New governance for ETSI's General Assembly and IPR committee

Sophia Antipolis, 29 November 2018

Diversity, experience and inclusiveness

The 72^nd ETSI’s General Assembly came to a close today with a newly elected governance and new partnerships bringing diversity, experience and inclusiveness, values that prove to be important to ETSI’s members and the organization as a whole.

New chair and vice chair

Dr. Neviana Nikoloski was elected as the new chair of ETSI’s General Assembly for a two years period. She is currently Manager of regulatory affairs and Intellectual Property rights at Phonak Communications, Switzerland. Phonak Communications is a member of the Sonova Group, the world’s leading hearing healthcare company. Within the Sonova Group, Phonak Communications is developing miniaturized wireless communication solutions and assistive technology, helping people with hearing loss to communicate effectively in challenging environments. Neviana has a long experience within ETSI where she has held several roles. As a current Board Member of ETSI and Head of the Swiss National Delegation, she has been actively participating in standards developments in the areas of spectrum management, electro-magnetic field exposure assessment, medical devices and safety. She came to ETSI more than 10 years ago to contribute to the development of harmonised standards enabling faster market access of innovative products, technologies and services. She is also multilingual, speaking Bulgarian, her mother tongue, English, French, German and Russian.

Mr. Dominique Wurges was elected as a new vice chair, he currently holds the position of Director of Institutional Relations, Standardization in Orange. Dominique has attended ETSI’s GA for about ten years and has participated in some specific GA groups, such as the governance ad hoc group (GAGS) and the ad-hoc group which addressed the premises accessibility issues. He is active in many issues addressed by Standards Development Organizations and fora, such as accessibility, Green ICTs, network security/cybersecurity and relations between carriers (roaming issues, economic and policy issues related to international telecommunications).

Mr. Vladimir Poulkov has been re-elected as a vice chair of the GA, representing users, for a two years mandate. He holds the position of Professor at the Faculty of Telecommunications in the Technical university of Sofia, Bulgaria. He is actively engaged with Small Business Standards, an organization representing small and medium enterprises (SMEs) interests in the standardization process at European and international levels and supports inclusiveness in ETSI. With the new challenges of 5G, IoT, M2M or smart cities, standardization for SMEs can increase their competitive advantage and international recognition.

IPR Committee: the automotive sector, a new entrant

Mr. Steve FARAJI was elected as the new chair of the ETSI IPR Special Committee for a two year mandate. As Senior Manager for Patents, Licensing and IPR Policy at AUDI, he brings a new industry sector into a leadership role in the ETSI IPR Special Committee. AUDI entered the telecommunications space several years ago, primarily as an integrator of complex products that incorporate standardized telecommunications technology, while itself being a major patent owner in the automotive area. In the advent of the development and standardization of 5G and the deployment of Internet of Things products, the ETSI IPR rules also need to reflect the additional interests of new stakeholders. Steve brings in his background in telecommunications technology, experience in standard essential patent related issues and his leadership and moderation skills.

New partnerships with diverse sectors

The General Assembly was the opportunity to approve new partnerships agreements (Memorandum of Understanding) with organizations from various sectors, showing how ETSI’s ecosystem has evolved over the last few years. Agreements were signed with Shift2Rail, a platform for the key stakeholders of the European rail system and the Augmented Reality for Enterprise Alliance (AREA), an organization in charge of achieving adoption of interoperable AR-assisted enterprise systems. MoUs were also signed with the Accredited Conformity Assessment Bodies’ Council (ACAB’s) which aims at harmonizing the application of the conformity assessment requirements derived from the eIDAS regulation, and the Single European Sky ATM Research (SESAR) Deployment Manager, responsible for the management level of the SESAR deployment governance and associated tasks.

TCCA and ETSI Renew Partnership

The first partnership between ETSI and the TETRA Association, now TCCA, was signed in 1997 and was renewed during this General Assembly. The development of the TETRA standard has been an ETSI success story, with TETRA now mature and continuing to receive global acceptance. The cooperation between the two bodies continues and ensures coordination in evolutions of the TETRA standard as well as in work on critical communications in general. ETSI and TCCA have the common objective of developing, maintaining and promoting standardized solutions for critical mobile communications, including but not limited to TETRA, LTE and future 5G standards.