UK ETSI MEMBERS’ CONFERENCE

 

Collective Letter CL11_2884 - Invitation to the 58th ETSI General Assembly (GA#58) to be held on 29-30 November 2011 in the Hotel Martinez, Cannes, France, (http://docbox.etsi.org/C_Letter/CL2011/CL11_2884.pdf) has now been issued. The 58th ETSI General Assembly, which will include a Specially Convened Meeting (SCM), is due to start at 09h00 on Tuesday 29 November 2011 and continue until 16h00 on Wednesday 30 November 2011.

 

General information and Member registration can be found at: http://webapp.etsi.org/MeetingCalendar/MeetingDetails.asp?mid=29439

Alternatively documents for the General Assembly meeting and those for the SCM can be found at: http://docbox.etsi.org/GA/ga58/: and http://docbox.etsi.org/GA/ga58-scm/ respectively.

The UK ETSI Members’ Conference provides a forum for the UK members to prepare for their participation in ETSI General Assembly (GA) meetings where representation is by National delegation, the objective of the UK meeting is to review all available ETSI GA documents to enable the head of the UK delegation to the ETSI GA – currently Olly Wheaton – to prepare a ‘UK Members’ brief for use at the General Assembly.

 

The next UK ETSI Members’ conference, that is preparation for GA#58, is due Tuesday 22 November 2011 to commence at 1200 and is planned as a two part meeting – Luis Jorge Romero – the ETSI DG will join us for an initial discussion from 1200 and the UK preparatory meeting will commence at 1400 and finish hopefully by 1700 - the meeting location will be in central London, hosted by Wragge & Co. Ltd.

 

UK Members will receive an individual invitation via the UK ETSI Members’ e-mail list which will include the necessary registration information.

 

NOTE: Security restrictions will require that all members’ notify their participation in advance.

 

If you are a UK ETSI Member and wish to participate but do not receive an invitation via the UK ETSI Members’ e-mail list, then please advise at: mail@uketsi.org.uk

 

A key activity of ETSI GA#58 will be to appoint a new ETSI Board and Board chairman for the mandate period (November 2011 to November 2014), ETSI GA#57 amended the constitution of the Board to reflect the growth in ETSI membership; reserved seats for an SME and User representative are retained and the Board is increased to 28 members plus the 2 reserved seats if they are not included in the 28 elected members. Also a vacancy will now occur if one of the reserved seats falls vacant or if the total number of Board members drops below 25 (including the reserved seats).

GA#58 has received just 28 Board member applications, and the Assembly will be asked to endorse their applications by acclamation.

 

A first draft UK Members’ brief will be distributed prior to the preparatory meeting and the final version of the UK Members’ brief for GA#58 will be distributed by e-mail following the preparatory meeting.

 

 BACKGROUND

 

ETSI – the European Telecommunications Standards Institute is based in Sophia Antipolis, France and is responsible for preparing voluntary and harmonised standards for the complete range of telecommunications, including radio and broadcast, products. Day to day management is the responsibility of the Director General, who is appointed by the General Assembly.

 

The ETSI General Assembly normally meets twice per year with recent meetings having been held at the Hotel Martinez in Cannes, the Acropolis Centre in Nice has also been used as a meeting location. The General Assembly is the membership body that is responsible for determining overall ETSI policy; it appoints the ETSI Director General (DG), the ETSI Board members and the Board chairman via individual Member vote(s). The Assembly is also supported by a Finance Committee and ad hoc groups as required.

 

The current ETSI Director General is – Mr Luis Jorge Romero Saro – he was appointed by ETSI GA#57 at its meeting held in April 2011 – he took office from 01 July 2011

 

GENERAL INFORMATION

 ETSI produces globally applicable standards for Information & Communications Technologies including fixed, mobile, radio, broadcast, internet, aeronautical and other areas, and is recognised by the European Union as an official European Standards Organisation, together with CEN and CENELEC, enabling access to European markets.

ETSI’s best known product is probably still GSM, the ‘Global System for Mobile’ communication, though originally the term GSM was the abbreviation for ‘Groupe Spéciale Mobile’, from the standardisation activity’s origins within CEPT, ETSI’s predecessor.

ETSI is an independent, not-for-profit organization based in the technical park of Sophia Antipolis in the south of France; it brings together more than 700 member organisations drawn from 62 countries worldwide, and unites: Manufacturers, Network operators, National Administrations, Service providers, Research bodies, User groups and Consultancies.

ETSI strives to provide high quality and low time-to-market standardisation products and actively collaborates with relevant research bodies. Standards making in ETSI is built on direct input from ETSI members in open discussion groups seeking consensus, and is also active in complementary areas such as interoperability via event services related to standardisation including forum hosting.

ETSI’s portfolio of standards and related publications includes: Security, Satellite, Broadcast, Human Factors, Testing & Protocols, Intelligent transport, Power-line telecoms, eHealth, Smart Cards, Emergency communications, GRID & Clouds, Aeronautical, and many more.

 

ETSI is a founding member of the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) which was established in December 1998.  The collaboration agreement brings together telecommunications standards bodies – the Organizational Partners – ARIB, ATIS, CCSA, ETSI, TTA and TTC with Market Representation Partners - Individual Members (Member companies affiliated with one of the 3GPP Organizational Partners) plus Guest Members and Observers.

 

The original scope of 3GPP 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)).

 

ETSI Standards can be downloaded free of charge via the Publications Download Area, but note that only publicly available drafts and publications can be downloaded via this application

 

 

General Contact for UK ETSI members – mail@uketsi.org.uk