3GPP FAQs

The first 3GPP methods seminar was held at ETSI headquarters in June 2009. The presentations given there are still relevant and are freely available from the 3GPP web site - (Click here) - Covering the following topics;

3GPP Intro, Basics, Meetings, Rules, Following the work, Preparing meetings, Organizing and chairing meetings, Work Plan, Work items, WID improvement, Spec numbering, Drafting specs, Change Requests, Chair’s Role, Elections, Voting, Electronic meetings, Funding, Legal aspects.

The presentations were filmed - see the movie ....

LATEST (June 2024): A new presentation is available here: https://www.3gpp.org/ftp/Information/presentations/Newcomers_quick-start 

• Representatives of members of participating Organizational Partners (i.e. Individual Members)
• Representatives of Organizational Partners
• Representatives of Market Representation Partners.
• Representatives of Observers and Guests

Precise details are given in the 3GPP Working Procedures.

All is revealed here.

Delegates must register - in advance of the meeting - their intention to participate. Regitration is on-line, using the URL given in the meeting invitation or via the link shown against the meeting on the portal (Meetings tab) or web site meeting page (e.g. for RAN1). Ensure you register under the correct company or other organization. If this is your first 3GPP meeting and your are unknown to our database, you will have to follow the instructions for creating a new "person" record. See below for how to proceed if you change employer or if your employer restructures its business. When you have successfully registered for a meeting, you will receive an automatic acknowledgment email. Keep this safe! - you will need to refer to it for confirming your presence at the meeting. This email also contains a hyperlink to enable you to print your meeting badge: you are responsible for printing that badge, and you must wear it throughout the meeting. At the meeting venue, the host will provide a limited number of badge holders, but you are encouraged to retain your badge holder and to re-use it for each 3GPP meeting you attend.

When you are at the meeting, wear your badge throughout the meeting, and once the meeting has started (and before it finishes), you must "check in" to confirm your presence. Instructions for how to check-in on line are given in the registration acknowlegment email (which is why you must keep that email safe!).

Occasionally - for example, at ad hoc meetings which, exceptionally, are not supported by MCC, or at venues where it is technically impossible for MCC to install a local meeting server - it will be necessary to check in by signing against your name on a paper attendance sheet; in this case, it is your signature which confirms your presence.

If you do not check in at the meeting, the organization you represent may lose voting rights.

3GPP etiquette demands that you

• do not check in using another colleague's token (or by forging their signature);
• at venues where several groups are holding parallel meetings, do not check in for meetings other than those in which you actually participate.

If you have forgotten to register in advance, all is not lost: register straight away and receive your check-in token and badge URL. You remain responsible for printing - and wearing - your badge. Unless you have registered, you will not be able to check in, and your organization may lose voting rights.

Note that registering for the meeting is quite independent of booking hotel accommodation!

When you register for a meeting, you will have to identify yourself, either by your ETSI On-Line account coordinates or by your name and email address. If you have recently changed employer, or have a new email address, DO NOT CREATE A NEW PERSON RECORD during the registration process, but follow the link to update your existing record first.

By default, you will be registered as representing your employer at the meeting, as long as that employer is a 3GPP Individual Member organization. If you wish to represent any other organization, select it from the appropriate list. When representing an organization other than your employer, at the moment you confirm your registration, an email will be automatically sent to both the TSG/WG Secretary and the official contact person of the represented organization informing them of the fact.

If you wish to represent an Individual Member other than your employer, do not create a new Person record in our database. Use your existing record, but select the appropriate "represented organization" from the pull-down list as described above.

Participation in TSG and WG meetings is recorded by the Support Team based on on-line check-in (or, exceptionally, signatures on the participants list). An Individual Member organization’s right to vote in a particular group (TSG or WG) depends on its delegates’ participating - and being recorded as participating - in meetings of that group. The official participation record appears in the secretary’s report of the meeting, and the Individual Member organization you represent will acquire / maintain the right to vote at that meeting.

If you (or a colleague from the same organization) does not attend a group for three "ordinary" meetings, the IM will lose the right to vote at subsequent meetings. Find more information on voting rights here (especially slide 18 ff).

