Page 100 - Trends in Telecommunication Reform 2016

designed so they do not constrain innovation in together manufacturers, service providers, end-
still-young IoT markets. But partial or delayed users, and regional standards bodies from North
standardization can complicate innovation, leading America, Europe and East Asia . It has developed
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to industry coordination problems and fragmented a suite of standards for M2M and other IoT
technology options . applications, including a set of security solutions .
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In an effort to deal with these issues, ITU-T has Another IoT-specific group is the Industrial Internet
created a Global Standards Initiative on Internet Consortium, which includes some of the largest
of Things (IoT-GSI) to “promote. . .a unified companies developing IoT technologies, such as
approach in ITU-T for development of technical AT&T, Cisco Systems Inc., General Electric, IBM,
standards (Recommendations) enabling the and Intel. The consortium is developing use cases,
Internet of Things on a global scale,” and to “act reference architectures, and frameworks, and it
as an umbrella for IoT standards development aims to influence global standards processes . A
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worldwide.” IoT-GSI works with specific ITU-T IoT third example is the AllSeen Alliance, a consortium
groups (i.e., a joint coordination activity and the that is developing the open-source AllJoyn
focus group on a machine-to-machine service software and services framework. Members
layer), and the main ITU-T Study Groups (especially include consumer electronics companies such as
Study Groups 2, 3, 5, 9, 11, 13, 16 and 17) . Canon, Electrolux, LG, Panasonic and Sharp, as well
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as technology companies such as Microsoft and
Other international communication standards Qualcomm . And the mobile industry association
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bodies have ongoing IoT-related activities. The GSMA works with its members to drive M2M
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers standardisation.
(IEEE) considers IoT-related issues in a range of
its communication standards, particularly 802.11 There are also IoT application-specific standards
(Wi-Fi), 802.15 (Wireless Personal Area Networks), frameworks, such as the M/490 Smart Grid
802.16 (broadband wireless), 802.3 (Ethernet), reference architecture, which can be reused in
and 1901.2 (power line networks). IEEE also is other IoT domains. This was created following a
considering applications relating to the smart grid, specific mandate from the European Commission
energy, industrial, agricultural and mining sectors. to European standards organizations, principally
It has created a draft standard (P2314) on an ETSI, CEN and CENELEC. These bodies are able
architectural framework for IoT. to create standards that can be referenced in EU
regulations and directives, allowing policy-makers
The leading Internet communication standards to incentivize the creation and use of specific
body, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), technical standards . Another incentive method
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has considered IoT issues in the following working is for governments to support the development
groups: of standards and products through grant funding
and by prioritizing the use of such products
• 6Tish (IPv6 access and meshing over in government-funded programmes. Without
deterministic (scheduled) MAC), such incentives, large companies may find it
more attractive to create their own, proprietary
• IPv6 (Internet Protocol version 6), standards, which might act as market-entry
barriers to limit competitors .
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• 6LoWPAN (IPv6 over Low power WPAN),
Many IoT systems will require very limited human
• RPL (Routing Over Low power and Lossy interaction – for example, an on/off switch or a bus
networks), stop sign notifying passengers of the time until the
next bus arrival. Requiring a separate smart phone
• MPL (Multicast Protocol for Low power and app or other type of software to interact with
Lossy Networks), and such systems will be an unnecessary burden for
users. One suggestion for standardizing the user
• CoAP (Constrained Application Protocol) . interface to these systems is to have them locally
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broadcast a Uniform Resource Indicator (URI),
In addition, there are some IoT-specific which is currently most commonly used to identify
standardisation groups. The OneM2M group brings web pages. Other smart devices within range can

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