LONDON -- Europe's telecommunications standards body ETSI (Sophia Antipolis, France) is to establish a focus group to look at the approaches needed to standardize the fast growing Machine-to-Machine (M2M) sector.

The decision was taken at a meeting last week that attracted over 100 delegates from all sectors of this fast-growing market including telecommunications operators, network equipment vendors, M2M solution providers and the automotive and wireless sensor industries.

The delegates noted that the M2M communications market presents "astonishing opportunities and major challenges."

They stressed that of the 3 billion mobile phones being used, only 50 million are currently connected.

Such devices vary from highly mobile vehicles needing to communicate in real-time, to immobile meter-reading appliances which send small amounts of data sporadically. Current telecoms networks were not designed with these new types of "ÔUsers" in mind.

ETSI concurs that several standards bodies have a role to play in M2M standardization and that these bodies need to coordinate their efforts, thus the reason for setting up the focus group.

"M2M communications is a complex area in which standardization in particular can help to structure and enable interoperability between devices, gateways and services for point-to-point and networked applications. I foresee a lot of work to do and very much appreciate ETSI declaring this a strategic topic," commented Joachim Koss, head of applications and standards at Cinterion Wireless Modules GmbH, formerly Siemens AG's unit for M2M wireless modules.

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