Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP)
3GPPTM is a partnership project bringing together national Standards Development Organizations (SDOs) from around the globe initially to develop technical specifications for the 3rd generation of mobile, cellular telecommunications, UMTS.
We took over the maintenance of the (2nd generation) GSM specifications already brought to maturity by ETSI TC SMG, and which had formed the basis for 3G development. We later instigated 4th generation mobile with LTE and more recently the 5th generation, 5G. Technologies developed and maintained by 3GPP include EDGE, HSPA, Carrier Aggregation, NR, EPC and NG-CN, descriptions of which can be found in the Technologies pages.
3GPP now encompasses seven SDOs: ETSI (Europe and rest of world), ATIS (USA), ARIB and TTC (Japan), TTA (South Korea), CCSA (China) and TSDSI (India). Technical input comes from around 2000 delegates representing member organizations of these SDOs. ETSI provides the 20-person secretariat which coordinates some 140 meetings per year handling 100,000 contribution documents. The running costs are divided amongst the SDOs, and a number of regional “Friends of 3GPP” groups fund the meetings in their respective regions.
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