Subject: RE: What is ETSI (was: ETSI vs. Magaziner whose interests?)

From: Roberto Gaetano <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 13 Feb 1998 18:17:47 -0000

Hi, Gordon.

I am obliged to answer the inaccurate and incorrect statements about
ETSI. In doing so, I am forced to explain what ETSI really is and does.
Do you see another way?
I am limiting my answer to the correction of the statements about the
Institute, snipping the rest. I hope you don't mind.

You wrote:
	....  ETSI is the telecom
> standards group for the Eurporean PTTs is it not?
> 
Nope.
The Institute (which is a not-for-profit Organization) has, as today,
457 Full Members,  43 Associate Members,  and  81 Observers. Of course,
the European PTTs are represented, but they are only a minority.
Among our Members and Observers we have corporations like:
- 3Com
- Canon
- Cisco Systems
- Compaq
- Digital
- Fujitsu
- Hitachi
- HP
- IBM
- Intel
- Lockheed Martin
- Lucent Technologies
- Microsoft
- Motorola
- NEC
- NorTel
- Octel
- Panasonic
- Rockwell
- Tektronix
- Texas Instruments
- Toshiba
- US West
- Xerox
I don't want to take too much bandwith, and more important, I don't want
to look like somebody making publicity for his company (even if we are
not a commercial company) on a list. Therefore may I ask you or anybody
else who wanted to verify more in depth the composition of our
membership or any other information on us to contact me. I will be glad
to forward the call to our InfoCentre or providing you with the URLs to
our Web pages that may be more significant for the subject under
discussion. 

>  .... The group that puts the
> telecom standards desired by the European PTTs globally before the ITU
> in
> Geneva.
> 
Nope again.
Our Telecommunication Standards are much broader in scope than what
desired by  European PTT.
On one hand, you may check yourself with the members listed above
whether they feel to work with us in the interest of the European PTTs
(please put me in copy of their answer).
On the other hand, among our most succesful standardization domains you
can find the GSM Digital Cellular phone, adopted not only in Europe and
Australia, but also in many countries in Africa and Asia, and beginning
coverage in America (mostly south of the Rio Bravo, but you'll never
know: future will tell). Also, may I suggest you to take particular
attention to TeTRa, Terrestrial Trunk Radio, not only because it has
coverage and applications well beyond the European borders, but mainly
because of its capability to use also a packet switching technology in
the lower layers.

As for the ITU, we have friendly relationships, but our Standards are
separated from their Recommandations (which is the product of their
work). 

>   ETSI is also one of the 88 (or is it 100?) CORE registrars or is
> it registries with $10,000 and $2000 a month tied up in the POC gTLD
> moves.
> 
A correct statement, for once.
CORE Members are, for the time being, 88. Easy to remember: as many as
the keys of a regular piano (counting black keys and white keys, we are
international and not racist).
We participated with $10,000 to the funding of CORE and of its Shared
Registry System, to the best of my knowledge the only Shared Registry
for gTLDs so far, and to the best of my knowledge the one that satisfies
most of the requirements of the US DoC Appendix 1 (which means that
criticism to the Green Paper doesn't originate from technical
difficulties in compliance).
As the Green Paper has put our program to a hold, and we were unable to
perform the business CORE was created for, we were forced to finance
CORE with $2,000 for 2 months. Should the situation get moving again, no
such further economical burden will be put on Registrars.

> ETSI has (or had?) its headquarters in Spohia Antipolis where INRIA
> and
> Christian Huitema did their path breaking work in connecting France
> and
> europe to the Internet.  yet i am told that for many years ETSI wasn't
> even
> aware of INRIA's existence and that as recently as 1991 ETSI was an
> adament
> oponent of the internet.
> 
I don't know your source of information, but if I were you, in the
future I would consider either verifying of the elements provided by
him/her, ore use alternate sources.
As a matter of fact, the statement that "ETSI wasn't even aware of
INRIA's existence" is incompatible with the fact that, in reality, INRIA
is an ETSI Member!  ;>))
By the way, W3C is also in the park, and we have excellent relationships
(you're welcome to check with them). They are not Members (yet).
About our opposition of the Internet, I cannot exclude that some of our
Members may have been opposed at a time or another (maybe one or two
still are - Microsoft, for instance?), but this of course did never
engage the Institute. I would love to see the document of 1991 where we
stated to oppose the Internet. Or is this still part of the "I've been
told that..."?.
Also, our membership includes TERENA (formerly the RARE Consortium), and
this name should be familiar to ISPs (at least in Europa, Middle East
and Africa).

> The IETF list readers might find it useful to have some context to
> judge
> who you are against the remarks you make.
> 
They still don't know who I am, I'm afraid.
But does it matter? They will judge anyway the remarks.
All the remarks, from both of us.

As a final note, may I say that we believe that in the future the
borders between Information Technology, "traditional"
Telecommunications, Internet, Broadcasting, will reduce and eventually
vanish. For this reason, the market will be global not only in the sense
of "world-wide", but also in the sense of the merge of today's separate
domains in a global Information and Telecommunication Technology. When
this will happen, the quarrels between supposed supporters and opponents
of "traditional" Telecom and Internet will look like Jurassic Park.

As a matter of fact, if you are looking for a Project where different
technologies, including Internet, are used, don't look further, we have
it: it is called Tiphon, and is the Standardization of the Voice over
Internet.

Best regards
Roberto

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 13 Feb 1998 10:43:55 -0800

>All the remarks, from both of us.

Indeed, you are right.  "The Internet Way", and especially The IETF Way, is
to judge the content, not the speaker.  Occassionally it is worth helping
new listeners to summarize a pattern from a given speaker, and occasionally
a heated debate carries one or another of us away into the realm of
personal commentary/attack, but that's actually pretty rare in normal
Internet discussions.  

As such, I'm still unclear what problems there were with the content of
your message.

d/
----------------------
Dave Crocker                                           +1 408 246 8253
Brandenburg Consulting                            fax: +1 408 249 6205
675 Spruce Dr., Sunnyvale, CA 94086  USA           www.brandenburg.com