The 47th General Assembly (GA) of the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) was held on 28-29 March in Nice.
The high point of the meeting was the appointment of Walter Weigel to be the next ETSI director general, replacing Karl Heinz Rosenbrock. The German candidate thus received the most votes from the GA. The other candidates for this position, Adrian Scrase and Alan McLaughlin (both from the United Kingdom), respectively ranked second and third place in the vote count.
The following documents were presented and approved at the meeting:
- Minutes of the 46th ETSI General Assembly;
- List of candidatures for new ETSI members, calling attention to the fact that a Brazilian organisation has joined as an observer;
- Report from the Financial Committee, the Auditor?s Report and the Annual Report (corresponding to the year 2005) of ETSI. Regarding the financial deficit presented in these reports (the first in ETSI history), the GA was informed that the negative figure was largely due to delays in Commission payments for the various services that ETSI provides to that community institution;
- Document on the changes in management powers and responsibilities, which was only subject to one small change in the recommendation, in the last sentence of the paragraph, with introduction of the following phrase: ?Advise Director-General concerning decisions on the creation, progress and cessation of ISGs?.
The proposal to increase the contribution units to impose on the administrations and companies that are part of ETSI was also approved by majority (though with Portugal voting against).
The ETSI management report was presented at this GA by the respective president, Francisco da Silva, as well as the so-called progress report, by the director general, Karl Heinz Rosenbrock. The GA also took note of the presentation of the documents on the 2006 budget and on more recent information about its current status, as well as the guidelines for the 2007 budget. Regarding the question of defining the term ?open standard? and after heated debate, during which the need for that definition was questioned, the GA approved by majority the proposal that ETSI should define the term; the respective secretariat was charged with defining same and transmitting the consequent draft definition to the management, so that same can continue the process until the next General Assembly, where the obtained results will be presented.
The major projects currently headed by ETSI were also considered. They specifically involve the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) and activities related to the development of Next Generation Networks (NGN).
On the agenda point concerning the subject of International Relations and Co-operation with other agencies, the agreements ETSI is currently negotiating were presented, along with the account managers designated for that purpose. Also regarding this point, the following partners were presented: GSA (Global mobile Suppliers Association) and UMTS Forum.
The General Assembly unanimously approved the proposed changes to the ETSI Statutes regarding the overall ambit and ICT issues. Also, the Italian candidate Massimo Actis Dato (of Uninfo, Italy) was elected to represent small and medium sized enterprises in the ETSI management, over the French candidate, Frederic Onado (of SPiDCOM Technologies, France).
The next ETSI General Assembly will be held in Nice this coming 21-22 November.
