By Sebastiano Toffaletti, SBS representative in the ETSI Board. 

On 4 and 5 February 2015, the recently elected new Board of ETSI gathered in Sophiantipolis (FR) for its first meeting in 2015. Telecom operators and well as manufacturers, administrations and SMEs are represented in the ETSI Board. SBS occupies a seat reserved to User representatives.

The ETSI Board was an opportunity to review many of the technical areas covered by ETSI in view of highlighting issues and opportunities for the future. Promising developments are happening in the area of standards for the Internet of Things (IoT), where groups such as M2M and ERM are progressing their work. Also, the European Commission requested the ETSI Board for a IoT mapping exercise. The Commission stressed that IoT is an important element of the Digital Single Market, ie one of the strategic goals of President Junker. Standards are essential to create an open ecosystem around IoT, where not only large players but also SMEs can succeed.

Within the Board of ETSI, SBS is promoting the strategic discussion on the positioning of ETSI in the European and international standardization landscape. In view of the ongoing evaluation of the European standardisation system, launched in 2014 by the European Commission in order to assess the efficiency of the process and its compatibility with the new legal framework introduced by the Standardisation Regulation No 1025/2012, SBS is keen on ensuring that SMEs will full access to standardization in ETSI.

Another topic in which SBS is highly contributing is the ETSI positioning vis-a-vis H2020, where ETSI aims at providing opportunities to the research community and innovative SMEs for standardizing their solutions.