Recommendations on standardisation processes

• Co-operation between SDOs in general

The co-operation between different international and national standardisation organisations should be improved and supported by the European Commission. The Commission should encourage and promote the dialogue between the SDOs. This would help to avoid overlapping and lacks in standardisation. One possibility to establish such a co-operation could be a forum under the umbrella of the planned European RFID network.

• Support co-operation between ISO and EPCglobal

Another important step would be to support the co-operation between ISO and EPCglobal. At present, ISO and EPCglobal are the most relevant standardisation organisations. On the one hand, ISO has a wider standardisation scope and worldwide acceptance, while EPCglobal as a user organisation has a strong enduser involvement and is ahead on software standards. Combining both could help to complement them and provide strong and trend-setting standards which could be used for all kinds of applications. A coordinated standardisation road map would help to avoid competing standards and to make the standardisation work more efficient.

• Support the European involvement

Another important act would be the support of European involvement in international standardisation activities. In several ISO groups, e.g. WG4 SG1 Europe is not represented very well. This makes it easier for organisations and companies from other parts of the world to be considered decisive for RFID developments and the definition of the basic infrastructure.

• Support SMEs

The support of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) in standardisation processes is a further action that should be taken. SME organisations are often not able to participate in international standardisation activities. Travelling costs to meetings should be reimbursed. As soon as business trips are not linked to high costs it will be more attractive for companies to send their delegates to important committees. On that account, the creation of standards nowadays is still mainly influenced by large organisations and companies.

• Direct participation of companies in CEN and CENELEC

An option for companies to participate in the work of European SDOs, CEN and CENELEC directly should be established. The structure of ETSI e.g. allows the effective development of standards by an active participation of companies.

• Establish a single European Radio Regulation Authority

Another recommendation is to initiate talks with member states to move forward to a single European Radio Regulation Authority under the European Commission. It would be helpful to bring relevant industry and users together to support the European Commission at this point. This would also help to harmonise the frequency bands on an international level. A possible solution could be the suggestion of commissioner Reding which is described in [18]. National regulatory bodies should be assisted in their work and if necessary forced to take some action. The national regulatory authorities should be integrated into the Board of Regulators of ETMA. In general the use of frequencies should be free of licence.