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European standardisation, a key institution for the functioning of the EU single market, functions at the crossroads of private rule-making and public policy. Recently, it has been subjected to fierce scrutiny by the European Commission and the European Court of Justice. Expressed concerns relate to the legal value of standards and the legitimacy of institutions creating them but have broader implications for European competitiveness, highlighting the strategic role of standards. By far much of this critique has been directed towards the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), the EU’s crown jewel of technology standardisation. ETSI’s normative power manifests itself in policymaking, legislation and market processes, rendering it an interesting organisation to study as a proxy to understand the legitimacy and resilience of European standardisation. Against this backdrop, this introduction sets the theoretical and legal context for this Special Issue. Upon discussing the background and dynamic of European standardisation, it provides a theoretical framework for ‘crises' and ‘legitimacy’, tailoring it to the particular case of ETSI and the challenges it faces at the policy and judicial level. Lastly, it provides a critical reflection on the Research Articles in this Special Issue, linking them to the current discourses on legitimacy and resilience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the years, ETSI, the prime European standard-setter for ICT standards, has experienced significant critique about its legitimacy, including more recently by the European Commission in the 2022 Standardization Strategy, which focused on the alleged deficiencies of its global participation model. Despite potential missteps in certain instances, ETSI has overall addressed such critique with remarkable success. In this article, we argue that this occurred thanks to various strategies that ETSI used to sustain its organizational resilience over the years. In regard to its interaction with its de facto controller, the European Commission, we argue that ETSI had recourse to three key resilience strategies: one where ETSI took a hard stance resisting to the Commission's desires (contestation), one where ETSI intentionally succumbed to the Commission's desires or preferences (orchestration), and one where ETSI opted for a reconciliatory approach to achieve commonly set objectives serving the mutual interest (collaboration). Interestingly, such strategies were not only resilience-enhancing, but also legitimacy-conducive. This article contributes to two different strings of academic literature relating to organizational resilience, on the one hand, and institutional legitimacy, on the other, by combining them in a manner that, to the best of our knowledge, had not been done before in the relevant literature. In the discussion section, we draw observations that are pertinent to discussions and developments since the 2022 European Union’s Standardization Strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This commentary reflects on the contributions by Volpato and Eliantonio, Temple and De Vries, which focus on the important question of the legitimacy of ETSI’s governance. The authors discuss different concepts of legitimacy, confirming its multifaceted character. The commentary sheds light on their relevance to discussions about ETSI's responses and adaptations to the European Union’s demands and expectations set out in the European Union Standardization Strategy. This commentary contributes to this discussion by offering a dynamic account of legitimacy and illuminates how legitimacy demands and dynamics manifest in decision-making processes within ETSI. ETSI only to a certain degree has ceased the opportunity presented by the Standardization Strategy to increase its legitimacy by enhancing its responsiveness to societal stakeholders. Questions are raised for further research about ETSI’s autonomy, the consequences of current and ongoing decision-making for ETSI’s legitimacy, as perceived by the European Commission and other stakeholders, and ETSI’s relative influence and authority in the wider standardization field. It is argued that ETSI's upholding of European values, including respect for human rights, should be a measure of ETSI's legitimacy and rulemaking influence as a European standardization organization within Europe, and globally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This commentary reflects on the contributions by Egan, Delimatsis and Verghese that provide historical accounts of ETSI’s origin and its dynamic evolution and attempt to explain its resilience. In this commentary, we place focus on ETSI’s unique attributes and their dynamic evolution to arrive at a better understanding of its resilience during critical moments and over time. We identify three such key attributes, namely ETSI’s institutional set-up and openness, its standard-setting activities and flexibility and the ETSI IPR policy. The article illuminates their importance, also in ETSI’s interactions with the European Commission and how these traits originated, were activated and evolved during critical moments. Taken together, these contributions suggest that the governance reforms proposed by the EU risk undermining the attractiveness of open European ICT standardization, a key ingredient of ETSI’s very success in ICT matters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cybersecurity resilience