Global Standards Collaboration meets in France

The 18th meeting of the Global Standards Collaboration (GSC), held from 22-23 July, was hosted by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) in Sophia Antipolis, France. The meeting focused on three topics where standards play a major role in the development of technologies that bring benefits to consumers and businesses, one of which was critical communications.

The coverage of critical communications included subjects such as communications systems for public safety services, large-scale public warning systems, emergency calling systems and communications systems for disaster relief situations. The GSC seeks to reduce difficulties and improve critical communications services in these situations through global harmonisation of standards.

The meeting also discussed machine-to-machine communications and software-defined networking. It was determined that the success of machine-to-machine communications and the Internet of Things (IoT) will depend on the availability of globally accepted standards and associated economies of scale, while the rapidly progressing topics of network functions virtualisation (NFV) and software-defined networks (SDN) will provide greater flexibility to network operators, allowing them to provide new services faster and more efficiently.

The next GSC meeting is expected to be held in 2015.