Paul Downey :: ETSI 2.0

Description

And so to ETSI *, the august telecommunication standards body in Sophia Antipolis. I was kindly invited to by BT's Keith Dickerson and ETSI's Margot Dor to present during a board meeting session entitled "Hell's Kitchen: IMS and Web 2.0 Compete or Complete?" — an attempt to provoke fruitful discussion ahead of defining strategy for topics which included The Web and open source. I was encouraged to adopt a rather provocative position, one in which I was clearly representing open source and The Web and not necessarily a formal position from my employer. Oh my!

For those innocent in the ways of the telco, I'd position ETSI as a place where large companies, operators, vendors and regulators coalesce, publishing large rock-solid specifications for communications. Mostly these are things which most of the planet uses every day: SMS being a prime example, a small part of the enormous GSM which when printed is a foot or so high and yet just works. Web developers can learn a lot from organisations whose outputs are so solidly interoperable and deemed trustworthy enough to be used as inputs to legislature. But I wasn't here to praise The Romans and their functional viaducts. I was here to warn them about the Web 2.0 Vandals amassing outside!

Recently a significant part of ETSI's focus has been on something called IMS . I'm willing to wager few ordinary IT folk have heard of IMS, but for many in the telco industry it's a big bet, one predicated on being able to exploit the strong relationship between a punter and their operator. IMS aims to build an IP based multimedia platform from which vendors and vested interests will be able to innovate. I'm no fan of IMS, a prejudice re-enforced by hearing use-cases which sound like water ...

Original URL

http://blog.whatfettle.com/2009/06/22/etsi-2-0/

http://blog.whatfettle.com/2009/06/22/etsi-2-0/