General Requirements for CAB Designation

The applicant conformity assessment body (CAB) must meet the following requirements:

Location of the CAB

The CAB must be located in the United States.

Laboratory Accreditation

For Phase-I (testing laboratories), the CAB shall be accredited to ISO/IEC 17025 by a NIST-Listed accreditation body that operates in compliance with ISO/IEC 17011.

Certification Body Accreditation

For Phase-II (certification bodies), the CAB shall be accredited to ISO/IEC 17065 by a NIST/NVCASE recognized accreditation body that operates in compliance with ISO/IEC 17011.

Technical Personnel

The CAB shall have the technical staff who has relevant experience and knowledge of technical requirements and policies of the economy in which it intends to provide conformity assessment results.

Location of Testing

Recognized test labs must perform all recognized testing at the recognized lab location only.  If it is necessary to temporarily subcontract recognized testing to another lab, the subcontracted lab must also be recognized by the economy in question and for the specific test methods being subcontracted.  

MRA partner telecom regulators will not accept test reports that include any test data that was generated by a test lab that the regulator  did not recognize.   Any exceptions to this will be noted on the NIST designation requirements web pages.

CAB Procedures

The CAB shall have the written procedures for initial training and the on-going training of the technical staff to keep current with the latest technical requirement of the APEC economy of interest;

On-Going Obligations & the NIST CAB Declaration

The CAB shall keep NIST informed of all changes which may affect its status.  This includes, but is not limited to, changes in key personnel, changes in accreditation status, changes in location, legal status, or other factors which may affect the organization's ability to perform the functions of a CAB under the referenced agreement.

The CAB shall sign the NIST CAB Declaration form declaring commitment to the requirements and responsibilities of being a designated and recognized CAB and agreeing to the terms of its designation and recognition.

For questions related to the NIST Telecom MRA Program, please contact mra [at] nist.gov (mra[at]nist[dot]gov).

Technical Content last revised June 21, 2021