March 15, 2016 

Alain Sultan, the 3GPP Work Plan manager, takes a look at the major milestones reached during the recent plenary meetings in Gothenburg, with a particular focus on the achievements of SA#71. 

Last week, SA completed all of the remaining Release 13 work, with one exception remaining – but with a clear end in sight.

Among the completed items, the most significant one may well be the Mission Critical work ("MCPTT"). To achieve this, for the first time in 3GPP, a live conference call was held during the SA meeting to complete the key remaining issue - deciding upon a voice codec for MCPTT. Thanks to this initiative, MCPTT’s functionality is now fully defined in Release 13.

At the time of writing, the Cellular Internet of Things (CIoT) work is still not fully completed. However, significant progress was made in Gothenburg and a clear set of actions was put in place to complete the work before June – which is the limit for ‘exceptions’ granted for Release 13 completion.

Turning to Release 14, another milestone was achieved with the freezing of the Stage 1 work. With this, an initial overview of the content of Release 14 is now possible. the Release will include the introduction of Vehicle-based communications, further improvements in MCPTT (Video and Data) and enhancements for Mobile TV.

SA1 normative work for Rel-14

(green background when completed):

Last but not least, Release 14 will see studies being completed on the fifth generation of the mobile system (5G). Some initial results were already presented by SA1.

SA1 studies for Rel-14

(green background when completed):

These studies now involve SA1, SA2, SA3 and RAN. The aim is to "prepare the ground" for some normative work to take place in Rel-15 (targeted for Stage 3 completion in June 2018), and have a full 5G system for Rel-16, by December 2019 (Stage 3 completion). 

Contact for this article: Kevin FLYNN, Marketing and Communications Officer, 3GPP