US Holding Its Own on Standards-Setting, but ITU Raises Biggest Concerns

China has a growing presence in telecom standards bodies like the 3rd Generation Partnership Project, but experts said during a USTelecom webinar Thursday that the U.S. still has significant influence. Experts agreed the election of American Doreen Bogdan-Martin as ITU secretary-general is important to the development of industry-led standards (see 2205110039). The President’s National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee (NSTAC) is scheduled to vote at a May 24 meeting on a draft letter to the president on standards.

Speakers at an FCBA event last month said keeping up with China on standards-setting for 5G and telecom in general is becoming more of a challenge, with the U.S. failing to make the same huge investments as China in standards work (see 2204130072).

“There has been a growing perception, by some, that the United States is falling behind relative to other players such as China,” said Paul Eisler, USTelecom senior director-cybersecurity. “Policymakers across agencies and on the Hill have been attentive to this topic,” he said.

“China is obviously growing their presence in standards bodies, that’s kind of an empirical fact” and has been especially active in telecom groups like 3GPP, said Chris Boyer, AT&T vice president-global security and technology policy. “They’re far from dominating the standards process,” he said. Chinese involvement isn’t a bad thing, he said. “The benefit of standards is that it opens markets,” he said: “It allows U.S. technology to promulgate around the rest of the world. That actually has been a policy for the U.S. government for a number of years.”

The biggest area of concern has been the ITU, Boyer said. That “should be no surprise to anyone because that is by its nature a government-driven process,” he said. Most standards have come out of an industry-driven consensus process, “with the exception of the ITU,” he said: “In industry-led development the best technology wins. … In a more political body there are different concerns that may come into play.” Boyer was a leader of the NPSTC working group that drafted the standards letter to the president.

“Standards open markets and create opportunities for U.S. industry around the world,” said Phil Wennblom, global director-standards policy at Intel. Standards are “broadly important” and “form the interoperability for global supply chains, global communication networks,” he said.

The U.S. has always done “pretty well” on influencing standards and has “a good track record,” Wennblom said. “We don’t talk about it a lot because that’s not helpful for being able to influence the next standard, to talk about how good you are,” he said. Industry-led organizations have had the most success, he said. “That’s because industry prefers to be directly involved in the decision making,” he said.

Wilkinson Barker’s Evelyn Remaley, former NTIA acting administrator, warned against “any manipulation of the global process that we’ve all worked to create -- that industry-led, open, transparent, consensus-based, peer-based process.” Industry needs to be able “to trust the standards that come out of the process,” she said.

The election of candidates like Bogdan-Martin at the ITU is “our best opportunity for reform,” Boyer said. That could include more cooperative relationships between the ITU-telecom (ITU-T) sector and other standards bodies, he said.

Looking at how ITU-T develops study groups, how governance works and how things get added to the study agenda would likely be a priority for Bogdan-Martin, Remaley said. “Looking at that and what can be done is really critical,” she said. Governments shouldn’t have “undue influence” on standards beyond what “the market-led process would traditionally permit,” she said.

USTelecom released a paper this week, in combination with ATIS, CTIA, the Information Technology Industry Council, NCTA and the Telecommunications Industry Association, stressing the importance of industry-led standards. The paper urges the U.S. government to “take both immediate and longer-term actions to strengthen U.S. leadership in standards, which would bolster U.S. competitiveness.”

“There has been a growing perception by some that the United States is either falling behind or being outflanked through the global standards and specification development process, particularly by China,” the paper said. Even at the ITU, “where membership is open to industry, we have repeatedly observed the specter of government, rather than market consensus or technical expertise, forming the basis of policy proposals.”

“Exempt information and communications technology (ICT)-related standards and specification development activities from the scope of the Export Administration Regulations in order to re-enable robust U.S. industry participation in critical standards and specification development organizations,” the paper advises. The U.S. government should “play a coordination and convening role to bring stakeholders together to help identify standards and specification setting organizations, initiatives, and activities that are critical to U.S. leadership in emerging technologies,” it said: “Provide targeted financial incentives to support participation in industry-driven global standards and specification development bodies.”