October 2025 - In this interview, Roland Hechwartner summarizes the latest developments from oneM2M’s 71st Technical Plenary. In addition to chairing oneM2M’s Technical Plenary (TP), Roland is responsible for the coordination of the overall management of the technical work within the TP and its Working Groups (WGs). He is also a representative of Deutsche Telekom (DT).
Q: Would you begin with an overview of the key developments at TP#71?
RH: We are grateful to ETSI for hosting TP#71 at their premises in Sophia Antipolis, France over the week of September 8th to 12th, 2025. In addition to our regular working sessions and standardization roadmap planning, this TP was an opportunity to celebrate election outcomes, technical excellence, and collaborations to extend the standards-based IoT ecosystem.
Q: Beginning with the topic of elections, what developments can you report?
RH: oneM2M members get to vote on key positions every two years. At this meeting, I am pleased to report Bob Flynn’s (Exacta GSS) election by acclamation as the Chair of the Testing and Developer’s Ecosystem (TDE) WG. Bob now starts his second two years term of the TDE WG3 which focuses on the following terms of reference:
(1) Identify and define test requirements for oneM2M System and services related to it.
(2) Develop and maintain a set of specifications to support conformance tests, interoperability tests, and developers guides.
(3) Specify and maintain standard feature catalogue and product profiles.
(4) Cooperate with other working groups to define the proper testing scope and strategy.
(5) Initiate and supervise test related events (such as Plugtests) as well as developer related events (such as hackathons and developer tutorials).
(6) Coordinate interoperability events in collaboration with other organizations.
(7) Support the implementation of oneM2M Certification Program and its maintenance.
In addition, the TDE WG has made great strides by leading the introduction of the new git-based specification development process that we have discussed in past interviews.
Q: oneM2M recognizes technical excellence every year. Who are the recipients of the 2025 awards?
RH: Yes, the awards scheme is an opportunity to acknowledge high standards of excellence, innovation, and quality. The newest recipients of a oneM2M Technical Excellence Award are SeungMyeong Jeong (KETI), Andreas Kraft (Exacta GSS), and Miguel Reina Ortega (ETSI). It is fair to say that everyone appreciates their outstanding technical contribution to oneM2M specifications.
Q: Collaboration is critical to developing the IoT ecosystem so what aspects did members focus on at this TP?
RH: Mid way through this TP, on 10 September, we held a joint meeting for all parties with an interest in the “ESTIMED” project. ESTIMED is part funded by the European Commission/European Free Trade Association. ETSI is another collaborative partner, via the ETSI ISG MEC (Industry Specification Group on Multi-Access Edge Computing) and ETSI’s Specialist Task Force #685 (ESTIMED). The focus on the meeting was to discuss different MEC-oneM2M deployment scenarios and to develop plans for a hackathon.
Just prior to the meeting, TP members gave their agreement to a formal progress report. This involved gaining approval from three groups: ETSI TC Data, ETSI ISG MEC, and the oneM2M partnership project. As things stand, the project is progressing on plan. The related oneM2M WI-0120 has been updated in accordance with the ESTIMED milestone plan proposed at the TP#70. There was also an agreement at TP 71 to align the timing of oneM2M’s Release 6 with the ESTIMED project’s milestones.
Q: What does this timing decision mean for oneM2M’s Release roadmap?
RH: If I can start with Release 5, we are currently in the stage of finalization its deliverables. What that means is that members are working on corrections and clarifications as well as editorial updates to the Technical Specifications only. Any new requirements and technical features will feed into the Release 6 versions of the existing Technical Specifications (TS) or, if required, new TSs.
The Technical Reports aiming at the Release 5 timeframe need to be finalized within 2025. Our intention is to have all Technical Specifications converted to markdown and ready for processing via git. That make a tremendous difference by easing and speeding up the process for contributions and publication. For the Technical Reports, as well as the work item documents and the work program management reporting, we are also aiming at full conversion as soon as possible.
We plan to finalize the Release 6 in Q2 2027 and to have all Release 6 deliverables ready for publication by oneM2M’s Partners in September 2027. This means that we allow for new normative requirements until TP#73, which is in Q1 2026.
Q: In addition to these activities, what were the main developments in the oneM2M Working Groups?
RH: Massimo Vanetti (SBS) chaired the Requirements & Domain Models (RDM) Working Group which made progress on the ‘Enablement of IoT in the metaverse’ work item. There were also several agreed additions to the use case document to include enhancements of Edge related use cases. The RDM WG’s focus is now on the Release 6.
Peter Niblett (IBM) chaired meetings of the System Design & Security (SDS) working group. That WG reported completion of the TS-0041 on oneM2M and SensorThings interworking with the final baseline benefitting from checks carried out by ETSI’s editHelp service. The TS document is due for publication soon.
In line with our shift to improve collaborative document handling, the following documents have been converted to Markdown format: TS-0016, TS-0022 and TS-0030, TS-0033.
The WG also reported progress on WI-0120 on Edge Deployment using ETSI MEC, and on WI-0122 which deals with oneM2M and Model Context Protocol, targeting interworking with agentic AI.
The newly re-elected WG chair, Bob Flynn chaired meetings of the final of oneM2M’s three WG, Testing & Developers Ecosystem (TDE). Members discussed continued progress and enhancements to the git process as well as additional newly converted technical specifications and technical reports. The plan is to convert all TSs by end of 2025, which would be a great collaborative achievement. We owe considerable thanks to all oneM2M delegates who supported this change and made it possible in such a short period of time. In particular, Miguel Reina from ETSI plays a key role in the process in his role as admin of the ETSI forge, i.e. the GitLab instance, which oneM2M members rely on. In addition, Andreas Kraft has provided many tools to allow to start this change and to progress and evolve so quickly.
The TDE participants had a status update on the planning of future hackathon events. Firstly, KETI, TTA and Sejong University are preparing for an international oneM2M Hackathon initiative, similar to what took place in 2024. The scheduling for this event is from 13 October - 17 November 2025. The Award Ceremony will take place on November 27 in conjunction with an AIoT conference in South Korea.
The second hackathon is the one that the ESTIMED project (oneM2M & ISG MEC) is planning. This will be a three-day event that that takes place towards the end of October 2025.
Q: What are the plans for the coming TPs?
RH: The TP#72 meeting, covering TP meetings, WG meetings and a Workshop will be hosted by the Malaysian Technical Standards Forum Bhd (MTSFB), TTA, KETI, with support from InDiCo-Global. It will take place in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia from November 10-14th.