Standards set for M2M

ETSI (European Telecommunications Standards Institute) has published the first release of its machine to machine (M2M) service standards, providing a standardised platform to manage the complexity of multiple M2M services and technologies.

M2M communication services are already showing strong revenue growth with the number steadily increasing but the technology landscape is fragmented, which discourages investment.

Companies participating in ETSI’s Technical Committee for Machine to Machine communications (TC M2M) have now developed a set of standards which provides a complete horizontal service layer for communications.

Release 1 standards enable integration of different M2M technology choices into one managed platform. It is built on proved and mature standards from ETSI and other bodies such as the IETF, 3GPP, the Open Mobile Alliance and the Broadband Forum.

The business benefits are clear: reduced complexity, reduced deployment time for new services and, ultimately, reduced CAPEX and OPEX.

The standards specify architectural components including: devices, gateways with associated interfaces, applications and access technologies as well as the M2M Service Capabilities Layer.

They also offer security, traffic scheduling, device discovery and lifecycle management features.

The ETSI M2M Release 1 standards are published as a set of three specifications: 

• Requirements in ETSI TS 102 689
• Functional architecture in ETSI TS 102 690
• Interface descriptions in ETSI TS 102 921

The specifications are available for download from the ETSI website.