as a concept and EU policy approach encompasses, in broad terms, the preparedness of organisations against and the ability to recover from cyber-attacks. Policy and law makers in the European Union have started endorsing strategies moving both towards reactive measures mitigating the consequences of cybersecurity incidents and proactive measures geared towards prevention. Recently, a political agreement was reached on a new horizontal Regulation addressing cyber resilience of products with digital elements. An essential aspect of the Cyber Resilience Act is technical standardisation to support its goals. How appropriate is however the European Standardisation system for such a role in EU cybersecurity law? The paper argues that for European standards to be conceptualised as a building block of cyber resilience in the European Union, their development process must be inclusive and open, and a prerequisite for that is that the ESOs jointly work towards the common goal of developing and adopting European standards in support of the EU cyber resilience policy and law. This collaborative approach is mandated both by the nature of cyber resilience and cybersecurity as regulated fields, but also the changing nature of standardisation aspiring to contribute to areas pertaining to societal interests and fundamental rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Standards are the foundation of global trade facilitating the compatibility and interoperability of goods and services through institutional coordination to reduce transaction costs, shape technological choices, and market access. Such private transnational rulemaking has faced increased competition in key technological sectors. In Europe, ETSI has been critical for the European telecommunications market in the aftermath of liberalization of national monopolies as Europe sought to enhance market power to attract European and non–European firms to develop key technological standards. With the standardization strategy in 2022, the European Union has requested the revision of internal governance and operating norms of ETSI to strengthen European economic interests and social values. This has generated concern in the United States over the increase in government–based membership at the expense of a more open model. As international leadership in standards continues to be challenged by China, the US and EU have highlighted the importance of values–based standards. This has generated efforts to promote cooperation with strategic partners. The reform of ETSI could be viewed as a defensive strategy at odds with its globally oriented model of standards development and may undermine its legitimacy as a leading open and inclusive standards body in the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of standards to complement legislation is a prevalent regulatory technique in the EU, including in the telecommunications, information technology and broadcasting sectors, where the ETSI (European Telecommunications Standard Institute) plays a key role. In light of the recent reform of ETSI’s governance model in terms of its inclusiveness, this paper examines the role of societal stakeholders in ETSI’s standard-setting process through the lens of throughput legitimacy. In particular, by relying on desk research and semi-structured interviews conducted in 2020 and 2023, we analyse specific membership and voting rules of ETSI in order to discuss in detail the possibilities of effective participation for the so-called ‘Annex III organisations’. The paper shows that ‘Annex III organisations' have had limited participative possibilities in ETSI’s standard-setting process, entailing both institutional throughput and constructive throughput legitimacy issues. Although not fully, the recent reform of ETSI’s decision-making appears to tackle them to a certain extent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The service management and orchestration (SMO) framework plays a major role in the management and orchestration (M&O) of applications, services, and components within the open radio access network (O-RAN) architecture, as defined by the O-RAN Alliance. It comprises the non-real-time RAN intelligence controller (Non-RT RIC) and possesses the capability to incorporate management systems and components from multiple standards development organizations (SDOs), notably the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) and the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI). This multi-SDO-based SMO framework aims to provide a rich set of M&O services in a coherent and unified manner. Leveraging management data analytics (MDA) to deliver M&O services can enhance SMO capabilities. This article proposes an intelligence-driven approach by integrating MDA into the 3GPP and ETSI management systems within the context of SMO. Furthermore, it introduces the artificial intelligence (AI)/machine learning (ML) Function into the Non-RT RIC, consolidating existing intelligent components and introducing novel ones to enhance the intelligence capabilities of the Non-RT RIC. The article further proposes an architectural solution that unifies and facilitates interoperability among the intelligent systems of the 3GPP, ETSI, and Non-RT RIC – collectively referred to as “three modules” – within SMO. It also presents the end-to-end lifecycle workflow of the AI/ML model across the three modules. Finally, the article outlines key research challenges related to integrating MDA within the SMO framework.

