3GPP Scope and
Objectives
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Structure
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Legal Issues
| 3GPP Working
Procedures The 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) is a
collaboration agreement that was established in December 1998. The collaboration agreement brings together a number of
telecommunications standards bodies which are known as “Organizational
Partners”. The current Organizational Partners are ARIB, CCSA, ETSI,
ATIS, TTA, and
TTC. The establishment of 3GPP was formalized in December 1998 by
the signing of the “The 3rd Generation Partnership Project Agreement”.
The original scope of 3GPP was to produce globally applicable
Technical Specifications and Technical Reports for a 3rd Generation Mobile
System based on evolved GSM core networks and the radio access technologies that
they support (i.e., Universal Terrestrial Radio Access (UTRA) both Frequency
Division Duplex (FDD) and Time Division Duplex (TDD) modes). The scope was subsequently amended to include the maintenance and
development of the Global System for Mobile communication (GSM) Technical
Specifications and Technical Reports including evolved radio access technologies
(e.g. General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) and Enhanced Data rates for GSM
Evolution (EDGE)).
The discussions that led to the signing of the 3GPP Agreement
were recorded in a series of slides called the “Partnership
Project Description”
that describes the basic principles and ideas on which the project is based.
The Partnership Project Description has not been maintained since it’s
first creation but the principles of operation of the project still remain
valid.
In order to obtain a consolidated view of market requirements
a second category of partnership was created within the project called “Market
Representation Partners”.
“Observer” status is also possible within 3GPP for those
telecommunication standards bodies which have the potential to become
Organizational Partners but which, for various reasons, have not yet done so.
A permanent project support group called the “Mobile
Competence Centre (MCC)“
has been established to ensure the efficient day to day running of 3GPP. The MCC is based at the ETSI headquarters in Sophia Antipolis, France.
If you require any further information, this may be
obtained from “3GPP
Contact”
Last update: 2007-06-29: 3GPP agreement update
2006-04-24: link to Structure page corrected, link to obsolete TB Officials page
deleted; direct link to zip file of Working Procedures removed
2004-04-13