The critical role of the industry-led standards model

At the global level, standards are increasingly becoming part of the political debate over national competitiveness and leadership in advanced technologies. ATIS has been at the forefront of discussions with Administration and Congressional officials on this topic. Our role is to educate decision-makers on how standards development processes work to promote innovative solutions and the importance of the industry-led standards model to the country’s national and economic security.

For instance, ATIS has worked with Members of Congress and key agency officials on ways to facilitate greater industry participation in international standards efforts. This includes proposals to offset the cost of participating in standards work, facilitating the ability for standards meetings to be held in the U.S., and investing in growing the domestic standards talent base. ATIS will continue to engage on this issue of critical importance to the industry.

Contact Vice President of Technology Policy and Government Relations Glenn Reynolds for more information on this work.

Launching Research for 6G Now

ATIS’ Next G Alliance announces launch of its Research Council and research priorities to advance North American 6G leadership.

The Next G Alliance (NGA) Research Council launched this summer by publishing its 6G Research Priorities, a major step in aligning the future vision for North American 6G with the research to drive wireless leadership over the next decade. These focus areas are derived from collaboration among NGA working groups, involving more than 800 experts from the 6G wireless ecosystem.

The Research Council brings together leading industry and academic experts from the NGA to collaborate on development of a comprehensive North American 6G research strategy. It will leverage key NGA findings and lay the groundwork for cooperative efforts among government, industry and academia. Developing an action plan to advance NGA research goals, working with the U.S. and Canadian governments as well as private-sector 6G research communities is the Council’s next step.

“Audacious Goals” to Create the 6G Future

Accomplishments furthering foundational goals in North America's 6G vision.

Advancing two of the “Six Audacious Goals” set forth in its Roadmap to 6G, the NGA has recently released two reports. They address the top priorities for North America’s contribution to future 6G-related global standards, deployments, products, operations and services.

• 6G Distributed Cloud and Communications System overviews the distributed cloud and communications system from the perspectives of design goals, driving forces, challenges, research directions and the path to realization. The intent is to spark research and design discussions to realize the NGA’s audacious goal in this area.

• Trust, Security and Resilience for 6G Systems presents five research directions to aid in establishing trust, security and resilience for 6G systems. They are: Security Assurance and Defense, Confidential Computing, Secure Identities and Protocols, Service Availability and Post-Quantum Cryptography.

Reports advancing Audacious Goals in the areas of cost-efficient solutions and digital world experience are expected by early 2023. Access the 6G Library for all Next G Alliance publications.

The Path to Sustainable 6G

Minimizing the environmental impact of future generations of wireless technology.

After publishing Green G: The Path Toward Sustainable 6G in early 2022, two new Green G reports are slated for release early next year. The first delivers insight into the scope of KPIs required to measure the sustainability metrics for future 6G networks. The goal is to provide an overview of available sustainability KPIs currently used for the ICT industry and applicability to the 6G ecosystem. Following this initial report, the Green G Group will delve deeper into specific sustainability metrics for end communications devices, the radio access network, the core network and cloud & edge compute infrastructures.

Global 6G Collaboration

Next G Alliance and Europe’s 6G Smart Networks and Services Industry Association announce memorandum of understanding.

The Next G Alliance/6G Smart Networks and Services Industry Association (6G-IA) MoU was recently signed to exchange information regarding the two organizations' work programs in areas of mutual interest in the field of 6G communication systems and networks. 6G-IA is the voice of European industry and research for next generation networks and services. Similar strategic agreements have been signed with Korea's 5G Forum and Japan's Beyond 5G Promotion Consortium.

Quantum

Helping the industry better understand the opportunities and threats of quantum computing.

Quantum computing leverages the quantum properties of entanglement and superposition to deliver a huge leap forward in computation to solve problems too complex for classical computers. However, there are concerns that quantum’s computational power will eventually compromise current encryption algorithms widely used by network operators. A new white paper created by Walter Krawec, Assistant Professor of Mathematics at University of Connecticut, and Bill Trost of AT&T, lead member of technical staff on ATIS' Quantum-Safe Communication and Information Initiative addresses this issue.

Metaverse

Identity and privacy within the metaverse.

