INDIA | JULY 2020| ISSUE 4 | ETSI releases White Paper on the role of standards for ICT to mitigate the impact of a pandemic

Message From SESEI

Greeting from SESEI!!!
Dear Readers,

This is the Fourth edition of the “SESEI Newsletter India”, comprising of news, latest updates and important developments in the field of technology and standards associated with sectors such as ICT, Smart Cities, Automotive, Electrical Equipment including Consumer Electronics etc. for the period of April to June 2020.

Starting, January of this year the clutches of Covid-19 are becoming stronger and the enormous social and economic consequences of the pandemic are becoming clearer. The policy makers are currently focused on restart and reconstruction of the economy and mapping out emergence out of the coronavirus pandemic with a series of commitments such as how tomorrow’s digital world should function for citizens across the continents. The need to strengthen country’s digital skills and education, growth of telecommunication infrastructure, availability of public wifi, push to new generation technologies, digitization of key services and industries both SME and MSME, financial inclusions, E-health services and above all a robust cybersecurity law and standards to support and safeguard the growing digital needs of the country should be a priority and focus as a key learnings emerging from the pandemic.

This newsletter is a testimony of the efforts and steps being taken by the European Commission and the standardization bodies to further bolster their ICT and digital infrastructure. The European Commission is adopting and implementing regulations which will simplify and accelerate 5G network installations, as a fully-fledged 5G rollout relies on denser and smarter wireless networks of small cells, or antennas. The Commission Implementing Regulation defines the physical and technical characteristics of those small cells, which are exempted from any individual town planning permit or other individual prior permits.

EU is also investing heavily in creating 5G ecosystem for Connected and automated mobility (CAM). The three new 5G cross-border projects (5G-Routes, 5G-Blueprint, 5GMED) will design, test, and validate use cases in the field of mobility and transport under different geographic conditions and associated weather constraints.

To better serve the new 5G applications, ETSI has recently launched a new group on Non-IP Networking (ISG NIN) to develop standards that define technologies to make more efficient use of capacity, have security by design, and provide lower latency for live media.

As more devices in the home connect to the internet, cybersecurity has become a growing concern. In this context, the standardization community is playing an important role. CEN and CENELEC’s JTC 13 ‘Cybersecurity and Data Protection’ released a series of European Standards (ENs) providing guidelines and criteria to assess the security level of IT systems, cryptographic modules and privacy. ETSI EN 303 645 standard for security of consumer internet of things (IoT) products was also released by the ETSI Technical Committee on Cybersecurity (TC CYBER). This EN is designed to prevent large-scale, prevalent attacks against smart devices that cybersecurity experts see every day.

IoT, Cyber Security, deployment of safe 5G networks were areas of key focus during the ETSI Security week held virtually from 8th to 19th June 2020. More than 4000 viewers from over 50 countries made use of the 14 webinars held during the security week.

European Commission has also accelerated its efforts to achieve global sustainable targets, by adopting and making Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) intrinsic fibre of all the national and European policies. CEN and CENELEC have been working in collaboration with the Commission and other stakeholders to develop and adopt standards in support of sustainability. The newly launched Green Deal by CEN CENELEC is committed to using standardization to facilitate the transformation of our society. The Green Deal also emphasizes that the digitalization of all sectors of the European economy will facilitate its decarbonization. A new Joint Group on Circular Economy (JG-CE) will also be launched to provide advice and coordinate CEN and CENELEC’s standardization activities related to the Circular Economy. Circular Economy and Resources Efficiency will play a pivotal role in the sustainable Development goals.

Digitalization is one of CEN and CENELEC priorities for the future, with the development and implementation of a Strategic Plan for Digital Transformation. Annual reports 2019 have been released by EFTA and CEN-CENELC, providing overview of the activities and key areas of function during the year. ETSI has also released its 2020-2021 work programme. We are also very pleased to share that CEN CENELEC celebrated 60 years of collaboration on European Standardisation. Their Joint efforts have helped in creating an effective platform for European Standardization.

In the end, I would like to conclude by stating that the global coronavirus pandemic has clearly demonstrated the need for the businesses, organisations, and people to become resilient and adaptable to changes. Standards and new technologies will play an essential role for safeguarding the environmental needs, business solutions and adaptability to innovative solutions. We encourage you all to utilize this time for internalization, value creation and adopt safe practices for self and the environment.

Warm regards,
Dinesh Chand Sharma
(Seconded European Standardization Expert in India)