An integrated transport infrastructure acts as a huge boost for the development of the single market in Europe, reducing business costs and improving the quality of life of its citizens.
Road Transport Telematics (RTT) offers tools for better traffic management, Vehicle navigation and toll collection. However, RTT applications must be able to operate across the European road network, that is across more than one country.
CEN's TC 278, in cooperation with the other European Standardization Organizations is developing a series of European Standards for areas including automatic fee collection and access control, freight and fleet management systems, and automatic vehicle and equipment identification architecture.
An efficient European transport infrastructure is vital to the future of the EU, helping to develop the single market. EU institutions have since the late 1980s prioritized the development of a trans-European transport system, with the result that transport networks within the EU are now steadily integrating.
However, transport development brings with it some control and management problems. The European Commission estimates that inefficiencies in the current system have cost more than ECU 100 billion per annum. There are additional costs to society, including damage to the environment and to citizens' health. The number of traffic accidents increases with traffic congestion and signalling failures.
Better and safer integration of European transport networks is greatly assisted by the introduction and increased use of RTT systems.
These systems work on the principle of radio communication between individual vehicles and roadside stations. A transmission device on board the vehicle 'shakes hands' with the network provider by means of radio transmission.
Through dialogue with a smart card in the transmission device the network operator can determine the vehicle's identity and location. It can therefore decide whether the driver should pay a road toll or parking fee, whether the driver is in any difficulty, or, in the case of commercial lorry drivers, whether they have driven for too many hours and should be taking a mandator y break.
Road telematics applications give road operators better tools to monitor and control road traffic flows. The net effect is to reduce traffic congestion. RTT helps transport service providers and fleet managers by providing logistical and management support. In the ideal fully-integrated European transport system drivers would not need to stop to pay road tolls. The smart card on board their vehicle would have already been automatically billed. RTT also offers increased road traffic safety - an important consideration, given the large number of fatal traffic accidents each year in Europe.
At the same time, RTT can give policy makers an alternative to road-building, by allowing better use of existing infrastructure. And by reducing congestion, it also benefits the environment.
Services provided to vehicles by roadside operators include navigational aids and traffic information. Many more are sure to be developed, particularly if there is open access to all competing service providers.
ICT applications will also make it possible to drive from one side of Europe to the other without having to use a large and unwieldy map. An onboard computer (or navigation system) will choose the best route, adjusting for changing conditions along the way. So, if traffic congestion builds up on the motorways in the South of France, the on-board navigation system of a car being driven from Germany to Spain could be informed in advance and make appropriate corrections. This requires an integrated Europe-wide system.
European private and commercial transport users will not be well served if different RTT systems are developed separately in EU member states without due regard to interoperability. Telematics systems have already been implemented in some European states, thereby creating integration problems and requiring a renewed push towards harmonization.
Standardization offers the best path to ensuring that RTT works across borders. This is not something that the market is best placed to initiate, though only the market can follow it up with applications using the RTT platform created. Hence, EU Member States signed a Memorandum of Understanding in 1997 committing them to joint development of
The European Commission has also prioritized interconnectivity of products and services. This will have the following advantages:
The European Commission has encouraged several standardization initiatives in the field of road telematics and safety, including Dedicated Road Infrastructure for Vehicle Safety in Europe (DRIVE), the precursor to CEN Technical Committee 278 (Road Transport and Traffic Telematics).
The Commission mandated the European Standardization Organizations some years ago to develop and take the necessary steps for formal standardization. At present, the process is being reviewed and re-validated. The action has started with a survey to cover:
Eventually, the majority of administrative and commercial activities will have their on-line equivalent, with offices filled with paper a thing of the past. Individuals will also increasingly engage in electronic commerce - the on-line exchange of value (including money, goods and/or information).
Standardization initiatives are underway to ensure that incompatible networks and applications do not impede electronic commerce. Only in this way can a truly global market-place develop. A key set of standards relate to smart cards that can be used for a wide and expanding range of activities, including financial transactions, providing proof of personal identity, on-line access and so on. Standardizers are also producing open standards for electronic data interchange (EDI), known as EDIFACT.
The means by which we conduct our financial affairs and interact commercially would be unrecognizable to our forefathers, and would have seemed most unlikely even 20 years ago. Most people are accustomed to the facility of 24-hour cash withdrawals from bank automatic teller machines, and expect the option of paying for goods with credit cards. They expect to be able to do so when travelling abroad on business or holiday. Furthermore, an increasing number of people conduct their dealings with their banks exclusively on the telephone, which means that they save time by not actually having to visit the bank.
Much of our business is now conducted without recourse to paper communications. The cause - and the result - of these changes is electronic commerce.
