3G Standardization Process

In 1998, the ITU called for Radio Transmission Technology (RTT) proposals for IMT-2000 [originally called Future Public Land Mobile Telecommunications Systems (FPLMTS)], the formal name for the Third Generation standard. Numerous proposals were submitted. The DECT and TDMA/Universal Wireless Communications organizations submitted plans for the RTT to be TDMA-based, while all other proposals for non-satellite based solutions were based on wideband CDMA - the main submissions were called Wideband CDMA (WCDMA) and cdma2000. The ETSI/GSM players, including infrastructure vendors such as Nokia and Ericsson, backed WCDMA, also known as UMTS. The North American CDMA community led by the CDMA Development Group (CDG), and included infrastructure vendors such as Qualcomm and Lucent Technologies, backed cdma2000.

In December 1998, the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) was created following an agreement between six standards setting bodies around the world including ETSI, ARIB and TIC of Japan, ANSI of the USA, and the TTA of Korea. This unprecedented cooperation into standards setting made 3GPP responsible for preparing, approving, and maintaining the Technical Specifications and Reports for a 3G mobile system based on evolved GSM core networks and the Frequency Division Duplex (FDD) and Time Division Duplex (TDD) radio access technology.

For example, ETSI SMG2 activities on 3G have been fully transferred to 3GPP. The CDMA Development Group was unfortunately not an original member of the 3GPP whereas both the EDGE and UMTS technical specifications were already being developed at 3GPP and supported by wireless organizations throughout the world.

The first half of 1999 saw much progress in terms of agreement upon a global IMT-2000 standard that met the political and commercial requirements of the various technologies - GSM, CDMA, and TDMA. In late March 1999, Ericsson purchased Qualcomm's CDMA infrastructure division and Ericsson and Qualcomm licensed each other's key Intellectual Property Rights and agreed to the ITU's 'family of networks' compromise to the various standards proposals.

ITU completed its Recommendations in late 1999 and sanctioned five terrestrial IMT-2000 standards. Refer to IMT-2000 Terrestrial Radio Interfaces diagram.

Having three different modes, one for Europe and Asia, one for Japan, and one for the U.S. does not differ much from the existing 2G situation. The main change in the 3G situation is that Japan has joined the European GSM and UMTS-based community and TDMA operators in the Americas have largely chosen their migration to GSM via the 3G evolutionary path of GPRS/EDGE/UMTS.

The ITU also developed indicative minimum requirements for data speeds that IMT-2000 standards must support. The following table describes some of the key service attributes and capabilities expected of 3G systems:

3G System Capabilities

Capability to support circuit and packet data at high bit rates: 144 Kilobits/second or higher in high mobility (vehicular) traffic 384 Kilobits/second for pedestrian traffic 2 Megabits/second or higher for indoor traffic

Interoperability and roaming

Common billing/user profiles: Sharing of usage/rate information between service providers Standardized call detail recording Standardized user profiles

Capability to determine geographic position of mobiles and report it to both the network and the mobile terminal

Support of multimedia services/capabilities: Fixed and variable rate bit traffic Bandwidth on demand Asymmetric data rates in the forward and reverse links Multimedia mail store and forward Broadband access up to 2 Megabits/second

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