The power of standardization

Last month, I presented my last Board Chair report to the ETSI General Assembly. The year 2023 marks the 35th ETSI and the 25th 3GPP anniversary and is a good time for me to review my own business journey.

Technical expert - From first generation mobile systems up to GSM

When I joined Siemens in 1985 as a software developer for the German cellular communication system C-Netz, mobile communication was still at its infancy, seen as “the rich man’s toy”.

The German system was based on the C-450 standard proposed by Siemens. It was originally designed to support 100,000 subscribers. Phones where bulky and cost 5000€, and the only use was telephony. The system was incompatible with the many other first-generation systems that existed in other countries, making it impossible to use the phone abroad.

In 1988 I started my journey at ETSI as a technical expert, developing communication protocol standards in CEPT GSM and ETSI SPS committees. The standardization work was going on full speed.

In the 1980ies, the political desire of several countries to promote the European single market and the liberalization of telecommunication led to the establishment of the Group Special Mobile (GSM) in the European Post and Telecommunications Committee (CEPT). The goal was to create a pan-European cellular communication system in the 900 MHz band, which would allow citizens to use the same phone in all participating European countries, for manufacturers to increase their addressable market and for everyone to enjoy better economies of scale, better quality and lower prices. By working together with many colleagues from other companies and administrations, we were able to deliver the full set of standards for Phase 1 of the GSM system in 1990. GSM, then called the Global System for Mobile Communication, went into commercial operation in 1992, in thirteen networks in seven European countries, with already 0.25 million users at the end of 1992. This period marked the definition of GSM as a prayer, “God Send Mobiles”, mainly because of problems with achieving the necessary regulatory Type-approval of mobile phones for market access.

Management positions - From the globalization of GSM to 3G UMTS, 4G LTE, 5G and soon 6G

I was asked to establish a new department for Systems Engineering at Siemens that focuses on mobile core networks. The standardization activity was part of the scope of the department. I became the head of delegation for ETSI TC SMG (Technical Committee Special Mobile Group), coordinating all Siemens standardization activities for GSM. Siemens was one of the main players pushing GSM into the US and other countries.

GSM was a fantastic success thanks to the high degree of standardized interfaces and functions, enabling interoperability and compatibility across different networks and devices. The standards facilitated international roaming and contributed to the widespread adoption of GSM technology. At the end of 2000, GSM served 69% of all digital mobile users worldwide, with 450 million users on 392 networks in 147 countries across all continents. GSM was one of the first digital cellular technologies, providing improved voice quality and enabling more efficient use of the radio spectrum compared to analog systems.?

Australia was the first non-European country joining the GSM club. The initial success of GSM continued with the development of PCS 1800 for the UK market, and the activities to establish GSM 1900 as a standard for PCS 1900 in the Americas in the mid-1990. In 1994, China adopted GSM as a Chinese national standard.? Many countries around the world welcomed GSM and implemented the technology.

The GSM standard was developed in Europe, and ETSI wanted to develop the third-generation mobile technology as an evolution of the GSM system with a new radio interface. Several technologies were proposed in ETSI. I was actively involved in the famous battles between the two radio access technologies WB-CDMA (Wideband-Code Division Multiple Access) and TD-CDMA (Time Division-CDMA), including lobbying for TD-CDMA in various parts of the world. Due to the economic importance of the technology selection, the discussions and lobbying activities involved the CEOs of companies and Ministers of countries from all parts of the world. During the two ETSI TC SMG decision meetings in December 1997 in Madrid and January 1998 in Paris, no proposal was able to gain the necessary majority, but there was the common understanding that a solution had to be found. This led to a compromise based on elements from both proposals, which was then accepted by consensus.

The global mobile community accepted that the technology choice was made in ETSI, despite the fact that the decisions were taken exclusively by the European ETSI membership. It was however necessary to find a structure where all partners globally could participate on equal rights. This led to the creation of the 3rd Generation Partnership Project 3GPP in December 1998 by the five partners ARIB and TTC (Japan), ETSI (Europe), T1 (US) and TTA (South Korea), followed by CWTS (China) in May 1999. ?

