Public notices

December 9, 2005 the SINTESIO testlab was officially opened by ETSI general director, Mr. Karl Heinz Rosenbrock. The opening ceremony attended Slovenian minister of economy, Mr. Andrej Vizjak, founder of the SINTESIO testlab, representatives form strategic partners, supporting organizations, and government institutions.

The test reference center operates within the framework of the Sintesio foundation, a non-profit organization that has a broader social significance. Co-founders include the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), which has its head office at Sophia Antipolis, France; the Slovenian Institute for Standardization (SIST), Ljubljana; and Iskratel, d.o.o., Kranj.The Faculty of Electrical Engineering (FE), Ljubljana, and its Laboratory for Telecommunications play an important role in the center’s operation. The Bled municipality supported the project by providing appropriate premises.Sintesio is the first permanent center of its kind to provide the technological infrastructure and expertise to test and demonstrate the interoperability of products, services and applications in next generation networks (NGNs). The purpose, the operation and the plan of activities of the Sintesio center have been endorsed by the ETSI’s leading global standardization body, which additionally emphasizes the neutral role of the center, and its expertise.
Interoperability is of key importance for all the players in the field of information and communication technologies (ICT), i.e., standardization bodies (ETSI, ITU-T, etc.), equipment manufacturers, solution providers, operators, service and application providers, end users, and also for regulators.Open standards and the demonstration of interoperability prevent market fragmentation, increase the competitive edge, and promote the introduction and efficient use of new technologies in all spheres of the information society.The ICT helps in making it possible to put the Lisbon strategy into practice, and to achieve faster economic growth. Both the EU, within the framework of its development initiatives, and the ETSI, the main standardization body, have identified interoperability as a strategic priority in the next three to five years. This is why the Sintesio test center is part of ETSI’s reference technological infrastructure and its long-term strategic orientation.Sintesio’s added value and contribution can be measured through:

— the early validation of standardization documents and feedback information to the standardization bodies;

— increased cooperation among all the participants in the ICT chain that results in the compatible operation of products and solutions across the entire network (end-to-end);

— proof of interoperability that stems from a real environment; this increases the trust of end users and makes it possible to draw up efficient regulations in important technological and social areas.

Sintesio receives support from important ICT players, such as the following: the operators Telecom Slovenije and Telekom Austria; product and solution manufacturers; test-equipment suppliers; the Directorate for Electronic Communications and the Directorate of the Information Society with the ministries of the Government of the Republic of Slovenia; and APEK, the Slovenian regulatory agency. Sintesio represents an important step in the efforts of Slovenia to become a reference technological site for the development, testing and implementation of new products, solutions, services and applications in the area of ICT.