The Telecommunications Industry Association (News - Alert) (TIA) has announced that they will host a meeting of experts from various Standards Developing Organizations (SDOs) and similar forums from around the world during its premier annual industry event - TIA (News - Alert) 2011: Inside the Network.

TIA 2011: Inside the Network will facilitate business and technical conversations about how to plan for the best on the Network—while avoiding the worst.

In September 2010, the Chair of TIA TR-50 Smart Device Communications engineering committee was appointed Convener of the newly-created M2M Standardization Task Force (MSTF), which will meet during TIA 2011, at the most recent Global Standards Collaboration meeting (GSC-15) organized by the China Communications Standardization Association (CCSA) in Beijing, the company stated in a press release.

Dr. Jeffrey O. Smith, Chief Technology Officer of Numerex (News - Alert), Chair of TIA TR-50 and Convener of the MSTF added, "I am very pleased with the response from our fellow SDOs. In addition to the United States, Canada, China, India, Japan, Korea, and Europe will be represented at the meeting, boding well for the quality of the work and the recommendations to GSC-16. We have already started to liaise and collaborate with other prominent international standardization groups.”

Hosted by the ICT Standards Advisory Council of Canada (ISACC), and held in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada during the week that starts October 31, 2011, the MSTF will report on its activities and recommendations to GSC-16. Some of MSTF’s speakers and attendees will participate in various panels of the M2M track of TIA 2011 and will be able to address the current status of this exploding market, the manifold opportunities of the technology, and share the progress made in the area of standardization, although the MSTF meeting is not open to the public.

Recently, the association inked a Memorandum of Understanding with Georgia Tech Applied Research Corporation to explore areas of mutual interest involving research, testing and outreach in the area of global information and communications infrastructure. The idea behind this MOU is to establish an industry-supported center at Georgia Tech that focuses on the science, engineering and testing necessary to advance telecommunications standards.