Interview with Keith Dickerson: “ETSI came to dominate my professional life”

 

 

 

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You’ve been involved in ETSI for a long time. Was it your main professional activity?

Not at first. I only became involved in international standards in 1989, when BT joined a European research programme called RACE. We had to map the standards landscape for a project deliverable, and embarrassingly, we missed ETSI completely because it had only just been created. The European Commission rejected the document, so we had to revise it. That was really my first encounter with ETSI. I didn’t attend a meeting until 1992, when I joined the RACE Consensus Management Project and began participating in ETSI groups such as NA4 and HF. Over time, although I was also active in CEN and the ITU, ETSI became the organisation I was most loyal to. If there was ever a clash, ETSI came first.

You spent many years on the ETSI Board. How has governance evolved?

When I first became involved, there was no Board. Under Karl-Heinz Rosenbrock, ETSI was run very much as his creation, and he didn’t welcome interference. The Board only really gained influence after he left. Walter Weigel worked with the Board more naturally, perhaps even deferring to it too much at times. Later, under Luis Jorge Romero, the relationship felt balanced. I also saw the rise and fall of the ICT Standards Board, created in the late 1990s to reduce overlap between European ICT standards bodies. But ETSI is fundamentally a bottom-up organisation, so the idea of an external body allocating work never sat comfortably and eventually disappeared.

You also led ETSI’s strategy work. What stands out from that period?

When I joined the ETSI Board in 2002, strategy wasn’t really part of its role, it focused mostly on finance and IPR. I pushed for strategy to become a regular activity and became strategy manager. My own approach was simple: identify five or six important new topics and make sure ETSI was engaged. Later strategies became more elaborate and structured, but also, in my view, harder to translate into action. For me, strategy had to be practical. The Secretariat would then explain how ETSI would respond to each priority.

What contribution are you most proud of?

Probably the Green Agenda. We wanted ETSI to reduce travel, cut carbon emissions and work more efficiently, so we normalised remote meetings using GoToMeeting long before online collaboration became routine. That allowed more frequent meetings and faster standards work. We even gave feedback to adapt the tool to ETSI’s needs. Later, of course, everyone moved to Teams. I also did important work on lifecycle analysis and carbon footprint, including in satellite systems. We compared satellite based systems vs 5G mobile systems as people were worried about carbon emissions from launches. One of our findings was that rocket launches accounted for only around 2% of a satellite service’s lifetime carbon footprint, much less than many people assumed.

Will satellites play a bigger role in the future?

Yes, definitely. I once thought satellites would be fully integrated into 5G, but in reality that has only happened partially so far with, for example, emergency SOS functions on mobile phones. I think real integration will come with 6G. Satellites will become increasingly important not only for connectivity, but also for defence and European sovereignty. Galileo is a good example: it is already embedded in smartphones, even if users don’t realise it. Its independence and accuracy matter, especially in a world where strategic autonomy is becoming more important.