Page 12 - 3GPP Highlights

PARTNER FOCUS

MADE FOR THE GLOBAL MARKET

With help from the 3GPP Project Coordination Group (PCG) Chair and the three
Vice-Chairs, we look back to the creation of the 3rd Generation Partnership Project
at a time when International cooperation was needed to allow mobile broadband

standards to reach their full potential. We also asked them for some insight into what
comes next for the project.

In 1998 the founding Organizational The vision was clear that rather than having
Partners - Standards Developing a different standard developed in each
Organizations (SDOs) - from Asia, Europe country or region and then wait for the
and North America, formed a common market to declare a winner, we managed to
project to co-operate on the production get one step ahead, where everyone in the
of technical specifications for a 3rd partnership agreed on a common standard.”
Generation mobile system - based on GSM
evolution. 3GPP was created to do the
technical work, with the Organizational SDOS MOVE
Partners (OPs) providing the membership. TO ALIGN ON 3G
We asked ETSI Director General,
Luis Jorge Romero, about the ETSI GSM
standards. How big a risk was it to BRINGING
move that work into 3GPP and why In both Korea and Japan, at the same time,
was it needed? there had been progress towards market ECONOMIES
liberalization and an openness to search
Luis Jorge Romero: “There was an element beyond national borders for the next step OF SCALE
of risk, given that the GSM specifications in cellular.
were ETSI’s, but we all understood that
we had to work with the other colleagues Kyoung Cheol Koo, Vice President of TTA,
around the world towards a global system, shares his views on how TTA decided on the Prior to 1998, the U.S. had successfully
with all of the potential that offered. best way forward for 3G. deployed several networks based on
Kyoung Cheol Koo: “In 1996, the first national standards, that were influential in
“we all understood commercial CDMA service was launched international deployments. However, the
that we had to work in Korea, which was a great step up toward global market was still fragmented.
a leadership role in telecommunications.
As the market and technical capabilities
with the other Then, quite soon after we had to plan for grew, the U.S. was also planning its
the move to 3G (IMT-2000), so we were future technical direction, with the T1
colleagues around the facing a choice between WCDMA (UMTS) standards body (later to become a part
and CDMA-2000. of ATIS), working on wireless multimedia
world towards a global There was some debate – even at and messaging services (WIMS), using
system, with all of the government level – and there was strong W-CDMA technology.
support for CDMA-2000, as a mature ATIS President and CEO Susan Miller
potential that offered.” commercial service. That said, 3GPP was explains how the industry pulled together
also a strong option for the future, from to align the strong U.S. incumbent service
the TTA perspective. We wanted to avoid
ETSI (TC SMG) was very advanced with divergence, for the good of the users providers and vendors to look towards an
GSM Phase 2+ and was already working and industry and it was obvious that the international solution for 3G.
on what we called the Universal Mobile partnership would provide an opportunity Susan Miller: “Early on, the U.S. industry
Telecommunications System (UMTS). With for improving global manufacturing recognized that moving to global technical
the concept of GSM evolution in place, we progress and competitiveness.” standards for the third generation
could then work to establish 3GPP with would deliver economies of scale leading
like-minded partners. to reduced costs and creating new
opportunities for equipment vendors
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12 3GPP Highlights newsletter in the international market.