The NGMN-ITU joint public workshop “Open Source and Standards in 5G” addressed the interaction between standards and open source in a 5G context.
Attended by more than 100 technical as well as legal experts, the one-day event took place in San Diego, California, USA, and was kindly hosted by Qualcomm and jointly organised by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the NGMN Alliance.
In this unique workshop, key representatives of a wide range of industry alliances, standards bodies, open source communities and academia joined to exchange their views on technical and legal challenges relating to open source and on the cooperation between SDOs and the open source community. The discussions focused on topics related to 5G technologies – such as IPR challenges of 5G, the opportunities for collaboration en route to 2020, the related legal challenges – and also covered the various modes of engagement between standards and open source communities.
Main conclusions from the workshop are:
- Open source is needed in the context of 5G and open source components will complement the development of standards in 5G;
- Open source and standards are converging and both can benefit in 5G from each other e.g. as regards interoperability, virtualisation of network functionalities or software defined networking;
- Open source and standards are not two different worlds, they do not live in silos, and close cooperation creates opportunities for both.
Luigi Licciardi, board director of NGMN and chair of the NGMN IPR Forum concluded: “For the first time, the workshop has enabled us to jointly engage with internationally renowned experts and panelists, exchange views and experiences and identify possible solutions to key issues affecting the industry in 5G. We have now an agreed starting point to further develop our cooperation with the clear intent to benefit business and end-users in the context of 5G.”
Peter Meissner, CEO of NGMN, underlined the importance of open source in the NGMN 5G work-programme: “The NGMN Alliance will continue the discussion in the NGMN Board and will address the topic in the NGMN Industry Conference & Exhibition in Frankfurt in October 2016, see https://ice2016.ngmn.org .”
The workshop presentations are available on the following website:
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