If you do not sign check in, you will be deemed not to have participated in the meeting! Note that you will not be able to check in on-line after the meeting has finished.

Each TSG has a Chair and up to three Vice-Chairs who are from member organizations, and a secretary from the 3GPP support team. The arrangements for WGs are similar, but WGs may have a maximum of two Vice-Chairs. Contact details of the officials can be obtained from the homepage of the individual TSG or WG (e.g. for SA4).

See the Elections section of the site for details of the imminent elections and recent results.

For more information on the election of officials; see the 3GPP Working Procedures.

At the start of every meeting, the Chair shall read out a statement concerning declaration of Intellectual Property and a statement concerning compliance with antitrust (compatition) law. They shall also mention the conditions of LAN and internet fair usage usage (cited below).

If you change employer, let MCC know (mailto:3gppMembership@etsi.org) and we wll update your records. If you change any other parameters of your Person record, e.g. your contact coordinates, you should immediately take steps to update your Person record held by 3GPP. If you have an ETSI-On-Line (EOL) account, you should update your own coordinates by visiting this page and correcting your own record. If your email address has changed, you should take particular care to tick the check box to force all exploder lists managed by 3GPP to be updated to reflect that new address. If you do not have an EOL account, you should send an email to 3GPP Contact with full details of your new coordinates, and MCC will update the record for you. However, if you change employer, your old EOL account will no longer be valid, and you should email us with full details of your new employer. We will issue a new EOL account and cancel the previous one.

When a company restructures, or is involved in a take-over or merger, the company may itself inform the appropriate OP(s) of the change and in due course the OPs will inform the 3GPP Support Team. In this case, we will make appropriate changes to all affected employees of the organizations concerned, and delegates need take no explicit action (other than to check that their new coordinates are correctly recorded).

If you change employer, you are of course no longer eligible to represent the old employer, unless it is within the same group of companies. If the new employer is a 3GPP Individual Member (or OP, MRP, etc) you are immediately able to attend meetings representing that new organization.  If a member organization restructures itself, its delegates may find that they are no longer employed by their original organization. However, changes in 3GPP membership normally occur rather later, and the original memberships will persist for some time. Until the new structure becomes reflected in the 3GPP membership, you may continue to attend meetings representing your former organization.

If you are the official contact person of a member organization, you can remove employees when they leave your organization by visiting https://portal.etsi.org/webapp/teldir/ListPers.asp. You will have to log in with your EoL account. Alternatively, you can notify MCC (mailto:3gppMembership@etsi.org). Unless you take this action, or the employee themself tells us they have left your organization, the ex-employee will retain their identity as an employee and can continue to act in that capacity if they so wishes.

It is often difficult for a company, especially a new member, to decide which 3GPP Groups to attend in order to be most effective in contributing to the work and to incorporating their ideas into the latest Release of specifications. This is particularly so for smaller organizations which may not have the resources to send a large enough number of delegates to cover all Groups. In order to make a sensible selection, you should review the Terns Of Reference of each Technical Specifications Group, and each Working Group, and look at the Work items and Specifications that each is responsible for. There is a structural map on the Specification Groups home page. Use the main menu item "Specification Groups" to select each Group of interest in turn. Each Group's page gives the latest Terms of Reference of that group, and in a table lower down you can link to lists of active Work Items and of active Specifications. You may also find the page listing the Specification series of interest.

MCC can give you further information or guidance if need be.

Each TSG or WG has a specific documents area allocated on the 3GPP ftp server. This is where you will find the all meeting documents including invitations, agenda, reports, contributions (TDocs) relating to that group. Delegates are advised to download and read all documents prior to the meeting. This will avoid saturating the meeting network during the first minutes at the start of the meeting.

During the meeting, new documents are made avaiable on the local meeting server in the Inbox folder pertaining to the group in question. The secretary may copy them to the main public server from time to time during the meeting if time permits. After the end of the meeting, the secretary will ensure that the public server is brought up to date with all documents created during the meeting.

