CCSA and NetworldEurope Pool Expertise to Promote Global Standards

“Two heads are better than one,” says Rui Luis Aguiar on explaining why collaboration between NetworldEurope and China Communications Standards Association (CCSA) is becoming much closer.

Aguiar is Steering Board Chair at NetworldEurope, a European Technology Platform for communications networks and services. With over 1,000 members, the organization is responsible for position papers on technological, research‐oriented and societal issues.

Aguiar believes that cooperation between NetworldEurope and CCSA, which brings together experts from China and Europe – specifically to share knowledge and experiences of how technology can positively impact society – is not only helpful to both regions but also the rest of the world.

“The cooperation will become more important as we move towards a greener society,” adds Aguiar. “The challenges we are facing make it more and more urgent that methodologies and standards we use are commonly shared across the whole world. For continual development of our society, universality of strategies and technologies will be increasingly important.”

Wen Ku, Vice Chairman of the Board and Secretary-General at CCSA, sees just as much value in the collaboration as Aguiar. Since it was established in 2002, CCSA has overseen development of nearly 5,000 standards primarily aimed at the Chinese market. CCSA, however, is keen to expand its efforts on developing international standards through cooperation and greater openness.

Like Aguiar, Wen believes technology innovation that gains traction in one market should not face technical barriers in taking off in another. Both recall with some dismay when mobile roaming was impossible in some parts of the world due to incompatibility of networks and phones. “We should make the bridge between different countries, cultures and technologies,” says Wen. “Sharing experiences and cooperation are important in driving standards.”

As part of its more expansive cooperation with global standards organizations and industry alliances, CCSA officially joined NetworldEurope as a member in early 2020. It has also submitted comments on Europe’s Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda (SRIA) on telecommunications, which NetworldEurope helps develop.

“The [SRIA] objective is to act as almost a lamplight for the future directions of where technology in Europe should go in order to pursue policy, societal and ESG goals,” says Aguiar.

He clearly welcomes ‘outsider’ input. “We strongly support global and open cooperation,” adds Aguiar, pointedly noting that 15% of NetworldEurope’s members come from outside Europe.

Workshops on 5G2B…

Aguiar and Wen think Europe and China can learn a lot from each other by sharing experiences and technology with one another. Aguiar is particular impressed by CCSA’s “huge amount of work” on 5G for industry verticals (5G2B). “They have a wealth of experience,” he says. “The greatest value in working with CCSA is the exchange of experiences between China and Europe, and avoiding years of isolated work in Europe.”

CCSA and NetworldEurope have jointly held several 5G2B vertical industry workshops, covering smart manufacturing and 5G healthcare. “We’ve been striving to exchange experiences,” says Aguiar. “Not only in putting experts into contact with one another but designing and executing a series of workshops to highlight and identify specific problems common to China and Europe.”

A virtual e-health workshop held last October looked at three main challenges currently facing the global medical and health sector: ageing, chronic diseases, and the lack of medical resources. It also highlighted the importance of 5G in addressing these challenges.

The workshop had strong input from CCSA, not least because it is one the organizers of “Blooming Cup, a 5G application competition in which the third winner for the 2021 edition– the competition’s fourth year – were related to medical IoT. Healthcare and 5G is a key part of CCSA’s work, and its development of a distributed model – where 5G can be used for home monitoring – is being tested in some European hospitals.

Wen references one of the competition’s recent winners where the cost of pre-diagnosis screening is reduced, the medical equipment price is reduced by 70%, and the size is reduced by 60%. “This makes out-of-hospital diagnosis much easier,” says Wen.

…and Green Telecom

At Mobile World Congress, CCSA and NetworldEurope are hosting a Green Telecom workshop on March 2. It will provide a platform for experts from both organizations to exchange information and ideas on sustainability and communications.

There is lot of work to get through before there is industry strategic alignment, however. Aguiar says industry doesn’t yet know how to quantify the green impact of ICT technologies on other sectors outside telecoms, and that agreeing on what might be deemed a reasonable trade-off between faster and more intelligent networks with higher power consumption has still to be worked out.

Wen also highlights a lack of visibility on quantifiable data. “There’s not even a clear PCF [product carbon footprint) definition for a mobile base station,” he says, adding that 5G base stations may have three times higher power consumption compared with 4G. “Methods and criteria for assessing the green contribution of ICT technologies to vertical industries also need to be continuously enhanced,” says Wen.

In much the same way Aguiar lauded CCSA’s expertise in 5G2B, Wen acknowledged that Europe was a leader in greener technologies. “We would like to learn from and work together with our partners in Europe to make the whole world greener and more sustainable,” he says. “We believe ICT technologies and innovation solutions could contribute more and more in the future.”

— Ken Wieland, Contributing Editor, Light Reading

This content is sponsored by NetworldEurope & CCSA.