On Friday, November 2, the Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA--www.tiaonline.org) issued a release rejecting a "blueprint" proposed by the Alliance for Telecommunications industry Solutions (ATIS--www.atis.org). Under the proposed blueprint, the standards-development work of both organizations would be integrated into the work of a single entity.
The ATIS proposal stems from the TIA's August 20th announcement that it plans to restructure its existing standards work into a legally separate and autonomous entity.
Martin McCue, chair of the ATIS board of directors, said, "A constructive alignment/integration of the various TIA and ATIS standards committees would provide an unprecedented opportunity for public benefits, allowing committee participants to focus this country's communications standards work and establish a single voice in the global communications standards arena."
Matthew J. Flanigan, TIA president, said that he agreed with McCue that an alignment could provide such opportunities. He further stated, "That is why TIA initiated discussions with ATIS as far back as 1998 to analyze and consider such a mutually beneficial agreement."
However, Flanigan characterized the ATIS proposal as a "takeover" of TIA standards work and the intellectual property in the TIA's database of standards. Such a takeover, "together with the added costs to TIA members to 'join' ATIS is not what TIA members will find acceptable," he said.
In a release, the TIA characterized the ATIS blueprint as "woefully lacking from the vision of the TIA board for a consolidation or 'merger of equals' and thus is inadequate and unacceptable to TIA."
Flanigan concluded, "TIA is open to further discussions for a rationalized telecom standards-development-organization structure that meets the requirements of both service providers and manufacturers."
The full text of the blueprint is available at ATIS's Web site.
