Sophia Antipolis, 2 October 2014
Global Telecoms Business magazine and website has named Luis Jorge Romero, Director General of ETSI, as one of the most powerful people in the telecommunications industry worldwide, joining top executives from the industry’s leading companies.
Global Telecoms Business has named its Power100 list of the most powerful people in the telecoms industry every year since 2008. This year's judges have said “Power implies the ability to move the industry. If the Power100 reflects the people who are running this industry, then many people outside the telecoms industry are causing shifts to occur - and they are as powerful as many of the leaders within telecoms operators and vendors.”
The judges were selected for their global experience of the industry: a lawyer/regulator, the founder of a leading trade organization, an analyst and a recruitment specialist. Three of them have, during their careers, worked for telecoms operators and all four maintain a close relationship with the industry.
The judges picked out Network Functions Virtualisation as a technology driver in the industry and selected a number of executives behind its development. ETSI is the home of the Network Functions Virtualisation Industry Specification Group and ETSI’s Director General, Luis Jorge Romero, has overseen the rapid growth and success of this important initiative.
Since his election as ETSI Director General in 2011, Mr. Romero has been further developing ETSI, a European Standards Organization, to provide global reach to its members. He has led the development of the oneM2M global standards initiative for Machine to Machine Communications and the Internet of Things. This brings ETSI together with eleven other leading ICT standards bodies, fora and consortia throughout the world, and with 200 of their member companies to define the specifications needed for scalable, secure deployment of M2M and IoT services. He has also ensured that ETSI is well positioned to take an active role in the development of future 5G standards, both within ETSI and 3GPP, of which ETSI is a founding member.
Industry is demanding that standards be produced more efficiently in the future than in the past. This implies faster delivery times, higher technical quality and greater assurance of interoperability. Mr. Romero has set about achieving these objectives by modernizing the standardization processes used within ETSI, a task that will take time to complete but which is already demonstrating clear benefits.