Consumers scouring the Internet or television shopping channels, and who use payment cards to acquire goods or services that they have selected, are engaging in electronic commerce. So are viewers who watch films or listen to music programmes selected in interactive cable environments. Eventually, the majority of commercial activities will have their on-line equivalent.
Electronic commerce can take place between companies, between individuals and between public administrations - or between any combination of these groups.
Electronic commerce can increase organizational efficiency and competitiveness, through time and resource savings. By communicating with each other electronically all enterprises and public administrations are seeking to minimise the amount of paper flying from office to office and which can end up stored in bulky files. Electronic commerce is particularly applicable when repetitive document multi-tasking functions must be performed, for instance telecommunications companies' regular issue of bills and invoices.
Electronic commerce certainly counteracts the economic disadvantages of geographical remoteness. Employers and employees alike need not migrate to big cities if their office can be fully integrated with the international market. This is one reason why it is especially important for SMEs, allowing them to operate internationally without requiring points of presence in many cities or the need for expensive and time-consuming travel.
By removing the need physically to be present to 'do business', electronic commerce allows regions at the geographical margins of Europe to integrate with the centre and to prosper. For example, the Prodos North Aegean project in Greece stimulated employment by developing an integrated multimedia network connecting the islands via the Internet to the mainland and international sites to promote tourism and local products, and to enable on-line reservations, teleworking and teleconferencing.
But electronic commerce is not just about the exchange of money: it is also about the exchange of all financial information. For example, it may become possible for people to deliver their tax returns electronically. Similarly, more public administrations may encourage a direct exchange of views with citizens, which may improve service levels.
There is a danger that the new opportunities offered by electronic commerce will only be available for those who have a sufficient grasp of new technologies. It is desirable that society should not be split into those who benefit from such know-how and those who cannot. Public administrations like the European Commission are keen that electronic commerce should be open to all individuals and companies, acknowledging that this may require educational and promotional initiatives.
Another concern is that many SMEs that have not themselves adopted electronic
commerce may be forced to by their sole or main contractor, for
instance to invoice or exchange technical information on-line.
In such cases, SMEs would have to accept the standard used by their
major client, causing potential problems if they then began trading
with a company using an incompatible system.
The keys to setting up effective electronic commerce are that:
The electronic information age requires security and a legal framework
for a contract between two parties.
This is critical to the success of goods or services marketed in
an on-line environment, as an effective 'electronic market-place'
requires trust between seller and buyer:
Electronic commerce will only gain the sufficient level of consumer acceptance and trust if the customer is convinced that their commercial transaction, involving release to a 'faceless' service provider of some form of personal banking details, is safe from prying eyes. As information flows proliferate, data is at risk from unauthorized access and/or use, alteration or destruction. All information systems must therefore be made secure: if people do not trust that the new electronic applications used in electronic commerce are safe, they will not use them.
Digital signatures and cryptography are seen as essential tools for secure electronic commerce. Digital signatures should provide the same guarantees in electronic commerce that normal signatures on original paper documents already provide in business; encryption helps ensure that documents or messages carrying sensitive information, particularly credit card numbers, remain confidential. Some countries have already started setting a regulatory and standards regime for security in electronic commerce. Pan-European standards linked to international standards will broaden the market-place for electronic commerce and ensure interoperability.
Some states, such as France and the USA, have reservations about the use of cryptography on national security grounds. Nonetheless, cryptography remains vital to the development of electronic commerce, and the European Commission is pushing for an EU-wide regulatory solution that involves cryptographic products.
European-based standards bodies are actively considering what standards are needed to ensure secure electronic commerce. The European Commission issued a draft directive on electronic signatures, including digital signatures, in the spring of 1998. This directive will be supplemented by a coherent programme of standards-related activities. Under a draft mandate, ICTSB has been asked to prepare and co-ordinate this programme. Full account will be taken of global requirements.
Interoperability is important because:
When ICT platforms are open and interoperable, the customer can make real choices between competing products. For example, a small company has a greater chance of succeeding in business if it can use the same equipment to access electronic libraries, issue invoices by electronic mail and market its products on the Internet. Similarly, large companies will increase sales when the largest possible number of computer users can access their products, while those individuals who own computers will enjoy the widest possible choice of ser vices when they are not restricted by incompatible protocols.
Put another way, the value of an electronic payment card would be limited if it could only be used in one country.
.... and how to achieve it!
The ways in which interoperability is achieved do not matter as long as the end result is global electronic commerce. Standardization helps by seeking to ensure seamless interfacing. If not, creativity in developing solutions may be restrained.
The following examples illustrate the benefits of standards in developing user-friendly electronic commerce:
Electronic commerce in its purest sense is made much easier by the development of 'smartcards'. These constitute a fundamental building block for electronic commerce and are a key technological enabler for the ser vices of financial institutions.
