the member company's annual ECRT band.

Partnerships

ETSI works in close co-operation with the

(EC) and the

European Free Trade Association The European Free Trade Association (EFTA) is a regional trade organization and free trade area consisting of four List of sovereign states and dependent territories in Europe, European states: Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerlan ...

(EFTA). ETSI is a European Standardization Organization (ESO) and as such provides standards and specifications to support

(EU) legislation and public policies. ETSI also works with European country's national standards bodies or National Standards Organizations (NSO). NSOs are responsible for the transposition of

European Standards European Standards (abbreviated EN, from the German name ("European Norm")) are technical standards which have been ratified by one of the three European standards organizations: European Committee for Standardization (CEN), European Committee for ...

(ENs) into national standards and for the withdrawal of any conflicting national standard. ETSI has set up a portfolio of over 100 active partnership agreements with fora, consortia and international and regional Standards Development Organisations (SDOs) located all over the world in order to improve co-operation and thus facilitate the convergence of technologies ETSI is a founding partner of two major international partnership projects, th
Third Generation Partnership Project
(3GPP) for 4G and 5G mobile communication and

oneM2M oneM2M is a global partnership project founded in 2012 and constituted by 8 of the world's leading ICT standards development organizations, notably: ARIB (Japan), ATIS (United States), CCSA (China), ETSI (Europe), TIA (USA), TSDSI (India), TTA (K ...

that produces standards for IoT communications. All ETSI partnership agreements are available on th
ETSI Member Portal

Deliverables Types

ETSI standards are available free of charge and can be downloaded from the ETSI website. Over 1 800 standards are published annually. They are different types of deliverables, each with its own purpose. * European Standard (EN): to meet needs specific to Europe and for transposition into national standards, or when the document is required under a standardization request from the European Commission (EC)/European Free Trade Association (EFTA). An EN is drafted by a Technical Committee and approved by ETSI's European National Standards Organizations. * ETSI Standard (ES): Used when the document contains normative requirements and it is necessary to submit the document to the whole ETSI membership for approval. * ETSI Guide (EG): Used when the document contains guidance on handling of technical standardization activities, it is submitted to the whole ETSI membership for approval. * ETSI Technical Specification (TS): Used when the document contains normative requirements and when short time-to-market, validation and maintenance are essential, it is approved by the technical committee that drafted it. * ETSI Technical Report (TR): Used when the document contains mainly informative elements, it is approved by the technical committee that drafted it. * Special Report (SR): Used for various purposes, including giving public availability to information not produced within a technical committee. ETSI SRs are also used for "virtual" documents, e.g. documents that are dynamically generated by a query to a database via the web. An SR is published by the technical committee in which it was produced. * ETSI Group Specification (GS): Used by Industry Specification Groups according to the decision-making procedures defined in the group's Terms of Reference. This deliverable type is approved and adopted by the Industry Specification Group that drafted it. * ETSI Group Report (GR): An ETSI deliverable, containing only informative elements, approved for publication by an Industry Specification Group.

Testing and Interoperability

ETSI has created a Centre for Testing and Interoperability (CTI) which mission is to provide hands-on support for testing and validation techniques to the different ETSI technical committees, 3GPP™ and

. The CTI assists in the development of conformance and interoperability test specifications that are widely used for certification schemes. The CTI has also been organizing interoperability events called Plugtests since 1999. Every year ETSI organizes an average of 12 Plugtests that cover diverse technologies, These events enable networking and co-operation between companies by gathering engineers who test the interoperability of their implementations. Plugtests aim at validating ETSI standards and improving the interoperability of products and services while supporting the deployment of new technologies. ETSI organizes other interoperability events such as Hackathons and Hackfests to further support the validation and implementation of its standards.

Research and Innovation

A significant part of ETSI’s work is to identify new potential areas for

at an early stage in order to monitor the technologies that may influence the future of

digital economy The digital economy is a portmanteau of digital computing and economy, and is an umbrella term that describes how traditional Brick and mortar, brick-and-mortar economic activities (production, distribution, trade) are being transformed by Interne ...

. To do so ETSI uses several paths to develop a close interaction between research bodies and its technical committees: * Workshops, summits and webinars * Close collaboration with National Standards Organizations and with SMEs that are at the edge of new technologies * Relationships with relevant European Technology Platforms, Public Private Partnerships and Joint Technology Initiatives

Education about Standardization

ETSI has develope
a comprehensive suite of educational materials on ICT standardization in collaboration
with the EC and

EFTA The European Free Trade Association (EFTA) is a regional trade organization and free trade area consisting of four European states: Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland. The organization operates in parallel with the European Uni ...

. It includes a comprehensive textbook, “Understanding ICT Standardization: Principles and Practice”, and an extensive set of over 380 slides to be used as teaching aides. The teaching materials are targeted at third-level education, primarily for students of engineering or scientific subjects.

References

External links

ETSI Official websiteETSI Portal3GPP websiteoneM2M websiteETSI Research sectionSmall Business Standards (SBS) aisbl
{{authority control Electrical safety standards organizations International telecommunications Organizations established in 1988 Standards organizations in France Telecommunications in Europe Telecommunications organizations