Digital Jersey signs up as Founding member of Industry Standards Group in bid to drive Internet of Things strategy

Digital Jersey has been invited to help produce the technology roadmap for evolving Smart Cities globally. As a founding member of the ETSI Industry Specification Group on City Digital Profile, Digital Jersey will be helping draw up and test the standards to help cities and regions obtain the most suitable technology options to improve quality of life for their citizens.

ETSI, the European Telecommunications Standards Institute, produces globally-applicable standards for Information and Communications Technologies, and indeed developed the GSM mobile phone standard used around the world. The new Smart Cities group, aims to ensure that new technology invested in by countries and cities adheres to open standards, interoperable with other locations. The goal is for good investment decisions to be made and proprietary options avoided.

Smart Cities aim to intelligently use existing data sets combined with new data collected via electronic sensors to connect their citizens and enable better decision making, reduce public sector costs and improve productivity.

Digital Jersey CEO, Tony Moretta says, “If countries and cites around the world are to benefit from smart IoT solutions, open interoperable standards are essential. Investment and best practice can then be shared and technologies developed and tested in one location can then be quickly rolled out globally.”

Members of ETSI come from 66 countries and cover five continents. They range from manufacturers and network operators to national administrations and Universities. The other founder members of the Smart Cities group include: Cisco, BT, Microsoft, IBM, Huawei and Digital Greenwich – the only other ‘location’ involved besides Jersey.

The inaugural meeting of the group is set for 21^st November and Digital Jersey will be working with its member telecom companies to fulfil its role.

Tony Moretta commented, “This is a great opportunity for Jersey to use our world leading telecoms infrastructure to test new IoT solutions that can then be launched around the world. We will also get great exposure to global technology companies to market ourselves as a testbed. Plus the solutions we develop can address problems in all industries including tourism and agriculture, so this is a relationship that could help all of the island’s industries, not just the digital sector.”