TMCVocabulary
How to Balance Standards & Innovation
By Michail Tsatsanis
Situation
Our startup Company was in the process of developing innovative data transport equipment with
significantly higher performance and data speed compared to other existing solutions. The
equipment provided a solution to the "last mile problem" of connecting offices and businesses
to the internet, and the intended customers were communications service providers. For high
speed networks it is preferable if those connections consist of fiber links, however, there
is a large installed base of copper telephone wire connections. The Company's innovative
product provided a high speed data transport system using existing copper telephone wires and
helped providers delay the capital equipment investments associated with street trenching for
fiber deployments.
More so than any other industry, standards compliance is paramount in telecom where devices
have to interoperate with a host of other devices in the network. The Company was facing the
challenge of implementing its innovative technology in coordination with successful
standardization of its key elements.
