With an eye on the segment’s growth potential, the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) has announced its open Machine to Machine (M2M) Communications workshop, which will be held Oct. 19-20 at the Angora in Sophia, Antipolis, France.

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The workshop will have several goals, including a presentation of the status of M2M standards work; the identification of additional needs from the impacted industrial and academic segments for the further standardization of M2M communications; and an examination of how M2M capabilities will be one stepping stone among several toward the “Internet of Things.”

ETSI expects about 2 billion machines to be connected via M2M technology by 2010, with record growth in the cellular segment in particular. While many M2M deployments will use short-range or proprietary radio links, ETSI says, cellular-based M2M solutions will be preferred where mobility is required or where high data volumes or data transfer rates are involved.

Cellular-based M2M also can provide easier installation and provisioning, the group says, especially for short-term deployments. Yet telecom networks may need to be optimized to cater to these new “subscribers,” which may have very different behavior from current customers.

Until now, little effort has been made to bring these pieces together and identify the standardization gaps that exist. ETSI’s standards work is now reaching an advanced stage, the group says, with many network operators expressing their motivation for having the first release of M2M standards completed by early 2011.

ETSI TC M2M is now finalizing the architecture for the service platform that will enable the integration of multiple vertical M2M applications.  The group is looking outside to the utilities and end users to consider what future trends might drive M2M applications. Also, ETSI says that many subjects now being researched under the label of “Future Internet” also will be relevant for the evolution path of current fixed and mobile telecom networks.

ETSI