Terms of Reference (ToR) for
Technical Committee Machine-to-Machine communications
 (M2M)

Approved at ETSI Board#69

TCM2M|M2MWG1|M2MWG2|M2MWG3|M2MWG4|M2MWG5

Responsibility

TC M2M shall have responsibility:

•  to collect and specify M2M requirements from relevant stakeholders;

•  to develop and maintain an end-to-end overall high level architecture for M2M;

• to identify gaps where existing standards do not fulfil the requirements and provide specifications and standards to fill these gaps, without duplication of work in other ETSI committees and partnership projects;

• to provide the ETSI main centre of expertise in the area of M2M;

•  to co-ordinate ETSI’s M2M activity with that of other standardization groups and fora.

Areas of activity

The activities of TC M2M will include the following:

•  Advise and coordinate with other ETSI TC's on the following areas of activity, and where necessary, the

  development of ETSI specifications in support of the following areas of activity:

  • Service and operational requirements for M2M solutions

  •  End-to-end high level architecture and if necessary detailed architecture for M2M

  •  Identification and filling standardization gaps, such as:

  • Interconnection and integration of wireless capillary networks and their devices with wide area

  • telecoms networks

• M2M device identification and naming, addressing and location

• M2M QoS considerations

• M2M Security and Privacy

• M2M charging

• M2M management and provisioning

• Application interfaces to the M2M system components (management entities, network elements, application components etc.)

• Hardware interface standardization considerations;

• Mapping of existing components or sub-systems to the ETSI M2M architecture;

• Interoperability for end-to-end M2M solutions;

• Development of ETSI Test specifications in support of M2M interoperability;

• Provision of the ETSI main centre of expertise in the area of Machine to Machine system specification and be able to offer advice to ETSI Technical Bodies, the ETSI Board and the General Assembly;

• Organization of regular meetings/workshops with appropriate stakeholders;
  
• Liaison with relevant external organizations such as SDOs;
  
• Establishment of external relationships (and joint working groups) where and when ever needed.  Formal relationships will be established using the normal processes via the ETSI Secretariat (NIM/Partnerships).
  
  

Organization and working methods

• TC M2M shall work in accordance with the ETSI Directives and, in particular, the Technical Working Procedures.
  
  

• TC M2M shall provide progress reports to the ETSI Board and OCG from time to time.

• TC M2M will liaise with ETSI TC ITS for transport-related M2M issues, and with other ETSI TBs as appropriate (e.g. ETSI TISPAN, ITS, SCP, 3GPP, ERM).

• TC M2M will liaise with other SDO/Fora as appropriate.  Groups which TC M2M might need to liaise with include OMA, GSMA, ZigBee Alliance, WOSA, ISA, IEEE, IETF, IPSO Alliance, ISO, ITU-T, OSG‑I, W3C, Open Geospatial Consortium.

•  TC M2M will use the recognized 3-stage standardization method, identifying first the requirements, then developing architecture and information flows, and then performing detailed specification.  Use-cases will be used as part of the requirements development process. TC M2M will also explore the use of APIs to provide interfaces to the M2M system components.

• TC M2M will aim to refer to existing work done elsewhere, or encourage existing groups to fulfil its requirements, and only where such work does not meet TC M2M’s requirements will it perform detailed specification work itself.

Participation

• Participation in TC M2M is open to all ETSI members in accordance with the Technical Working Procedures.  Observers and non-members may participate at the discretion of the Chairman in line with clause 1.4 of the Technical Working Procedures.