WHAT IS 3GPP?

The development of the GSM technology unified the Europe with a bond and realized a true European Union. Following the success of GSM, there was a need for a broadband system based on the GSM framework. This led to European countries looking forward to an advanced personal broadband service, which they called the 3G. So overall, the 3G standard is nothing more than personal broadband services on the GSM core network. Of course, the technology behind the 3G system is an advanced version known as the UMTS or the Universal Mobile Telecommunication System. Its main competitor is the IMT 2000, supervised by ITU.

Members of 3GPP

There are six organizational members of the 3GPP project. These members are the regional standard development organizations of different countries or continents. They are:

• European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI, Europe)
• Association of Radio Industries and Businesses (ARIB, Japan)
• Telecommunication Technology Committee (TTC, Japan)
• China Communications Standards Association (CCSA, China)
• Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions (ATIS, North America)
• Telecommunications Technology Association (TTA, South Korea)

The project was planned in 1997 and work started in December 1998. This 3GPP project started their work for the future of GSM. First the GPRS came in 2000, then the EDGE or the 2.7G (also the EGPRS) came in the year 2003. Later in the same year 3G came to the market commercially. Of course, the experimental versions of these technologies had come much before their public use. NTT DoCoMo first tried the experimental version of 3G in October 2001. Then in the US, the IMT 2000 based CDMA2000 lx EV-DO came into existence in 2003.

So overall, we can say that 3GPP is a European project in collaboration with the other leading members of the world, which seeks to create post-GSM networks on the GSM framework with the goal of meeting future mobile needs. The main contribution in the post-3G era which is coming to the public is 4G.