The European Union (EU) has one of the most advanced environmental legislations in the world. It is indeed a necessary step to reach the ambitious objective it has set itself: becoming a leader in the protection of the environment. The good news, both for Europe and the environment, is that sometimes, European standards or practices on environmental issues are adopted at the international level and recognised as globally valuable.

This is the case of recently approved EN IEC 63000:2018. CENELEC has adopted this IEC-made standard, dedicated to providing guidance on the technical documentation for the assessment of electrical and electronic products (EEE) with respect to the restriction of hazardous substances. But, in turn, EN IEC 63000 is extensively based on EN 50581:2012, a fully European harmonised standard  developed to implement the EU’s Directive 2011/65/EU on the “restriction of the use of certain hazardous substances in electrical and electronic equipment”, also known as RoHS Directive.

ETSI published new standard for NFV deployment templates that will provide the foundation for an open ecosystem. The ETSI Industry specification Group (ISG) on Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) ended 2018 on a bright note, with the publication of the first version of ETSI GS NFV-SOL 001,  the specification of NFV descriptors based on the Topology and Orchestration Specification for Cloud Applications (TOSCA).

This was a highly-anticipated document in the industry, considering the prominent role VNF deployment templates play in an NFV system. Together with ETSI GS NFV-SOL 004, the specification of the structure and format of a VNF package, this new specification provides the foundations of an open ecosystem.

ETSI Multi-access Edge Computing group (ETSI MEC ISG) has also announced the creation of the Deployment and Ecosystem Development working group (WG DECODE). This group will focus on accelerating the market adoption and implementation of systems using MEC-defined framework and services exposed using MEC-standardized Application Programming Interfaces (APIs. The specification  ETSI GS MEC 002  targets interoperability and deployments. This includes a focus on running applications at the mobile network edge and provides use cases and technical benefits of those deployments.

The ETSI GS MEC 003 addresses the implementation of MEC applications as software-only entities that run on top of a virtualization infrastructure near the network edge. This includes specifications for MEC-in-NFV reference architecture, which defined how MEC-compliant edge deployments can be part of an overall NFV cloud architecture. Additionally, this release package includes ETSI GR MEC 022,  a report on MEC support for vehicle to infrastructure (V2X) and vehicle to vehicle (V2V) use cases.

ETSI has released a new set of classroom teaching materials on ICT standardization. A comprehensive textbook, “Understanding ICT Standardization: Principles and Practice”, together with an extensive slide pack have been developed with the support of the European Commission and the EFTA Secretariat.

Standardization has become a key business process in the ICT industry. Most standards professionals have acquired their technical knowledge through education, training and life-long learning. But it is unlikely they received much formal education or training in standardization.  Generally, third-level students in science and engineering courses have limited exposure to the world of standards, beyond studying or working with specific technical specifications.

The new materials from ETSI will help remedy this situation. They follow a modular design to enable students to focus on the aspects which most concern them. Topics covered include:

• Standardization basics
• The standards ecosystem
• The production of standards
• Standardization and innovation
• Standardization and strategy
• A business perspective: Standardization and intellectual property rights (IPR)
• The economic benefits of standards