The metaverse is harnessing a range of next-generation technologies to engage with people and businesses in entirely new ways. A Gartner, Inc. analysis states that by 2026, “25% of people will spend at least one hour a day in the metaverse for work, shopping, education, social media and/or entertainment.” These users need the ability to maintain a consistent and secure digital identity as they move both into and between metaverse worlds.

Digital identities will determine where, how, and to whom people appear in the metaverse. In these immersive, embodied spaces, avatars will add a new layer of representation and self-expression to our understanding of digital identity. As the industry works together with others to build the future metaverse, it will be critical to define and understand people’s expectations of representation, identity and expression across both 2D and 3D immersive surfaces. In addition, the metaverse will process vast amounts of critical data. Consequently, industry must prioritize security, privacy and transparency of data use. These issues are being explored in ATIS' Identity and Privacy Initiative.

IoT Categorization



An industry-first database progressing ICT industry IoT goals.

After assessing a wide range of IoT devices and applications to identify areas of commonality in terms of network resource and performance requirements, ATIS’ IoT Categorization (IoT Cat) initiative has standardized a new network slice, High-Performance Machine-Type Communications (HMTC). Through its work, the initiative learned that other apps could benefit from this new slice, including those in high-growth areas such as smart agriculture.

Beyond defining network slices, this work is creating a database of KPIs for applications — the industry’s first resource of this type. The Next G Alliance Applications Working Group will leverage the IoT Cat database to examine the existing applications in the database with a 6G lens to further identify Next G application performance requirements.

3GPP Release 17 – Building Blocks for UAV Applications

How mobile networks supporting 3GPP Release 17 specifications can prepare for an increasingly drone-reliant future – and the new opportunities inherent in it.

An ATIS report released this summer describes how mobile networks supporting the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) Release 17 specifications can enable uncrewed aerial vehicle (UAV) applications. It discusses how 3GPP’s work fits with other specifications to address UAV needs and shows how the 3GPP system can be used to enhance the opportunities to safely use UAVs for commercial and leisure applications.

5G Secure Profile

Join ATIS' 5G Secure Profile Working Group.

Enterprises and government agencies alike are eager to adopt transformative 5G technologies. To advance these efforts, creating enhanced security use cases is critical. But gaps exist between organizations’ mandatory security policies and the baseline security features implemented in commercial 5G solutions and service offerings. Early 5G adopters can remedy this situation with a custom 5G network deployment tailored to address unique organizational or mission security requirements. A new ATIS/MITRE Corporation partnership brings togetherindustry and government leaders in the 5G Secure Profile Working Group to help develop a standardized set of above-baseline security measures and configurations. To learn more or to join the initiative, contact Katie Bagwill of ATIS.

Content Classification

Forefront industry work mapping QoE to network availability.

Changes in traffic patterns and new use cases such as immersive extended reality (XR), call for new ways to look at how quality of experience maps to network availability. This requires the ability to establish a content classification framework where content providers can convey simple encoding of the content flow types to network providers for network traffic optimization purposes. This classification must work in a non-discriminatory and non-priority-centric way.

ATIS is engaging key stakeholders, articulating the use cases and defining high-level requirements to evaluate current technical specifications, provide implementation recommendations and identify potential gaps in this area. This work will explore ways to enhance the bidirectional application-network meta-data exchange in a privacy-focused way to proactively address congestion and improve quality of experience. This work is expected to begin in late Q4 2022.

ATIS’ Secure Telephone Identity Governance Authority

Service provider participation in SHAKEN ecosystem grows.

The importance of the STIR/SHAKEN call authentication solution in helping to mitigate illegal robocalling is becoming more apparent as new providers implement the protocol. A year that began with just over 400 service providers registered has seen that figure grow to more than 750. As providers increasingly use STIR/SHAKEN to authenticate caller ID, scammers are having a harder time using one of their main tools, illegal caller ID spoofing, to trick consumers. Evidence suggests that scammers have begun to resort to new methods of communications, such as texting, showing that STIR/SHAKEN is having an impact.

Expanding SHAKEN’s North American success globally.

In July, the Secure Telephone Identity Governance Authority set its first ever cross-border agreement into action. As STIR/SHAKEN was implemented in Canada toward the end of 2021, the industry-led governance authorities in the U.S. and Canada wanted to encourage call authentication between providers in both countries. The agreement paves the way for such coordination and provides a model for other nations to follow as they also implement STIR/SHAKEN.

