Very Good Article On Standards>
Standard Demands
Telecom liberalization and deregulation produce new mechanisms for
creating standards
Peter Purton, Contributing Writer
Telecommunications standardization, once a relatively simple if lengthy affair, is becoming as
dynamic and fast-paced as the marketplace.
Yet progress has its drawbacks, and standards setting is no exception. Today's less formal
procedures create opportunities for unfair competition and intellectual property rights wars that
carriers and vendors must guard against.
In the old days, monopoly national carriers would tell their handful of national suppliers what they
wanted and the suppliers would duly deliver. n And to ensure compatibility between networks of
different countries, the International Telecommuication Union would at least lay down some ground
rules to make sure national networks would connect with each other. n That is now all history. The
past 20 years of telecom liberalization and deregulation have changed everything. Second only to
the massive global expansion of the number of telecommunications network operators and service
providers has been the explosion of would-be telecom standards-setting bodies. Few, however,
would call themselves such.
Instead, they prefer terms such as forum, committee or group. There are, for example, the ATM
Forum, the TeleManagement Forum, the Telecommunications Industry Forum, the Internetwork
Interoperability Test Coordination Committee, the Network Management Committee, the Industry
Numbering Committee, the Telephone Bill Work Group, the Data Integrity Group and the Line
Access Routing Group Users Group. There are also a variety of institutes, centers, alliances and
boards.
Whatever the name, the goal is the same-to create open platforms on which products may be
developed that will work for a variety of customers and, perhaps more important, will work with a
variety of other products that those customers and their associates use.
The driving force behind these moves are often groups of users, either those representing end users,
or telecommunications network operators and service providers wishing to impose some order on
their suppliers. Manufacturers-or at least groups of them-have also been involved to speed up new
product availability.
Lessons Learned
The speed of telecom standardization has been a contentious issue for some time. In the late
1980s, the European Commission quoted it as a major reason for setting up the European
Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI). It was also the main factor behind the recent
organization of the ITU standards-setting body, the ITU-T. Despite these reforms, though, more and
more informal groups are emerging."There are at least as many things happening in the various
markets as in formal standards bodies," says Jim Warner, marketing director of TeleManagement
Forum (Morristown, N.J.), an organization dedicated to facilitating service providers and network
operators' move to low-cost, highly automated business operations.
Warner identifies three basic types of telecommunications standards organizations in the new
environment: the very formal chartered organization, such as the ITU-T or the Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF), the official standards-setting body of the Internet; the regional coordination
bodies, such as ETSI or the United States' Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions
(ATIS); and the single-issue forums, such as the TeleManagement Forum or ATM Forum. The latter
are very much in the ascendancy, he says."I think we are now seeing the telecom people taking a
leaf out of the computing industry's book," says Warner. "Processes today are much more market
focused and faster. You start with products and drive towards documented standards, rather than
starting with a stack of paper."
In the past, forum members would spend years seeking some common ground. Only when sufficient
compromise and consensus were reached could anyone start making anything. Conversely, in the
world of computing, they would generally end up endorsing or blessing the de facto standard.
Competition Advantage
The reason for the reversal of priorities is not so difficult to identify. In telecommunications,
conformance has been a priority because all forms of telecommunications equipment, simply by
definition, must be able to communicate with each other. As equipment has become more
sophisticated, more and more detailed specifications have become necessary. With the absence of
competition at the network or service level, the tendency may have been to take things a little more
slowly but get them right.
In the computing industry, on the other hand, fierce competition has meant that speed is of the
essence. Time to market rather than conformity dictates the pace. Computing products have tended
to come first, then the standards. Until networking, that is. Now, even in the world of computing,
networking in general and the Internet in particular are forcing computer makers to think about
compatibility. Users, also, will no longer tolerate being locked into a vendor's grip.
The digital industries are converging, says Jorma Ollila, chairman and chief executive officer of
Nokia Telecommunications (Espoo, Finland). The winners of the future, he says, will be those who
manage to combine the fast aspects of the computing industry with the solid aspects of the telecom
industry.