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The domain of SEPs is highly engrossed with multitude of issues, as it is generally understood. Most of the issues come from patent holders' anti-competitive behavior, which includes unilateral rejection to license, patent ambushes, patent holdups, strategic injunctive relief, royalty staking, and breach of F/RAND Commitments, both inside and outside of SSOs (national & international). One of the key tenets of standards is that they be universally recognized and applied once they have been approved. Suppliers view standards as a way to meet consumer needs while also offering a chance to pave the way for innovation through compatibility, complementarily and interoperability. Standards thus have an impact on both innovation and the dissemination of technology since they create a technological infrastructure with a significant public benefit component. The previous article provided the readers with a comprehensive introduction to SEPs and their implications in the modern intellectual property landscape. This issue of this yearlong series will take the baton further to dwell on the issues circumventing around this domain of SEPs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The modern world is increasingly getting interactive with holistic inter-connectedness; the same is made possible by virtue of standards which in turn sometimes are based on patented technologies. A laptop for instance must have to meet a humongous number of standards and hence requires a patented technology in doing so. But just like the builder doesn't manufacture bricks on its own, he rather purchases them, so is the case with technological building blocks for any product. These aforesaid patented technological building blocks are the ones that are often termed/categorized as 'Standard Essential Patents'. What motivated us as student of IP laws to usher this domain is the topical and contemporaneous nature along with increase in relevance of this technical domain of patent law. With the ever advancement of technology, this field is highly debated and is being worked upon in various sectors including academics! We being a part of academics and are engaged into the research of this topic would try to give a thorough discourse through a series of articles spanning across upcoming volumes of this journal. This third installment of yearlong series provides a fundamental overview of SEPs. It explains the concept of SEPs, their role in the patent system, and their importance in the innovation process. It also examines the various types of SEPs, the different licensing models, and the current challenges posed by SEPs. Finally, the article provides an overview of the current legal landscape surrounding SEPs. The article provides a comprehensive introduction to SEPs and their implications in the modern intellectual property landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article covers the review of the modern system of international standardization in the field of information technology (IT), and the fundamental role of standards in the purposeful development of IT. Standards are important in all areas of activity, but for the IT field, which should be considered as an established scientific and applied discipline, the standards’ system plays a special role - it performs the function of a scientific and methodological basis for the IT field, representing a world of models of different levels of abstraction, including models: conceptual, architectural, functional, data, behavioral, relationships, management processes for various activities, as well as a huge set of standardized methods and tools for processing data, information and knowledge. And this world of models serves as a conceptual, scientific and instrumental basis for the further development of the IT field. Meanwhile, many of these standardized models determine the fundamental laws of information matter. In this regard, it is extremely important for university students to study the principles of building and functioning of the international standardization system in the field of IT, to study the fundamental standards for the most important areas of IT, as well as to study the system standards of the International Organization for Standardization ISO. The article discusses the structure of the international standardization system, including: official international standardization organizations (ISO, IEC, IUT), regional standardization organizations (for example, CEN, CENELEC, ETSI); national standards organizations (ANSI, AFNOR, BSI, DIN, JISC, etc.), industry consortia and professional organizations (ISOC, IAB, IETF, IRTF, IEEE, OMG, ECMA, W3C, Open Group, WFMC, OCF, ONF, Foundation SFIA, etc.). It describes the standardization processes of a number of organizations, gives examples of standards developed by them.

In the context of current smart cities, Cooperative Intelligent Transportation Systems (C-ITS) represent one of the main use case scenarios that aim to improve peoples’ daily lives. Thus, during the last few years, numerous standards have been adopted to regulate such networks. Within a C-ITS, a large number of messages are exchanged continuously in order to ensure that the different applications operate efficiently. However, these networks can be the target of numerous attacks. The sybil attack is among the most dangerous ones. In a sybil attack, an attacker creates multiple identities and then disguises as several fake stations in order to interfere with the normal operations of the system or profit from provided services. We analyze recently proposed sybil detection approaches regarding their compliance with the current C-ITS standards as well as their evaluation methods. We provide several recommendations such as network and attack models as well as an urban and highway datasets that can be considered in future research in sybil attack detection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) has developed network function virtualization (NFV) management and orchestration (MANO) for operators to enable quick adaptation of deployment and to reduce the management costs of virtual network functions (VNFs). For scalable and flexible management across transport, cloud, and edge infrastructures, the NFV MANO has been extended into multidomain architectures with network-cloud/edge convergence. In this article, a novel hierarchical distributed overarching architecture of decoupled federation and orchestration frameworks for multidomain ETSI-compliant NFV MANOs is proposed. The proposed architecture can minimize overhead costs for the scalable exchange of abstracted vertical service information through hierarchical brokering and can enable flexible federation through distributed binding among multiple domains. The proposed architecture deploys end-to-end services in single and multiple domains for vertical industries, activates their service processes in a holistic way, and enables operational independence with administrative autonomy. This article serves as an important and necessary step toward the cloud-native design and implementation of federation and orchestration frameworks for multidomain