I have
always been negatively biased regarding bureaucratic procedures, long documents
full of asterisks and huge paragraphs explaining self – evident things.
Standards were one of these subjects that I was never willing to touch. But
many times, while dealing with seemingly irrelevant subjects, I caught myself
giving credit to standards and gradually realizing their role and impact.
Standards are documented,
voluntary agreements which
establish important criteria
for products, services and processes.
Standards, therefore, help
to make sure that products
and services are fit into
their purpose and are comparable and compatible
(Conformity Assessment News,
April 2003)
A
historical flashback would reveal that standards are not a recent discovery. Many
ancient communities established and involved standards in their everyday life
and activities for the same reasons as we do today. Maybe not with today’s
formality but the concept was the same. Babylonians, Chinese, ancient Greeks
and Egyptians etc. established standards for weight, length and time
measurement, for trade, for movement of their vehicles and so on. More
recently, from 1850, telecommunication standards regarding the Morse code,
ASCII, switch boards and many more made their appearance from today’s ITU
(International Telecommunications Union). Furthermore, today there are
standards for lighting, medical equipment, food safety and literally everything
that is been produced by manufacturers and used by consumers. Imagine buying a
new mobile phone which is not compatible with the network, buying a paper
package which does not fit into the printer, buying a new coffee machine which
operates at a different voltage from the one the power grid supplies or
spending double the money for a product that functions properly half the time
of a cheaper one (for example a battery which has a specific number of cycles).
So
standards exist and are necessary mainly for two reasons. Firstly, they
guarantee the quality of the product itself. Describes its features and makes
sure that the customer knows what is buying. Secondly, they ensure compatibility,
meaning products’ interconnection with other products that may coexist and
cooperate. The two above features of standards are relevant to some of the
basic concepts of standards. For instance a consumer who is buying a product
has limited knowledge about what he is going to buy while the producer is fully
aware of his product. This problem is called information asymmetry and
standards can significantly reduce by providing the necessary information to
the customer. Standards establish a kind of “regime” by setting some ground
rules. A new standard that replaces the old one must ensure an easy, fast and
smooth transition. The resources that must be tethered in order to accommodate
the transition are called switching costs and ideally must be as low as
possible. High quality standards can provide that thus minimizing effects like
excess inertia and lock – in. Excess inertia is the phenomenon where users are
not willing to give up an older standard in order to use a new one possibly due
to difficulties in switching and lock – in when the switching costs from one
standard to another are too high. When considering using a new product and
buying it one of the most important factors taken into count is price.
Standards ultimately result in reduction of production costs due to variety
decrease. This is called economies of scale. Lastly the network externalities
effect is very important for users. Network externalities essentially means
that network’s value is increased when a new user is connected to it. Its
importance can be understood if we consider many mobile networks for example,
all of them incompatible with each other. As a net result the users would be
limited in terms of the available users that can communicate with.
And where
do standards come from? Are they “randomly” shaped or strictly defined? By
classifying standards as viewed from this perspective, there are three types of
them:
·
De facto standards:
These are the standards that have been adopted by users through an unofficial
convention – agreement due to dominant use. Such standards are the massively
used PDF, QWERTY keyboard, TCP/IP, Windows operating system and a lot more.
·
De jure standards:
They are standards that have been established by laws or regulations after they
were approved by formal organizations like ITU, IEC, ETSI, FCC etc. after
strict procedures and voting. Standards related to medicine, food safety or
safety in generally de jure standards in order to ensure the minimization of
exposure to danger.
·
Voluntary standards:
They are standards that are available for use. Many times a voluntary standards
may become a de factor standard due to its dominant use. Bluetooth, ZigBee,
WiFi, GSM etc. are voluntary standards.
In any
case, standards should be specific enough to avoid ambiguities but not too
detailed, they usually have a modular structure and they should be quickly
adaptable and as technology independent as possible.
The three
largest international organizations amongst many others are International
Organization for Standardization (ISO), International Telecommunication Union
(ITU) and International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) which have
established thousands of standards for every possible topic. The members of
these organizations maybe governmental or private and their standards are
adopted by its members in order to ensure interconnection between products and
networks and to improve their quality and accessibility. Apart from the
international organizations there are also regional ones. For instance a
standard is recognized as European Standard if it comes from CEN (European
Committee for Standardization), CENELEC (European Committee for
Electrotechnical Standardization) or ETSI (European Telecommunications
Standards Institute). European Union members also adopt these standards as
national laws.
Even though
these formal organizations deliver standards of high quality, technology moves
too fast for them. Due to their nature and structure and also voting procedures
they lack flexibility thus being unable to keep up. At this point industry
consortia like IEEE, W3C, 3GPP etc. come into play. These consortia usually have
fewer resources and may even lack a formal organization structure but they
nevertheless create quality standards that are accepted worldwide and achieve
high penetration in the market.
Regardless
organization or consortium, standardization processes are always voluntary and
open, aim to cover society needs and ensure quality and compatibility. The
basic condition though is that participants pay their own expenses for all
standardization activities and have their vote in the standardization
processes.
Concluding,
what should be made clear by now is that standards have been around for a long
time and they are everywhere, even where it is difficult for someone to see. It
is a homogenization and unification process that aims in serving society and
consumers through different mechanisms. Many things that are considered self - evident and given are not, but they are products of standards. A world without standards would be a scenery
close enough to chaos…
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