Siemens, with me as the coordinator, was instrumental in the creation of 3GPP. The ambition was to ensure global compatibility and interoperability of mobile communication technologies. 3GPP plays a crucial role in defining the standards that enable seamless communication across different networks and devices, fostering innovation and ensuring a consistent user experience worldwide. I headed the Siemens 3GPP delegation during the first years. Later, my responsibilities expanded to research, patent generation and technical marketing activities at Siemens Mobile Communications.

The 3GPP 3rd Generation standard UMTS focused on data services and paved the way for mobile internet. I remember the first joint meeting of the Internet Engineering Task Force IETF and 3GPP in August 2001 during IETF#51, which was a clash of two different worlds, global Internet and global mobile communication, both seeing themselves as the center of the universe. We have learned to work together, so that 3GPP could use the IETF Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) for the IP Multimedia System IMS. ?

The economic value of mobile communication and the number of companies contributing to the ecosystem has increased steadily. Billions of Euros had to be invested to develop the technologies needed to support the mobile standards. It was therefore necessary to allow the contributors of these technologies to be fairly rewarded by licensing their patents to the users of the standards. Such a reward also encourages and allow them to continue investing in the creation of new technologies, bringing value to our society and the economy. This was made possible by ETSI’s IPR policy, approved in 1994, which serves as a blueprint for other standards organizations. The main policy objective – access to the standards for all implementers and fair reward for the contributors - remain unchanged to this day.

During the process of developing the standards for 3G and 4G, concerns were raised that the licensing costs would prohibit successful absorption in the market uptake. I asked this question myself when the decision on the 3G technology was taken in 1997/98. For 4G LTE, Deutsche Telekom and Vodafone also raised their concerns and asked for a commitment to a maximum aggregated royalty rate. History shows that these concerned are not justified. The immense value for industry and society provided by these communication systems and the moderate licensing costs requested by the main patent owners allowed the market to flourish. Some of the implementers of the standards became the world’s most valuable companies.

The number of unique mobile subscribers continued to grow, surpassing 1 billion in 2004 and 5.6 billion today. The competition in the business is fierce, new players arrive and established ones disappear. Communication networks have become a critical infrastructure for all industry sectors and society, and the economic development of countries and regions heavily depends on the quality of this infrastructure.

Management positions in ETSI and other external bodies

Coming back to my personal development, I continued to participate in ETSI, in the Open Mobile Alliance OMA where I was a Board member twice, in ITU and other standards bodies at technical and governance levels. ?I was fortunate to have many excellent people in my department who held leading external roles in ETSI, 3GPP, ITU, IETF and other standards bodies. Over the years, I have built excellent relationships with leaders in the industry, governments and SDOs across the world.

In 2005, I became actively involved in ETSI’s governance bodies and started participating in the IPR Review group. After the merger of the Nokia and Siemens communication networks businesses, I could devote more time to external functions. I participated in the ETSI General Assembly and the newly created IPR Special Committee. I chaired the IPR SC from 2008-2018. In 2008, I was also elected as ETSI Board member. I have chaired the General Assembly between 2010-2014 and the ETSI Board between 2014-2023. Europe has three officially recognized European Standardisation Organisations (ESO), ETSI for Telecommunications and ICT, CENELEC for Electrotechnical and CEN for all other sectors. With my official roles, I became a member of the CEN-CENELEC-ETSI Joint President’s Group between 2011-2023 and the 2013 JPG Chair. I was the Chair of the Global Standards Collaboration meeting #18 in 2014 and chaired several conferences in my role as an ETSI official. From 2015 till 2023, I was a member of the ETSI delegation to the 3GPP governing bodies, the Project Coordination Group (PCG) and the Organizational Partners (OP) meetings, where I often served as the Head of Delegation. The 3GPP technical work is done in the Technical Specification Groups, while PCG and OP need to ensure that the project funding, secretariat support, tools and ways of working remain fit for purpose and adapt to new requirements, even in challenging times like the pandemic. ??

As Chair of the IPR SC, I achieved the inclusion of a default SW copyright license in the ETSI IPR policy. I made the IPR SC a place where all stakeholders, including high-ranking judges, government officials from Europe, US, Japan, Korea, can openly discuss the interplay of standards and patents. Under my leadership, the current ETSI IPR database was designed and implemented, directly linked to the databases of the European Patent Organization. I established a regular dialogue with all relevant directorates of the European Commission on IPR policy issues as well as on the need to increase transparency. Speaking at numerous conferences and seminars has helped industry and policy makers understand the strength of ETSI’s IPR policy.

