The 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) is an umbrella term for a number of standards organizations which develop protocols for mobile telecommunications. Its best known work is the development and maintenance of: 3GPP is a consortium with seven national or regional telecommunication standards organizations as primary members ("organizational partners") and a variety of other organizations as associate members ("market representation partners"). The 3GPP organizes its work into three different streams: Radio Access Networks, Services and Systems Aspects, and Core Network and Terminals. The project was established in December 1998 with the goal of developing a specification for a 3G mobile phone system based on the 2G GSM system, within the scope of the International Telecommunication Union's International Mobile Telecommunications-2000, hence the name 3GPP. It should not be confused with 3rd Generation Partnership Project 2 (3GPP2), which developed a competing 3G system, CDMA2000. The 3GPP administrative support team (known as the "Mobile Competence Centre") is located at the European Telecommunications Standards Institute headquarters in the Sophia Antipolis technology park in France.

Organizational Partners

The seven 3GPP Organizational Partners are from Asia, Europe and North America. Their aim is to determine the general policy and strategy of 3GPP and perform the following tasks: Together with the Market Representation Partners (MRPs) perform the following tasks: The Organizational Partners are:

Market Representation Partners

The 3GPP Organizational Partners can invite a Market Representation Partner to take part in 3GPP, which: , the Market Representation Partners are:

Standards

3GPP standards are structured as Releases. Discussion of 3GPP thus frequently refers to the functionality in one release or another. Each release incorporates hundreds of individual Technical Specification and Technical Report documents, each of which may have been through many revisions. Current 3GPP standards incorporate the latest revision of the GSM standards. The documents are made available without charge on 3GPP's web site. The Technical Specifications cover not only the radio part ("Air Interface") and Core Network, but also billing information and speech coding down to source code level. Cryptographic aspects (such as authentication, confidentiality) are also specified.

Specification groups

The 3GPP specification work is done in Technical Specification Groups (TSGs) and Working Groups (WGs). There are three Technical Specifications Groups, each of which consists of multiple WGs: The closure of GERAN was announced in January 2016. The specification work on legacy GSM/EDGE system was transferred to RAN WG, RAN6. RAN6 was closed in July 2020 (https://www.3gpp.org/news-events/2128-r6_geran). The 3GPP structure also includes a Project Coordination Group, which is the highest decision-making body. Its missions include the management of overall timeframe and work progress.

Standardization process

3GPP standardization work is contribution-driven. Companies ("individual members") participate through their membership to a 3GPP Organizational Partner. As of December 2020, 3GPP is composed of 719 individual members. Specification work is done at WG and at TSG level: 3GPP follows a three-stage methodology as defined in ITU-T Recommendation I.130: Test specifications are sometimes defined as stage 4, as they follow stage 3. Specifications are grouped into releases. A release consists of a set of internally consistent set of features and specifications. Timeframes are defined for each release by specifying freezing dates. Once a release is frozen, only essential corrections are allowed (i.e. addition and modifications of functions are forbidden). Freezing dates are defined for each stage. The 3GPP specifications are transposed into deliverables by the Organizational Partners.