Downloading meeting documents individually using HTTP is very time-consuming, and delegates are strongly encouraged to use FTP. Some organizations configure employees’ PCs to inhibit the use of FTP: delegates may wish to ask their IT department to relax this restriction to enable more efficient meeting participation. Bear in mind that some meetings deal with over a thousand TDocs.

Archeological note: Written contributions are referred to as TDocs (or tdocs). This is an abbreviation of "temporary document" and in the long-ago (pre-3GPP) era of all-paper meetings, signified that such documents’ lifespan was limited to the meeting at which they were presented. Following the meeting, TDocs were destroyed. If any information presented in a TDoc was to have continuing validity afterwards, it had to be captured in a "permenant document" or in the meeting report. For this reason, it was not legitimate for a publishable deliverable (TS or TR in 3GPP context) to use a TDoc as a reference. 3GPP has always operated 100% electronic (0% paper) as far as contribution documents are concerned. Documents are not deleted following the meeting, but are retained on the public server indefinitely. Neverthess, the term "TDoc" persists. But 3GPP has no concept of "permanent documents".

Any 3GPP Individual Member or OP or MRP may make a contribution to a 3GPP meeting. Each meeting invitation will contain details of how to register and provide contributions for that meeting. See the Meetings pages of the web site or, more usefully, the Meetings tab of the 3GPP Portal for more details. All bona fide 3GPP delegates will be issued with an ETSI-On-Line (EOL) account, and we will notify you of your username and your password. You should use these credentials when registering for a meeting (see above) and you must log in on the 3GPP Portal to perform certain operations, in particular, reserving a TDoc number.

Organizations which have been granted temporary Guest or Observer status are not allowed to make technical contributions.

Organizations which are not Individual Members of 3GPP (or are not OPs or MRPs) must not appear as the "source" of a technical contribution other than those classified as as Liaison Statements. There is no restriction on organizations with which 3GPP may exchange Liaison Statements other than outgoing LSs to the ITU, as identified in the 3GPP Working Procedures.

You should familiarize yourself with the user instructions for the portal, and take great care to select the correct TDoc type when reserving a number.

Most 3GPP meetings are held in countries / regions in which 3GPP Individual Members are based (Europe, North America, Asia.) Meeting locations tend to reflect the geographical diversity of the TSG and WG participants. Meetings may occasionally be hosted outside these regions by agreement of the delegates and, if necessary, the PCG.

Any 3GPP Individual Member or group thereof may host a meeting. For more information on hosting requirements see here....

Invitations for 3GPP meetings supplying the necessary logistical information are to be distributed by the host well in advance (see 3GPP Working Procedures, article 31), to the TSG or WG membership via the appropriate email exploder, and also posted on the 3GPP website.

You may consult the meetings page for individual TSG or WGs or the Meetings tab of the 3GPP Portal where you will find the archives of past meetings, and information relating to any future meetings for that group.

Each TSG or WG meeting has a structured numbering scheme for its documents. Delegates wishing to make contributions must first obtain a document number via the 3GPP Portal.

Note that the obsolete Automatic Document Numbering (ADN) tool is no longer in use.

Several templates exist for submitting contributions to meetings. These can be found on the respective meeting folder on the ftp server, based on generic templates available in the information directory

• Skeleton of Technical Report document -- OBSOLETE, see combined TS-TR skeleton below
• Skeleton of Technical Specification document -- OBSOLETE, see combined TS-TR skeleton below
• Skeleton of Technical Specification / Technical Report document
• TS/TR presentation to TSG cover sheet
• Change Request (CR) cover sheet
• Liaison Statement (LS)
• Work Item Description (WID)
• Work Item status report
• Work Item exception sheet
• 3GPP presentation
• Proxy vote form     [see tips on the use of this form below]
• Meeting invitation [to follow]
• Visa application letter template
• Configuring WiFi access (presentation)

Use the TS/TR template provided (via the section above) and follow the guidances embedded in that document.

Follow the drafting rules (all of them!) given in 3GPP TR 21.801.

Also follow the procedural rules given in the 3GPP Working Procedures and the TSG procedures in 3GPP TR 21.900.

Use common sense. If that fails, ask your group’s Support Team Project Manager.