Looking like conventional plastic credit cards but containing a microprocessor, smartcards have a far greater ability "to think for themselves" and can be given multiple tasks. France and Germany have led the way in deploying smartcard technology, though there is now an explosion of interest in its application globally.
Most smartcards still have to be inserted into a card reader, but some already use radio technology to send and receive information without making mechanical contact with a terminal.
Smartcards offer more secure forms of electronic payment for goods. Inserted into a personal computer at home, they can be used to pay for goods or ser vices offered on the Internet. Indeed, there is evidence that the introduction of smartcards in recent years in France was followed by a marked reduction in credit card fraud in that country.
This is because smartcards have encryption systems that overcome techniques developed by criminals to duplicate or forge cards, or to monitor the messages sent by the older family of credit cards.
Smartcards are not only relevant to banking. They are already used in health, telecommunications and transport applications. Smartcards are expected to become multi-functional, sparing us the need to carry a wallet full of plastic. Future cards will offer a wide range of multi-functional services, probably combining access to telecommunications and banking in addition to providing proof of identification and carrying emergency medical information.
Furthermore, executives may in the near future dispense with the need to carry a laptop computer on their business trips, instead carrying a smartcard that could be inserted into any fixed PC in an airport lounge, office or hotel room. This would then allow them secure access (over the Internet, for example) to their corporate Intranet and e-mail.
The value of any machine-readable card would be greatly diminished if it were only possible to use it with one type of card-reader. Standardization has allowed the ATM card issued by one bank to be used in another's, or the smartcard issued by a telephone operator to be inserted in a variety of mobile telephones.
European manufacturers and banks have worked in ISO since the 1980s to introduce standards into smartcard technologies. CEN Technical Committee 224 has drawn up several standards in this area and is working on more. The process was complicated by the fact that working groups were seeking to introduce standards for products that had not yet been fully defined. In addition, even the participants in standardization might demand flexibility, with one version of smartcard preferred in France and another in Germany, for example.
However, common platforms were needed to ensure inter-operability. In addition, the development of terminals that accept various types of card will also help to provide conditions for inter-operable operations.
Under the term Next Generation Networks (NGN), ETSI discusses the concepts in a changing service provision environment in information and communications industries. This is mainly the decoupling of services from networks and the description of open interfaces between them.
Under the NGN umbrella, standards are being developed to describe the capabilities to the creation, deployment and management of all kinds of services, This comprises services using all kinds of media (audio, visual, audiovisual), with all kinds of encoding schemes and data services, Conversational, Unicast, Multicast and Broadcast, Messaging, simple data transfer services, Real time and Non-Real time, delay sensitive and delay tolerant services.
Global networking requires interoperability between networks. Scenarios are being described to for internetworking including legacy networks.
The NGN compliant architecture allows also the provisioning of both existing and new services independently of the network and the access type used.
Both, NGN-aware terminals and non-NGN-aware will be supported.
Protocols such as SIP, H.323, MGCP or MEGACO are considered as NGN-based while Q.931 and GSM 04.08 are non-NGN legacy protocols.
Users and consumers are interested in end-to-end QoS. Traditionally, this was described for legacy services such as telephony.
The set of QoS-parameters will be completed with those necessary for multimedia services. QoS needs as well a mechanism to control QoS between domains and networks.
Service platforms are a key principle for NGN to separate the networks from the service provision. The open interfaces between both are conceptual interfaces called Application Programming Interfaces (API).
Open Service Access standards with APIs describe the mechanisms to support provision of services across multiple networks covering both service roaming and interconnectivity of services. User control of service customisation and profiles will be supported.
The emergence of various forms of combined fixed, mobile, IP, access, etc. networks creates increasing complexities and challenges related to the management of such networks. This also applies to the management of existing and new services across different network types.
Basic network management services and interfaces to suit NGN requirements will be described for fault, performance, customer administration, charging/accounting, traffic and routing management.
LI is a legal requirement to provide interfaces between the network and the law enforcement agencies. Traditionally, LI specifications had been developed for legacy networks with rather closed set of protocols.
NGN will bring a more complex environment of inter networking. As NGN will embrace many different protocols and many new services, and older services delivered in a new form, LI needs to be completed according to the new demand. This will include transparency, accountability, traceability; and uniqueness.
Users/Consumers trust and confidence in ICT is based on security. With the changes in the ICT environment with more network operators and more service providers involved, networks cannot be conceived as monolithic blocs with clear interfaces.
With this in mind, standardization needs to:
Although the NGN-initiative started in ETSI, the objectives can only be achieved in close co-operation with partner organizations. As the principles of NGN are commonly shared among numerous standards organizations and consortia and for a, co-ordination and collaboration is required.
The protocols supporting NGN-principles are usually ITU-T-specified protocols or specifications which come from the IETF.
The Open Service Access is being worked on in collaboration with PARLAY.