NFV MANOs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As cities become smarter, the importance of vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) will be increasingly pronounced. To support latency- and time-sensitive applications, there have been attempts to utilize fog-cloud computing in VANETs. There are, however, a number of limitations in existing fog-cloud based VANET deployments, ranging from computation and communication bottlenecks to privacy leakage to costly certificate/ pseudonym management to key escrow, and so on. Therefore, in this paper we propose a privacy-preserving aggregation authentication scheme (PPAAS). The scheme is designed for deployment in a safety warning system for fog-cloud based VANETs. Specifically, the PPAAS scheme is realized using a novel efficient anonymous certificateless aggregation signcryption scheme (CASS) proposed in this paper, and allows a fog node to aggregate signcrypted traffic-related messages from surrounding vehicles into an aggregated ciphertext and unsigncrypt them in a batch. We then evaluate the security of PPAAS and demonstrate that it supports confidentiality, authentication, and (efficient) conditional privacy, and key escrow freeness. In particular, our scheme is the first in the literature to achieve efficient conditional privacy, which avoids the need for costly pseudonym management. We also demonstrate that the scheme is practical, based on our simulation results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Network function virtualization (NFV) is an emerging technology that is becoming increasingly important due to its many advantages. NFV transforms legacy hardware-based network infrastructure into software-based virtualized networks. This transformation increases the flexibility and scalability of networks, at the same time reducing the time for the creation of new networks. However, the attack surface of the network increases, which requires the definition of a clear map of where attacks may happen. ETSI standards precisely define many security aspects of this architecture, but these publications are very long and provide many details which are not of interest to software architects. We start by conducting threat analysis of some of the NFV use cases. The use cases serve as scenarios where the threats to the architecture can be enumerated. Representing threats as misuse cases that describe the modus operandi of attackers, we can find countermeasures to them in the form of security patterns, and we can build a security reference architecture (SRA). Until now, only imprecise models of NFV architectures existed; by making them more detailed and precise it is possible to handle not only security but also safety and reliability, although we do not explore those aspects. Because security is a global property that requires a holistic approach, we strongly believe that architectural models are fundamental to produce secure networks and allow us to build networks which are secure by design. The resulting SRA defines a roadmap to implement secure concrete architectures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Location awareness is essential for enabling contextual services and for improving network management in 5th generation (5G) and beyond 5G (B5G) networks. This article provides an overview of the expanding opportunities offered by location awareness in wireless networks, discusses soft information (Sll-based approaches for improved location awareness, and presents case studies in conformance with the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) standardization by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI). Results show that SI-based approaches can provide a new level of location awareness in 5G and B5G networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the author’s experience teaching in ETSI as an instance of a cross-cultural intellectual encounter. It develops an account of cross-cultural encounters as defined by two moments: first, a moment of cultural shock when the encounter rebounds on the self, leading one to question one’s assumptions about the world; and second, a moment of possibility where the self, after interrogating its own ways of thinking, can pivot to accommodate a detour from its past disciplinary and cultural habits. Here, the authors use the writings of the Argentinian feminist theorist María Lugones and the North American philosopher Frederick Elliston to clarify the nature of these moments.

My participation in the Emory Tibet Science Initiative (ETSI) has afforded me considerable means to enrich my teaching at the undergraduate level. Here, I discuss how I translated lessons learned from working with Tibetan Monks to teaching in a primarily undergraduate institution, including: 1) introducing each course with a challenge to the assumptions made as “Western scientists” 2) using the unique monastic pedagogy of debate to facilitate classroom scholarship, and 3) embracing compassion as a central tenet to engage and empower student learning, which has become the cornerstone of my teaching philosophy. In addition, I brought undergraduates with me to participate in ETSI, and the experience had a profound effect on their educational and career paths. These experiences with the Tibetan monks transformed my teaching and continue to inform how I approach undergraduate education.

The Emory-Tibet Science Initiative (ETSI) has embarked on a historic endeavor of introducing a systematic and sustainable science education program within the traditional Tibetan monastic institutions. His Holiness the Dalai Lama, who conceived and supports this initiative, calls it a hundred-year project. From the very beginning, translation from English to Tibetan has been an integral part of this project because of the need to prepare course materials as well as to facilitate on-site classes and lab activities in the Tibetan language. Our translation process involves not just conveying novel and foreign concepts across cultures but doing so with a scientific language peppered with technical terms that are not readily representable in the target language. In addition to the linguistic barriers, cultural and technical ones further complicate the process of communication. A case in point is the concept of life, or correlation versus causation, or the view that consciousness is an emergent property of the brain, where each construct has its corresponding but differing concept in Tibetan Buddhism. When engaging with such existing parallel yet divergent terms or concepts, the translators must strike a delicate balance and avoid forsaking the distinctive characteristics and connotations involved. In this article, the ETSI translation team shares its journey—highlighting the needs felt, challenges faced, and solutions sought. We discuss the translation principles guiding our work and the handling of such scientific features as graphs, acronyms, units, chemical names, and formulas. We hope our work will inspire other similar projects around the globe and encourage them to continue bridging barriers to cross-cultural dialogues, promoting cross-fertilization of knowledge for human flourishing.