Before digging into the jungle of wireless standards, we would like to introduce the concept of “standard” first. What is a standard by definition and why are standards important?
In 1978 the US-NSPAC National Standards Policy Advisory Committee defined a “standard” as:
"A prescribed set of rules, conditions, or requirements concerning definitions of terms; classification of components; specification of materials, performance, or operations; delineation of procedures; or measurement of quantity and quality in describing materials, products, systems, services, or practices."
One aspect of standards that can be surprising is that technical standards are frequently established between competitors to the same shared market. How come that competitors are suddenly working together when they are fighting for the same market share?
One thing that we can be sure about, is that if standardization of hardware, software and systems were not beneficial for the vendors, no standardization would ever take place.
For vendors, having a product that complies with a specific standard implies interoperability between products of the same family. It also means the possibility to access a global market where clients that are familiar with a standard do not necessarily need to be familiar with the product itself. Standards are used by vendors to achieve a level of safety, quality, and consistency in their products towards the customer. For the customer, a product that follows a specific standard implies the possibility of interoperability with other products and not to be “locked” to a single vendor.