Classroom Companion: Business

15.1 · Why Standards?

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side Geneva, Switzerland) and cooperating universities worldwide. Within a few 
years, the WWW became the de facto standard for information posting and brows-
ing on the Internet.
The layout and content of the digital good or service itself is not usually subject 
to standards: there is no standard concerning the content and presentation of, for 
example, Facebook, Twitter, Netflix, and Apple and Android apps. To reach the 
market, they must only support the standards required for accessing the Internet 
and for interactions with the users (the World Wide Web standards).
Definition 15.1 Standards
A de jure standard is obligatory, for example, the use of the radio spectrum as defined 
in the Radio Regulations of the ITU.
A de facto standard is a convention, procedure, or technology developed by the 
users of the standard (e.g., the 5G standard of 3GPP) or been selected by market 
forces (e.g., VHS as the standard for videocassette recorders). The de facto standard 
is not obligatory. A de facto standard is often referred to as industry standard.
An open standard is a publicly available standard (e.g., the standards of ETSI, 
ITU, and 3GPP). The standard may be free of charge or be subject to a usage fee or 
a patent licensing fee. Most de facto standards are open standards.
15.2 
 Standards Organizations
There are several organizations and groups specifying and standardizing ICT 
infrastructures, protocols, and operations. In this section, we will just look at some 
of the organizations and groups having the biggest impact on the evolution of the 
technologies and services supported by ICT. Some of them are based on interna-
tional charters (ITU, ETSI, and 3GPP), while others are nonprofit interest groups 
dedicated to a particular field of standardization (the Internet Society and the 
World Wide Web Consortium). The standards produced by these organizations 
and groups are open-source standards, meaning that anyone may load down and 
apply the standards free of charge. However, buying open-source standards from 
ITU and ETSI are often subject to certain fees.