News from GCF's Q2 2019 Steering Group Meeting

• 12 Jul 2019
• Lars Nielsen

GCF held its second Steering Group meeting of 2019 in record-breaking Parisian temperatures in June. It was an event well organised and hosted by SmartViser. The highlights of Steering Group meetings always include approval of new work items, and Paris was no exception, particularly with an exciting approval for GCF’s entry into the drone world with the Enhanced LTE Support for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles.

In other activities, 5G continues to gather pace within GCF with the first 5G field trial qualified network announced recently and we are now seeing devices coming through declaring support of 5G NR.

Membership and activities to reach new heights
Our membership continues to grow, and it will soon hit the 330 members mark with a high number of new members joining from the “non-traditional membership base” but from new sectors such as virtual network operators and the automotive industry. This is driven by a strong need for manufacturers to certify and the trend in membership growth is reflected in the financial status of GCF, where income in 2019 is predicted to exceed the budget. At the meeting it was decided to accelerate the investment in the generation of IT tools to support the evolution of 5G standards and other future requirements, while the GCF Board also announced the hire of an additional member of the GCF Office to cover GCF’s new device audit programme.

Where to meet GCF next

2019 has already seen GCF participate in several events, with the most recent being Critical Comms World 2019 in Kuala Lumpur. This was through our close collaboration with TCCA and we’re pleased to be invited to participate with them again at the TCCA Critical Broadband group meeting in November.
The event plan for the remainder of 2019 was approved at the meeting, so GCF will be present in three continents during October:

• India Mobile Congress in New Delhi  14-16 October
• MWC Los Angeles 22-24 October
• IoT Solutions World Congress in Barcelona 29-31 October

The 2019 event plan also includes workshops in South-East Asia and Middle East later in the year.

OneM2M certification launched 1^st July
The Steering Group approved the last remaining changes to the GCF reference documents so that the oneM2M certification could be launched on time. The programme was made officially available on 1^st July; for more information on how to apply, please check the new oneM2M area of the GCF website. The meeting also paved the way for certification against Release 2 of the oneM2M standard by approving work items for the next version of the standards.

Annual General Meeting 2019
The GCF Board of Directors announced that the Annual General Meeting will take place on 11^th December in Tampa, Florida, USA. 

The GCF Steering Group will meet next in Hong Kong on 24^th-26^th September, hosted by Testime.