Standard-developing organizations (SDOs) and forums for telecommunications.

In this lecture, Vicente Casares talks about SDO’s and forums for telecommunications. He said that exist a lot of standardization bodies but with good coordination between them and talk about some of them.

IETF

IETF, the Internet Engineering Task Force, has as a mission to make the internet work better by producing high quality, relevant technical documents that influence the way people design, use, and manage the Internet. IETF is a large open international community and it try to avoid policy and business questions, as much as possible. The actual technical work of IETF is done in its working groups, organized by topic into several areas. IETF holds meetings three times per year. So, IETF is not a conference or a traditional standards organization or membership organization and no way runs the internet. IETF reject kings, presidents and voting and believes in rough consensus and running code.

IETF has a hierarchy defined. First step of this hierarchy is ISOC (Internet Society) y is an international, non-profit, membership organization that fosters the expansion of the Internet. It is structured in IAOC, IAD, and IASA and only the latest has influence in IETF standards development. Second step is IESG (internet Engineering Steering Group) and it is responsible for technical management of IETF activities and the Internet standards process. It ratifies or corrects the output from the IETF's Working Groups (WGs), gets WGs started and finished, and makes sure that non-WG drafts that are about to become RFCs are correct. There are a lot of Areas to cover and every area as a working group assigned with an Area Director (AD) which together comprise the IESG.

The third step of the hierarchy is IAB (Internet Architecture Board) and is responsible for keeping an eye on the "big picture" of the Internet. Fourth step is IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority) and is the central coordinator for the assignment of unique parameter values for Internet protocols. IANA is the core registrar for the IETF's activities and is the body responsible for the global coordination of some of the key elements that keep the Internet running smoothly. IANA is also responsible for the operation and maintenance of a number of key aspects of the DNS and It coordinates and allocates to Regional Internet Registries.

In the fifth step there is RFC Editor that edits, formats, and publishes Internet-Drafts as RFCs, working in conjunction with the IESG. Once an RFC is published, it is never revised. As well as producing RFCs, the IETF is a forum where network operators, hardware and software implementers, and researchers talk to each other to ensure that future protocols, standards and products will be even better.

The next step of the hierarchy is IETF Secretariat. It is under contract to IASA, which in turn is financially supported by the fees of the face-to-face meetings. The IETF Secretariat provides day-to-day logistical support and is responsible for keeping the official Internet-Drafts directory up to date and orderly, maintaining the IETF web site and helping the IESG do its work.

Finally, the last step is IETF Trust. The reason the IETF Trust was set up is that someone has to hold intellectual property, and that someone should be a stable, legally-identifiable entity.

The IETF is completely open to newcomers and it does not standardize transmission hardware but does standardize all the protocol layers in between, from IP itself up to general applications like email and HTTP.

 IEC, ISO, ITU

IEC, International Electrotechnical Commission, provides a platform to companies, industries and governments for meeting, discussing and developing the International Standards they require. The IEC is the world’s leading organization that prepares and publishes International Standards for all electrical, electronic and related technologies. It is one of three global sister organizations (IEC, ISO, ITU) that develop International Standards for the world.

ISO, International Organization for Standardization, is a non-governmental organization that forms a bridge between the public and private sectors. On the one hand, many of its member institutes are part of the governmental structure of their countries, or are mandated by their government. On the other hand, other members have their roots uniquely in the private sector, having been set up by national partnerships of industry associations. ISO enables a consensus to be reached on solutions that meet both the requirements of business and the broader needs of society.

ITU, International Telecommunication Union, has coordinated the shared global use of the radio spectrum, promoted international cooperation in assigning satellite orbits, worked to improve telecommunication infrastructure in the developing world, established the worldwide standards that foster seamless interconnection of a vast range of communications systems and addressed the global challenges of our times, such as mitigating climate change and strengthening cyber-security. ITU is committed to connecting the world and is composed by different sectors as ITU-T, ITU-R,  ITU-D and ITU-Telecom. One of them is ITU-T (Standarization) which Standards-making efforts are its best-known and oldest activity. ITU-R (Radiocommunications) is responsible for managing the international radio-frequency spectrum and satellite orbit resources. ITU-D (Development) establishes to help spread equitable, sustainable and affordable access to information and communication technologies (ICT). ITU TELECOM brings together the top names from across the ICT industry as well as ministers and regulators and many more for a major exhibition, a high-level forum and a host of other opportunities.

ETSI

ETSI, European Telecommunication Standard Institute, produces globally-applicable standards for Information and Communications Technologies (ICT), including fixed, mobile, radio, converged, broadcast and internet technologies. The following structure has been created to support the activities of the Members of ETSI:  a General Assembly (the highest decision making authority in ETSI), a Board, a Secretariat and Various Technical Bodies.  ETSI's purpose is to produce and perform the maintenance of the technical standards and other deliverables which are required by its members. Much of this work is carried out in committees (Technical Bodies) and working groups composed of technical experts from the Institute's member companies and organizations. For certain urgent items of work, ETSI may also convene a Specialist Task Force (STF) that are small groups of technical experts usually seconded from ETSI members, to work intensively over a period of time, typically a few months, to accelerate the drafting work. ETSI recognizes three types of TB:

– ETSI Technical Committee: A Technical Committee is a semi-permanent entity organized around a number of standardization activities addressing a specific technology area.

– ETSI Project: An ETSI Project is similar to a Technical Committee but is established on the basis of a market sector requirement rather than on a basic technology.

– ETSI Partnership Project: An ETSI Partnership Project is an activity established when there is a need to co-operate with other organizations to achieve a standardization goal and where that co-operation cannot be accommodated within an ETSI Project or Technical Committee.

ETSI may also establish Special Committees (SC) that is a semi-permanent entity organized around a number of standardization activities addressing a specific technology area or related topic and Specification Groups (ISGs) that offers a very quick and easy alternative to the creation of industry forum.

Each TB establishes and maintains a work program consisting of Work Items (WIs).  An ETSI WI is the description of a standardization task, and normally results in a single standard, report, or similar document. The TB approves each WI, which is then formally adopted by the whole membership. A TB takes its decisions, including approval of draft Deliverables, either by simple consensus or by a weighted vote.

3GPP

The original scope of 3GPP, 3rd Generation Partnership Project,  was to produce Technical Specifications and Technical Reports for a 3G Mobile System based on evolved GSM core networks and the radio access technologies that they support (i.e., Universal Terrestrial Radio Access (UTRA) both Frequency Division Duplex (FDD) and Time Division Duplex (TDD) modes). The scope was subsequently amended to include the maintenance and development of the Global System for Mobile communication (GSM) Technical Specifications and Technical Reports including evolved radio access technologies (e.g. General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) and Enhanced Data rates for GSM Evolution (EDGE)). The technical Specification groups are TSG GERAN (GSM EDGE Radio Access Network), TSG RAN (Radio Access Network), TSG SA (Service & Systems Aspects) and TSG CT (Core Network & Terminals).

In America, there are another Standardization Institute named ANSI(American National Standard Institute).