Interview with Kevin Holley: From GSM to 3GPP, a life in standards

 

 

 

 

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You’ve seen ETSI almost from the beginning. What did its creation mean at the time?

It was about creating a centre of excellence for telecom standards in Europe. Back then, different countries had different radio technologies, and that made scale impossible. Every operator had its own specifications, and vendors had to build custom equipment for each market. ETSI changed that by enabling common standards across Europe, not one per country, but one shared approach. That was essential for the move from analogue to digital and for building the economies of scale that made modern telecom possible.

You were closely involved with SMS. How do you see its place in telecom history?

I sometimes describe SMS as the first mobile text network. It wasn’t really social media in the modern sense, because it was one-to-one rather than one-to-many, but it was a major step in mobile communication. I was involved in SMS standardization in ETSI, and also in something very practical: making sure it actually worked across networks. At the time, users were discovering they couldn’t always exchange messages between operators. I even created an SMS connectivity fact sheet so people could see which combinations worked. That was part of the spirit of standardisation too, not just writing the standard, but making the service usable.

You also witnessed the shift in how standards meetings themselves were run…

Yes, that changed enormously. In the early days, everything was typed, printed and photocopied. Then we started sharing documents on floppy disks, later CDs, and eventually via local wired networks in the meeting room. Around 1996 or 1997, when I was chairing SMG4, we began testing true electronic meetings, where several people could connect to a server to upload and download documents.

Later, in 3GPP, people would bring their own wired hubs and help build the network for the meeting. It was very collaborative and quite inventive. That eventually evolved into the “inbox” system that 3GPP still uses today.

How do you describe the relationship between ETSI and 3GPP?

3GPP grew out of work that began in ETSI’s GSM groups, but there was a clear wish to make 3G global. Instead of one region controlling the process, ETSI joined with other standards bodies from the US first (T1P1 which became ATIS), then Japan (ARIB and TTC) and Korea (TTA) joined to create something broader. That was the strength of 3GPP: each region had a stake, but no single one dominated. China then India joined later. 3GPP became a model of global cooperation in mobile standards. Geopolitics never disappears entirely, of course, but eventually China, the US, Europe, and others agree on a standard. The goal is to bring different approaches together and find a consensus that works worldwide.

Were you surprised to be named an ETSI Fellow?

Very much so. I was contacted and asked whether I’d be happy about it, and of course I was. Looking back, I started in standardization in 1988, so it has been a long journey. ETSI feels like a second home. I’ve been coming here so many years that when I check into the Mercure, I joke that I’ve stayed there more than 100 times. The location is convenient, not far from the airport, and the people here are lovely.

Looking back, what stands out most?

SMS is one clear success story, but more broadly, 3GPP is a huge one. To bring together companies and standards bodies from different parts of the world and make that collaboration work over decades, that’s a real achievement. Not every standard ends up being widely used, and that’s part of the reality of this work. But when it succeeds, standardisation quietly shapes everyday life on a massive scale.