W3C Strategic Highlights: Meeting Industry Needs (Web & Telecommunications)

Web & Telecommunications

(This post is part of a series recapping the October 2018 W3C Strategic Highlights. This post does not include significant updates since that report. For more recent news, please see the Web & Telecommunications @ W3C home page.)

The Web is the Open Platform for Mobile. Telecommunication service providers and network equipment providers have long been critical actors in the deployment of Web technologies. As the Web platform matures, it brings richer and richer capabilities to extend existing services to new users and devices, and propose new and innovative services. The July 2018 edition of the Roadmap of Web Applications on Mobile explores the technologies developed in W3C that increase the capabilities of Web applications in mobile contexts.

Real-Time Communications (WebRTC)

WebRTC has reshaped the whole communication landscape by making any connected device a potential communication end-point, bringing audio and video communications anywhere, on any network, vastly expanding the ability of operators to reach their customers. WebRTC 1.0 reached Candidate Recommendation last November, indicating the stability of this specification which now serves as a corner-stone of many online communication and collaboration services.

The WebRTC Working Group aims to bring WebRTC 1.0 to Recommendation by the end of 2019, while it continues to evaluate what the next generation on WebRTC should be.

Web5G

The planned deployment of 5G, the fifth generation networks, in the upcoming few years is creating a set of challenges and opportunities for the Web Platform to adjust to these new network capabilities: higher bandwidth, lower latency and better coverage than today's networks – a need the W3C hopes to address under a Web5G plan:

• Important application layer innovation: XR, IoT, automotive, 4K & 8K videos;
• Multiple network and transport layer innovations: 5G, NFV, SDN, MEC, QUIC;
• AI and Machine Learning impact across layers.

The May 2018 Web5G workshop report proposes the creation of a task force of participants to develop compelling business and technical reasons, as well as incentives to drive a close collaboration among the W3C, 5G standard organizations (e.g. 3GPP), browser vendors, developers, equipment vendors and network operators.

For more information and to become involved in this exciting work, please see the Web & Telecommunications home page.