56-th General Assembly of the European Telecommunications Standards Institute took place in Congress centre of Martinez hotel (Cannes, France) on 30 November - 1 December 2010.

The Assembly gathered together around 130 delegates from 40 European Countries participated in the conference representing ETSI, ERO, ITU, CELENEC secretariats, Telecom Administration from 13 European Countries, major European and world manufacturers (Ericsson, Nokia Siemens Networks GmbH & Co. KG, Microsoft Ltd., Intel Corporation (UK) Ltd, IBM Europe Limited, Texas Instruments, Oracle Corporation, Hewlett-Packard, Panasonic, Samsung, Huawei, QUALCOMM UK Ltd, Sony Europe Limited, MOTOROLA Ltd, Cisco Systems Belgium), Operator and Manufacturers Association (GSMA,UMTS Forum, Association of Service Providers, SRD Forum, DMR, National Information Communications & Consumer Electronics Technology Industry Association, Association Européenne de Radiocommunications, ZigBee Alliance, SIMallian) as well as European Operators (Orange, Deutsche Telekom, Portugal Telecom, Telefonica, France Telecom, TELECOM ITALIA S.p.A , MOBITEL d.d. etc.).

56-th General Assembly of ETSI was devoted to reporting of ETSI activities in 2010, strategy considerations for 2011, ETSI structure issues, 3GPP and LTE-Advanced activity, ETSI representation in Brussels, budgetary and business plan 2011 approval.

The General Assembly considered reports and reviews of the European Commission, ETSI Board, CEN/CENELEC, regional standardization bodies, IEEE, Association of operators and manufacturers RITA, TISA. SRD Forum, DMR, ENISA, ATIS, ZigBee Alliance and SIMallianc.

General Director of ETSI considered some issues in his Report to 56-th General Assembly:

• By the end of November 2010, a total of 3 120 standards had already been produced which represents an increase of 489 deliverables over 2009. On 2011 ETSI had plan to produce 3400 new standards;
• Technical Bodies Activity is concentrated on Evaluation of the LTE-Advanced in 3GPP and on such directions as AERO/JTFEA: Aeronautics, RRS: Reconfigurable Radio Systems, M2M: Machine to Machine, MCD: Media Content Distribution, ERM: Electromagnetic Compatibility and Radio Spectrum Matters, TISPAN: Telecoms & Internet converged Services & Protocols for Advanced Networks, SCP: Smart Card Platform, SCP: Smart Card Platform.
• ETSI Participation in 7 cluster meetings of FP7 projects, numerous research conferences and meetings of European Technology Platforms (ETPs);
• International cooperation ETSI with UPU, RITA, TISA. SRD Forum, DMR, ENISA, ATIS, ZigBee Alliance and SIMalliance;
• ETSI cooperation with BRIC and Russia too in LTE technologies implementation and harmonization of ICT Regulation aspects;
• ETSI cooperation with CEN-CENELEC-ETSI in standardization aria;
• Submitting 12-th ICT Technical Proposals on Standardization Program 2010-2013 to EC;
• Creation of New ETSI newsletter «The Standard» and use of social media (Twitter: ETSI_STANDARDS);
• 5 ETSI Workshops (since GA#55) had hold: Smart Grids Scoping; QoE/QoS/User Requirements; Wireless Robotics; Defining M2M Services Capabilities; IMS Implementation, Deployment and Testing;
• 7 Technical Specifications had already been published on a new of ETSI Directions Activity (INS; MOI; MTC; QKD etc.).

More than 50 documents (http://portal.etsi.org/docbox/ga) were discussed at the meeting.

During of the General Assembly meeting the adoption of new ETSI members was done. The Institute for System Programming of Russian Academia of Sciences (ISPRAS) was adopted as a new ETSI member from Russian Federation (www.ispras.ru) and the Russian System Integrator ZAO «Norsi-Trans» (LI soft manufacturer) was adopted as ETSI Observer (www.norsi-trans.ru).

Members of the Regional Branch of Information and telecommunication technologies of RAEN attended the 56-th General Assembly of ETSI. Review of 56-the General Assembly and Progress Report of General Director of ETSI are available upon request to ITT RAEN.