As the GA Chair, I successfully managed a number of critical topics, including the controversial election of a new Director General in 2011 and the attempt to buy disproportionate voting power. Earlier, realizing the growing importance of communication technologies for all other sectors before the digitization of everything was a buzzword, I was successfully able to actively engage with the leaders of CEN and CENELEC and improve the relationship with the organizations and their members. Through my excellent relationships, I managed to convince ISO and IEC to join the Global Standards Collaboration in 2015, thus expanding the activity that was previously focused on telecommunication.

As the Board Chair, I was able to make almost all decisions by consensus. I led ETSI’s review activities initiated by the 2022 EU standardization strategy, ensuring that ETSI remains compliant with the amended Standardization Regulation, but, equally important, conducting a critical review of the ETSI’s ways of working. This review led to a new voting structure, better inclusiveness, new codes of conduct and a modernization of the rules - making ETSI even stronger in its ongoing journey as a world class Standardization organization with its model of direct participation at both European and Global level.

The importance of open-source software is steadily growing. ETSI recognized the need to better describe how software could be developed in ETSI in line with the IPR Policy. ?After seven years of work of two specially created Board subgroups without being able to reach agreement on a concept, I managed to get a new type of ETSI group, the Software Development Group, developed by the secretariat and approved by Board and GA.

The use of standards in support of policy and regulation is of high value for governments, citizens and industry alike. The apparent lack of knowledge about standardization however requires a lot of constant work with all relevant stakeholders. I have explained how ETSI works to many government officials, in different countries and in the European Commission and Parliament at different levels, helping them to understand the value of standardization and ETSI in particular in supporting their policy objectives. But I also started or supported several initiatives to improve the relationship between standards organizations, stakeholder organizations and governments in a more institutionalized way. I will mention two examples.

The European Commission conducted a review of the European Standardization System from 2009 to 2011 with the participation of various stakeholder groups and several standards organizations, including the three ESOs. The ICT industry was represented by the Standards & Interoperability working group of the trade organization Digital Europe, and I am a member of this group since 2009. This review led to the creation of the first EU Standardization Regulation. Several experts, including myself, saw the need to establish a specific structure for ICT standards, as the ICT standardization landscape was significantly different to other sectors. This work led to the creation of the Multi-Stakeholder Platform on ICT Standardisation of the European Commission in 2012, and I represent ETSI in this platform until today.?

Some German industry representatives realized the need to establish a better structure to voice the ICT standardization needs also in Germany. In 2010, we decided to setup a dedicated Working group on Standardization in the German ICT Industry Organization BITKOM. Since then, I have been the Vice Chair of the Group. We have established a very good relationship to relevant ministries in the German government and have influenced the German positions on regulation and policy topics on German and European level.

DIN and DKE are the two German National Standardisation Bodies (NSO). It is important for ETSI to establish good relations with the NSOs. The NSOs are an integral part of the approval process of European Standards and European Harmonised Standards, and the digitization of all sectors requires a good cooperation between ETSI, CEN, CENELEC and the NSOs. In that spirit of communication and dialogue, I was invited in 2011 to join the presidential committee Focus.ICT of the German national standards body DIN, where I am still a member, helping to increase the mutual understanding and allow a better alignment of views.

Let me conclude for today. I hear people saying that “Standardization is something for the technical experts” but also “We need to bring standardization to the C-level”. It highlights the importance of standards, but falls short of understanding the real power, the specific benefits and the positive impacts standards can have. I have been working with standardization during my whole business life. I started as a technical delegate in the early days of GSM. I hold numerous senior leadership positions in my companies Siemens and Nokia as well as at ETSI and was actively involved in the following mobile standards generations UMTS, LTE and 5G. I had a decisive role in shaping ETSI as a world-class organization, with innovation-friendly policies and supportive practices. And I can look back with pride, both in terms of my personal career and in terms of the economic and societal benefits that standardization has enabled over the last three and a half decades.

I have shared insights into my personal career, unravel the fascinating evolution of mobile communication and how standardization has influenced economy and society.

Over the coming weeks, I plan to write more about some specific aspects, the interplay of patents and standards, the ETSI journey and the work with policy makers, as well as looking ahead, so please stay tuned.