ETSI ISG F5G Chair: Evolving F5G to the next level

[Shenzhen, China] Recently, Informa Tech, a well-known UK analysis and research institute, jointly held the “F5G Evolution Summit” in Shenzhen with the participation of several operators, ETSI, WBBA and Huawei. Dr. Luca Pesando, Chair of ETSI ISG F5G, ETSI board member and manager of standard at TIM, highlighted the progress made by ISG F5G during the first 2 years mandate, shared the release plan of ISG F5G for the next 2 years mandate of as well as the plans for the evolution of F5G to the next level. He also presented TIM’s vision for it’s fibre network evolution.

Established in the beginning of year 2020, ETSI ISG (industry specification group) F5G (the fifth generation of fixed network) has made a significant progress with solid results in its first mandate (2020 ~2021), namely the growing number of members, many important technical specifications, extensive liaisons and outreach activities. Up to date, ETSI ISG F5G has formally released 7 standard publications and 2 white papers, which pave the way to its key objectives of “fibre to everywhere and everything” and “enabling of twin digital and green transition”.

Now ISG F5G enters into its second mandate after the successful extension approved by ETSI in the end of 2021. ISG F5G Release 1, aggregating the standardization work developed during the group first mandate, was formally published, Release 2 is being developed with plans to be published in end of year 2022 and Release 3 is already being discussed. The challenges from new services, new scenarios and new enabling technologies are triggering and driving the evolution of F5G to the next level, ISG is developing a new whitepaper named “F5G Advanced and Beyond” to describe this and aiming to release in September 2022, so now it’s the right moment for all related players around this ecosystem to contribute to the definition of F5G evolution and its key attributes in the next level.

TIM is one of the leading worldwide telecom operators, both in mobile (5G) and fixed (fibre) area, and is focused on “specialized in services, connectivity enabled”. Open standard solutions that can speed up the rollout of  FTTH (and even FTTR) with lower end to end costs,  fostering TIM’s business success via this ISG F5G initiative at ETSI jointly.

In conclusion, Dr. Luca Pesando said: “ETSI ISG F5G is still young but growing. The technical specifications are with good original content and developing accordingly. Now it’s the right time to add new ‘growth directions’ for the F5G.“TIM is facing a big change to make the best of technology opportunities, and the exploitation of ISG F5G initiative will help to increase fibre connectivity,  and enhance edge services”, notes Dr. Luca Pesando to end up his speech.