Delegates are reminded that they share the meeting IT resources with their fellow delegates. You should not abuse the service by using bandwidth-hogging applications such as movie downloads, streaming video, web-based gaming, etc during the meeting. Use the internet service in your hotel rooms for this!

Delegates must respect the law of the hosting country, and should not visit prohibited internet sites.

In cases of persistent abuse of the internet bandwidth, MCC may restrict individual’s use of the service.

In particular, the PCG has laid down the following network usage conditions:

1. Users shall not use the network to engage in illegal activities. This includes activities such as copyright violation, hacking, espionage or any other activity that may be prohibited by local laws.

2. Users shall not engage in non-work-related activities that consume excessive bandwidth or cause significant degradation of the performance of the network.

Since the network is a shared resource, users should exercise some basic etiquette when using the 3GPP network at a meeting. It is understood that high bandwidth applications such as downloading large files or video streaming might be required for business purposes, but delegates should be strongly discouraged from performing these activities for personal use. Downloading a movie or doing something in an interactive environment for personal use essentially wastes bandwidth that others need to make the meeting effective. The meeting Chair should remind end users that the network is a shared resource; the more one user grabs, the less there is for another. Email and its attachments already take up significant bandwidth (certain email programs are not very bandwidth efficient). In case of need the chair can ask the delegates to restrict IT usage to things that are essential for the meeting itself.

1. DON’T place your WiFi device in ad-hoc mode
2. DON’T set up a personal hotspot in the meeting room
3. DO try 802.11a if your WiFi device supports it
4. DON’T manually allocate an IP address
5. DON’T be a bandwidth hog by streaming video, playing online games, or downloading huge files
6. DON’T use packet probing software which clogs the local network (e.g., packet sniffers or port scanners)

Certain TSs contain formal SDL diagrams, MSC diagrams, and tests using TTCN. These require specialist tools to edit (see 3GPP TR 21.801 annex H.5 and annex I. These tools are expensive to purchase or license, so ETSI graciously makes a centralized instance of the tools available for the use of 3GPP delegates.

In order to use such tools, refer to the guideline document, then contact ETSI Helpdesk to obtain a personal account.

The facility for voting by proxy is described in the 3GPP Working Procedures, but the following tips will be useful for organizations wishing to use this technique at TSG or WG meetings. The process is identical for both elections and technical votes.

• Consult the voting list established for the vote in question to ensure that your organization is entitled to vote by proxy.
• Ask a friendly delegate who will attend the meeting representing an organization which is eligible to vote in person if they will agree to cast your organization's vote. This is important! Note that
  • You may request that the chosen person casts your vote in a particular way, but you have no way of checking whether they in fact did so!
  • There is a maximum number of proxy votes which a given individual can carry. This is laid down in the 3GPP Working Procedures. Check that your organization's vote will not violate that rule.
• The letter authorizing the chosen person to vote on behalf of your organization must be drafted according to the pro forma available via the link on this page. The letter should be on your organization's letterhead (and not on the letterhead of the organization whose representative will actually cast the vote!).
• Ensure (by checking the participants list) that the person who has agreed to cast the vote on behalf of your organization 
  • has registered to participate in the meeting in question, and
  • has registered to represent the organization designated in the proxy letter.
• The authorization letter must be signed by a senior person within the organization on behalf of which the vote will be cast. Ideally, this will be the person designated as "official contact" or "voting contact" for the organization. It is mandatory for all 3GPP member organizations to designate at least one such person. The letter should indicate the signer's job position and name. (MCC will reject a proxy letter if the person signing it cannot be identified.)
• Under exceptionsl circumstances, another person's signature may be acceptable, as long as the person is known (to MCC) to be a bona fide representative of the organization giving the proxy.
• The signed proxy letter should be scanned and sent by email to MCC's Voting Coordinator and to the Sectetary of the TSG or WG in question (both identified on the MCC page on this site).
• Prepare the proxy letter well in advance, bearing in mind all the steps above. Ideally, the signed letter should be with the Secretary at least one week in advance of the meeting at which the vote will take place. This ensures that MCC can validate it and catalogue it to ensure it is taken into consideration during the actual casting of the ballots.