Dr. Gierlich nominated as ETSI fellow for his outstanding personal contribution to the standardization body

23. June 2021

• Active in ETSI since its beginning in 1988
• Always dedicated to speech, speech transmission quality and all related aspects in networks and terminals
• Is planning to continue his activities

At the occasion of the ETSI (European Telecommunications Standards Institute) general assembly in April 2021 Dr. Hans W. Gierlich, managing director Telecom at the HEAD acoustics GmbH was nominated as ETSI fellow, a prestigious award for his outstanding contribution to the work of ETSI. In his nomination speech the ETSI director Luis Romero called him the “silent hero”. Dr. Gierlich is active in ETSI since its beginning in 1988. In the first years he was participating as an expert for Deutsche Telecom, later he represented HEAD acoustics GmbH. His activities were always dedicated to speech, speech transmission quality and all related aspects in networks and terminals. In consequence, he was active in standardization committees where speech quality was a topic - starting with analog and ISDN to packet based speech transmission, voice recognition and smart home technologies today.

Within the work of ETSI TIPHON he co-initiated the first ETSI VoIP speech quality test event – which got a blue-print for ETSI’s interoperability test events. His “home” in ETSI is the technical committee STQ (Speech and Multimedia Transmission Quality) where he was chair and is vice chair. In this committee the majority of speech-related standards in ETSI are developed, most of them gaining world-wide recognition and acceptance. Dr. Gierlich is planning to continue his activities: “There is still a lot to do until communication quality has reached a level which is close to human communication. And I am looking forward to actively accompanying this process.”

For more information please visit the ETSI website: www.etsi.org/membership/fellows