Sophia Antipolis, France, 31 March 2026
The ETSI Fellowship Award ceremony took place on 24 March at the Marriott Hotel in Cannes, where the ETSI Director General, the Chair of the General Assembly and the Chair of the Board proudly introduced the 2026 ETSI Fellows. In a moment filled with applause and genuine emotion, Keith Dickerson, Kevin Holley and Michael Pluke were honoured for their remarkable achievements. Their Fellowship award stands as a tribute from their peers, celebrating the outstanding personal contributions they have made to ETSI and to the global standardisation community.
Keith Dickerson, retired, former Director of Climate Associates (UK) was a regular participant in ETSI Technical Bodies, the Board, as well as the General Assembly from 1992 to 2024, spanning nearly 33 years, which represented a significant part of his career. During this time, he made hundreds of contributions across various technology. At the ETSI Board, he was the first Strategy Manager for six years, and lead work on the Green Agenda. “When I was strategy manager, I simply picked five or six new topics and said ETSI should be involved. I drafted my strategy, had it agreed, and the Secretariat then described how it would respond to each point.”
Kevin Holley, Industry Standards Director, BT (UK) has over 38 years of experience in ICT standardisation. He has been driving the development of ETSI and 3GPP standards from the very beginning and is an active Board member. He started working on GSM within CEPT in 1988 then led the ETSI GSM group which completed the SMS standards between 1990 and 1996. “People were on different networks and couldn’t message each other. Someone discovered you could manually change the SMS centre to another operator, and suddenly it became possible.” Kevin was instrumental in introducing the first electronic meetings in 3GPP, using crowd-sourced Ethernet cables and switches.
Michael Pluke, Castle Consulting Ltd, (UK), retired since January 2026, was active in early Human Factors standardisation work in ISO/IEC and ITU-T since 1988. He became a member of the ETSI Technical Committee on Human Factors in 1993 and Vice-Chair in 2002. He led or contributed to the development of many human factors’ standards and guides.
From 2011, Mike was responsible for the development of the ETSI/CEN/CENELEC EN 301 549 accessibility standard, to support mandates of the European Commission. “The newest version of the EN 301 549 has been updated for the European Accessibility Act. That is more complicated and involves many companies because every company will be impacted by it.”
Keith, Kevin and Michael are now part of the ETSI Fellowship community on the ‘Wall of Fame’ in ETS’s headquarters- a lasting recognition of their exceptional contributions and dedication.
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