There are also European RTD projects in this field which provide testing platforms and involve the ETSI PLUGTESTS.
Recent natural catastrophes and terrorist attacks have led to new thoughts on telecommunications in emergency situations.
The concept of EMTEL addresses a broad spectrum of aspects related to the provisioning of telecommunications services in emergency situations.
Emergency situations range from a narrow perspective of an individual being in a state of personal emergency (with need to make an emergency call due to sudden illness, traffic accident, outbreak of fire in the home, etc.) to a very broad perspective of serious disruptions to the functioning of society (viz. disaster situations due to events or processes such as earthquakes, flood, landslides, cyclones, volcanic eruptions, etc.).
The concept also covers the telecommunications needs of the society's dedicated resources for ensuring public safety, including police forces, fire fighting units, ambulance services and other health and medical services, as well as civil defence services. Telecommunications needs for such services have until now been satisfied by dedicated telecommunications networks and equipment, often different for the different services, but it is with modern technology possible to increasingly integrate such services with the public telecommunications services.
Terrestrial and satellite radio/TV broadcasting and Internet services provide means for dissemination of information to the general public, in particular in hazardous and dis
aster situations.
The provisioning of emergency telecommunications services is particularly important, but also very difficult to establish and to maintain, in disaster situations leading to major destruction of the telecommunications networks. Networks and services may have to be restored or reinforced with temporary equipment with various degrees of mobility (e.g. network base stations brought in by helicopters, land or air based communications units, etc.).
Telecommunications means may also be increasingly used as parts of various community functions, such as health services (remote patient monitoring to reduce need for hospitalization) and supervision of prison inmates on leave.
Events
that seriously degrade public telecommunications services may also
cause situations that together with other events or processes that
potentially create threats to human safety.
These examples show the complexity of emergency telecommunications
and a need for sophisticated networks and equipment to cover some
of these situations.
Except for daily routine operations by police, fire fighting and ambulance services, emergency situations as seen from an individual person's point of view do not occur frequently. This, however, means that the handling of services and equipment is equally non-frequent and must be simple and intuitive. The person won't have time to, or is simply too stressed to able to, learn how to use equipment and services.
The increasing mobility of people, inside and outside their home territories and language areas, puts additional requirements on the chain of communications - from human to human, including the telecommunications part - and provides a challenge to the providers of services and the manufacturers of equipment. In this quest for reliable and effective emergency telecommunications services, the standards developing organizations have an important role to play, in close collaboration with the public authorities, public service organizations and the citizens.
Recent resolutions in bodies such as the ITU Telecommunication Standards Advisory Group (TSAG), the Global Telecommunications Standards Collaboration (GTSC), the Asia-Pacific Standardization Program (ASTAP) and various ETSI Technical Bodies (in relation to work on Next Generation Networks) and the results of the recent ETSI workshop highlight the need for a coordinated approach to emergency telecommunications.
The organization of emergency and public safety services may vary from country to country, depending on national regulation and related infrastructures. The citizens, of in particular the industrialized countries, are increasingly mobile. They travel for business, for holidays, etc. In order to provide an optimum level of safety to these citizens in emergency situations, the emergency telecommunications services need harmonization.
In order to cost-effectively utilize society's various public safety resources, the various resources need to be able to cooperate. Standardized interoperable telecommunications networks and services are essential for reaching these goals.
In order that public safety resources of different countries can be cooperatively utilized in an effective manner, not only at cross-border operations but also at joint operations in disaster situations, telecommunications networks and equipment must be able to interoperate.
The above triggered standardization activities, not only between those technical committees within an Standards Developing Organization (SDO) that address the various telecommunications networks and service solutions that support emergency telecommunications, but also collaboration between the various SDOs.
A lot of society interests (police, fire protection, medical and health services, user interest organizations, etc.) take part in this standardization work, in order to ensure that society and citizen interests in an optimal way can be met by the possibilities provided by legacy, current state-of-the-art and future technical implementations in public, dedicated and private networks and equipment.
The common emergency number 112 is obviously an early harmonised and successfully implemented service in emergency telecommunications.
Localization information is being worked on especially for mobile networks. In addition to the "who is calling" the network will provide information on "from where".
Although authorities push for specific services, exploitation may find wider applications e.g. for localization services. In such a case the data privacy law needs to be respected.
In Europe, TETRA and TETRAPOL are technologies to be used by emergency organizations. The next generation of emergency telecommunications is on its way.
MESA could be seen as the next generation of emergency telecommunications with Mobile Broadband Services. TETRA Digital Advanced Wireless Service has already been moved to MESA.
MESA is a partnership project between ETSI and TIA by which a new technology is being developed using a globally harmonized radio frequency spectrum.
The new technology will provide mechanisms for ad-hoc establishing of networks and self-healing cell services.