If each manufacturer developed products using own protocols, products by differing manufacturers would not be able to communicate with each other.

In order to unify these protocols, manufacturers and telecommunication carriers of each country are taking part in an international organization to create industry-wide standards.

However, even if standards exist, different equipment often cannot communicate with each other because the interpretation of the standards is different among manufacturers.

To avoid this problem, manufacturers conduct interoperability tests in the product development stage so that consumers don't have to worry about newly purchased equipment communicating with other equipment regardless of manufacturer.

This allows the design of systems which freely combine equipment by different manufacturers.

It is such interoperability activities which are central to the HATS(Harmonization of Advanced Telecommunication Systems) Conference.

By conducting interoperability tests on various equipment, the HATS Conference aims to assure interoperability to users and at the same time, facilitate the design of systems and networks.