The European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) is an independent, not-for-profit, standardization organization in the telecommunications industry (equipment makers and network operators) in Europe, with worldwide projection. ETSI produces globally-applicable standards for Information and Communications Technologies (ICT), including fixed, mobile, radio, converged, broadcast and internet technologies.
ETSI was created by CEPT in 1988 and is officially recognized by the European Commission and the EFTA secretariat. Based in Sophia Antipolis (France), ETSI is officially responsible for standardization of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) within Europe.
ETSI publishes between 2,000 and 2,500 standards every year. Since its establishment in 1988, it produced over 30,000. These include the standards that enable key global technologies such as GSM™ cell phone system, 3G, 4G, DECT™, TETRA professional mobile radio system, and Short Range Device requirements including LPD radio, smart cards and many more standards success stories.
Significant ETSI technical committees and Industry Specification Groups (ISGs) include SmartM2M (for machine-to-machine communications), Intelligent Transport Systems, Network Functions Virtualisation, Cyber Security, Electronic Signatures and Infrastructures etc. ETSI inspired the creation of, and is a partner in, 3GPP and oneM2M. All technical committees, working and industry specification groups are accessible via the ETSI Portal
ETSI technology clusters provide a simple, easy to grasp overview of ETSI’s activities in ICT standardization. Each technology cluster represents a major component of a global ICT architecture and covers the work of a number of ETSI technical committees and working groups that share a common technological scope and vision. The work of a single Technical Committee may be represented in several clusters. Clusters facilitate access to ETSI’s diverse work enabling you to easily identify your area of interest based on business relevance or application domain rather than purely on specific technical work areas.
In 2013, ETSI’s budget exceeded €23 million, with contributions coming from members, commercial activities like sale of documents, plug-tests and fora hosting (i.e. the hosting of forums), contract work and partner funding.
ETSI is a founding partner organization of the Global Standards Collaboration initiative.
