ETSI European Telecommunications Standards Institute

Background and Scope

The European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) was formed in 1988 as a direct result of changes to telecoms in the 1980s. As telecoms moved out of the shadow of postal services, away from being a national public utility and into private enterprise, Europe established competitive pan-European supply of equipment under the EU single market and competition at the network operator level. ETSI was formed to create standards in support of these changes. Unlike the existing CEPT (Conférence Européenne Des Postes Et Télécommunications) which is a club of the national operators, English was selected as the only working language and suppliers were deemed to have  equal status to the network operators.

While most of its work is now collaborative and global, ETSI is a formal standards body of the EU and some of its standards can carry the force of law in the EU.

One of ETSI’s most prominent roles is hosting 3GPP, providing all its administration and logistics support.

Organisation and Working Methods

Organisations are members of ETSI and membership is charged according to the size and nature of the organisation. Members can then participate freely in all ETSI activities, including 3GPP.

ETSI has several permanent working groups which work under the standard ETSI rules and participation is restricted to ETSI members. More recently, ETSI has formed several ‘industry specification groups’ (ISGs) which have bespoke constitutions allowing participation and contribution by non-ETSI members in the meeting. Notably, the standardisation of network functions virtualisation (NFV) started as an ETSI ISG. This model has also been extended to include the hosting of open-source software projects.

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The work of working groups or ISGs is organised into work items. All work items have a clear deliverable, the support of a minimum number of members who are willing to work on the work item, and a realistic timetable for delivery.

The deliverable of a WI will normally have an editor who is responsible for organising work on the deliverable and maintaining successive drafts of the document. The editor is not responsible for writing the documents, that is the responsibility of all involved.

Documents, both while in draft form and once published, can be subject to a ‘change request’ (CR) and documents are subject to version control.

Documentation

ETSI produces documentation at various levels. Most documents are either technical specifications (TS if it comes from a working group, or GS if from an ISG) or a technical report (TR if it comes from a working group or GR if from an ISG). In addition, ETSI produces more formal ETSI standards (ES) ETSI guides (EG) and European Standards (EN).

Accessing documentation

ETSI standards are now generally available on free download. While some documents are publicly available, access to working documents normally require an ETSI login which is available to all ETSI members and participants of a particular ISG.

Download ETSI ICT Standards for free