Nokia, for example, has been key in setting up at least three informal standardization initiatives:
Bluetooth, a wireless interconnection specification; Symbian, an operating system and user
interface for wireless terminals; and the WAP [Wireless Application Protocol] Forum, which is
specifying a markup language and protocol for the mobile Internet.
Nokia has not been alone. L.M. Ericsson AB (Stockholm) and Motorola Inc. have also taken a lead
in promoting the above industry standards, and others.
Yet taking an informal approach to telecom standardization has its drawbacks. Instead of propelling
the industry forward, standards rivalry can lead to billions being invested in what turn out to be
dead-end technologies. And even where there is broad agreement on industry standards, intellectual
property rights (IPRs) can become a thorny issue.
Few standards can be promoted based on only license-free technologies. Almost every standard will
involve a large number of IPRs. As technologies get more complex, the number of IPRs and quite
possibly rights holders are increasing. "If you look at the third-generation (3G) mobile phone
standards process, the whole thing was held up by the dispute between Qualcomm and Ericsson
over IPRs. Nobody could progress anything until it was resolved," says Nicky Scott, an analyst at
Ovum Ltd. (London). "If you are the holder of a key IPR, you are in a very strong position."
Further, IPRs are costly to produce. Nokia, for example, classifies half its worldwide 40,000-member
workforce as working in research and development. In fact, increasingly a company's value is judged
by the intellectual property rights it holds.
And how strategic those rights are. So it is not surprising that companies are careful about how
they allow their IPRs to be used, and what they want in exchange."People are very touchy about
their IPRs," Scott says. "Everyone wants to work together and develop common platforms to help
take the industry forward. But at the same time, deep down inside, they want to keep their little bit
for themselves. It is important that we get the [intellectual property rights] issue sorted out. But
exactly how we do it, I don't know."
A similar view is held by Keith Clarke, director of technology external affairs at BT. “If you are not
very careful you can give the organization holding an IPR an unfair advantage," he says.
Even when an informal standards initiative has broad industry backing and the license-fee free use of
the property rights is available to outsiders, it can still turn out to be anti-competitive. "The players in
the consortia may have a head start," says Clarke.
An Enabling Alternative
The problem may be that the impact of standards and the standards-making process are not
sufficiently understood, he says. "Few doubt that it is a vital part of the wealth creation process in
the information society," says Clarke. "But exactly how it plays that role, and the precise impact of
standards, is not clear."
Randy Bloomfield is director of the International Center for Standards Research (ICSR, Denver), one
of the few organizations in the world designed to investigate the standardization process."The
standards arena has become very complex and very important," Bloomfield says. "Standards affect
national and international economies--literally billions of dollars of world trade. They have become a
key force in public policy setting, product development and product life cycles. Yet we still do not
really understand their importance."
The days are gone when standards were just about technical details, says Bloomfield. "It is no
longer acceptable just to understand their technological aspects. We do not have reasonably good
ways of measuring whether a standard is good or not. There is no standard to define standards. We
have to rely on anecdotal information when assessing standards. We need a more scientific
approach. We still need considerably more research," he says.
But these are early days in the standards process and the fruits of any research will take a long
time to feed through. In the meantime, the awkward coexistence of parallel standards processes will
continue.
Flexible Approach
Emerging standards are being driven by innovation rather than by any formal standards activity,
says Chris Thomas, an independent telecom consultant based in Chorleywood, U.K. "Things are
moving fast. There is no time for ETSI or the ITU or anybody to do anything-by the time they could
do anything the whole world has moved on by three years."
The key to the future of standardization, says Thomas, may be not to define bulky and precise
specifications but to define enablers and let the industry take it from there. "That's the way it seems
to work with the Internet community. TCP-IP is an enabling technology. What people design to run
over it may be taken up or may just fade away," he says.
Mike Short, director of international affairs and strategy at mobile phone network operator BT Cellnet
Ltd. (London), says a case can still be made for the more formal standards bodies. "The traditional
model may need to be changed in our fast-moving Internet era, but it still has an important role to
play."
HOME | BUSINESS/POLICY | INFRASTRUCTURE | INTERNET | WIRELESS
All content created and maintained by CMP Media Inc. or its agents.
Copyright 1999. All rights reserved. |
