A standing committee of the ATIS Board of Directors, the Technology and Operations (TOPS) Council identifies the industry’s most pressing technical and operational priorities, and coordinates standardization efforts across the industry to produce interoperable, implementable, end-to-end solutions. The TOPS Council is chaired by Qwest CTO, Pieter Poll.

To support its efforts, the Council establishes focus groups, exploratory groups and task forces are established to address each of the "most critical" priorities as identified. These groups are led by members of the ATIS Board of Directors to examine the priority issues, set milestones, define needed deliverables and standards requirements, and develop a written work-plan that will guide ATIS’ coordination of the priority standards work. Additionally, the Council oversees the progress toward completion of the work plans, as ATIS and other standards organizations execute the necessary standards work.

The TOPS Council identified the most recent set of the industry's most pressing technical and operational issues in December, 2007:

Home Networking

Next Generation Carrier Interconnect

Service Oriented Networks
(IMS, SOA, Web 2.0)

Immediate past priorities on which work is still currently underway include:

Wireless-Wireline Convergence

Fiber to the Premises (& Optical Networking)

Inter-Carrier VoIP Call Routing

Broadband Services

NGN Identity Management

Service Capability Interaction Management (SCIM)

More information on the activities and initiatives to address the current priorities may be found on the Priorities page. Note that Broadband Services and Service Capability Interaction Management are being addressed within the context of Convergence. NGN Identity Management is being monitored within the PTSC.

Information on and deliverables from past focus groups may be found on the Archives page.