Committee standards battles in the era of convergence: Implications for smart systems

By now, there have been many standards battles fought within the same industry or by multiple industries in the market-based standardization. In these battles, incompatible standards compete to win market dominance. While there is some research on standards battles found within a single committee, competitions in the committee-based standardization between standards from different committees or SDOs are underexplored. This paper categorizes the types of standards battles by the mode of standardization and the heterogeneity of actors. A new type referred to as ‘committee standards battles for converging systems’ is introduced and the dynamics of such battles is explored with two cases. The battle between the electric vehicle charging and the smart meter communication standard and the battle between two different vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communication standards are analyzed. The failure in achieving compatibility between different committee standards on the same frequency bands results in communication interference that adversely affects the operation of smart systems. Social incompatibilities between actors and alliances from a mix of industries with vested interests towards a particular standard complicate the battling scene. The findings provide implications in terms of heterogeneity, actors, and government role in standards battles.