Illegal robocalling is a global issue beyond North America. The FCC has tasked the North American Numbering Council’s (NANC) Call Authentication Trust Anchor (CATA) Working Group (WG) to recommend how to extend U.S. progress to other countries. ATIS has been heavily engaged in this topic, providing leadership in capacity of co-chair of the CATA WG and providing technical content to the CATA report, Adoption of Caller ID Authentication for Combating Robocalls Outside the U.S., and is investigating the feasibility of launching a “non-jurisdictional GA/PA” that would allow global service providers beyond Canada to participate in the STIR/SHAKEN ecosystem.

Addressing Industry Priorities in Diverse Areas

ATIS' Standards Committees are addressing the industry's leading priorities in areas including:

Extending ATIS' leadership in SHAKEN development to face the challenges of TDM networks.

In October, ATIS announced release of two new major standards advancing the industry’s illegal robocalling mitigation goals in non-IP (i.e., TDM) networks: Extending STIR/SHAKEN Over TDM and Alternatives for Call Authentication for Non-IP Traffic.

ATIS’ Non-IP Call Authentication Task Force (NIPCA-TF) is now developing a Technical Report that examines the viability of hybrid scenarios where non-IP call authentication standards coexist with the SHAKEN solution in IP networks. Through the NIPCA-TF, industry will continue to identify and address new issues and to refine existing solutions in this area to enhance interoperability and deploy-ability – and improve viability of the authentication standards for calls that traverse TDM networks.

ATIS proposes streamlined outage reporting.

ATIS' Network Reliability Steering Committee has filed a Petition for Rulemaking recommending that the FCC modify its rules by encouraging Public Safety Answering Points (PSAPs) or 911 Authorities to furnish all covered 911 providers (both i3 and legacy) with the population counts served by the PSAPs or 911 Authorities. This petition also requires all covered 911 service providers to use population data instead of telephone number counts to consistently determine user minutes threshold criteria, since Automatic Location Identification (ALI) data and/or telephone number counts will not be available as providers transition to an i3 environment. 

Additionally, it recommended changes to Telecommunications Service Priority 2 (TSP 2) outage reporting by extending the reporting threshold of TSP 2 outages from 30 minutes to 4 hours, and to wireless outage reporting by establishing a de minimis exception for events that affect at least 5 macro cell sites located in Rural Service Areas or at least 15 macro cell sites located in Metropolitan Service Areas. These changes would result in outage reporting data that more accurately reflects the true impact on wireless and TSP 2 services, while also decreasing the number of low-impact or no-impact (e.g., withdrawn) outage reports. 

Forefront work identifying and developing adaptations to existing test methodologies to better measure handset-based geodetic and civic location performance.

Handset-based location plays a critical role in providing accurate geodetic X/Y/Z location for 9-1-1 calls. Better use of civic address information provided by handsets or other potential sources is a key public safety goal. Mobile smart phone devices are increasingly maintaining knowledge of their physical location, which can also benefit the reporting of a user’s position in the event of a 9-1-1 call. Current testing methodologies assume memoryless test devices in fresh test locations that have typically not been visited for months (if ever) by the handsets under test. To address this issue, ATIS' Emergency Services Interconnection Forum is conducting a new initiative that will, among other things:

• Starting with existing ATIS test methodologies, identify aspects that need to be updated and/or expanded to encompass the capabilities of device-based solutions and their possible memory of locale or use context.
• Extend the general concepts around context-aware device-based testing methodologies, captured in item 1 above, to address adaptations needed for specific types of location information to be collected i.e., X/Y, Z-axis, floor level, and complete civic address information.
• Consider how to properly analyze the various types of location uncertainty information that may be associated with the various forms of civic location information.

To join in this work, contact Drew Greco of ATIS.

6G Symposium Fall 2022

Building the 6G experience and promoting the Next G Alliance at this live industry event.

On October 11-12 in Washington, DC, ATIS partnered with 6GWorld in presenting the 6G Symposium Fall 2022. The event convened thought leaders and innovators from industry, government and academia to present what's on the technology horizon, why it matters for North America and the next steps in creating the 6G future.

Visit www.atis.org

to learn more about all of ATIS' exciting events and initiatives.