3GPP

The 3^rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) is an international collaboration of telecommunications standards bodies in the standardization of public mobile communication systems. Its founding Organizational Partners are Japanese (ARIB and TTC), Chinese (CCSA), European (ETSI), American (ATIS) and Korean (TTA).

The initial scope of 3GPP was to develop a global standard for UMTS, or to put it more precisely the 3^rd Generation Mobile System within the scope of the IMT-2000 framework program of the ITU. Hence the name 3GPP. Standardization was based on evolved GSM core networks and the radio access technologies that they support (i.e., Universal Terrestrial Radio Access (UTRA) both Frequency Division Duplex (FDD) and Time Division Duplex (TDD) modes).

The scope was later amended to include the maintenance and development of the Global System for GSM including evolved radio access technologies, such as the General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) and Enhanced Data rates for GSM Evolution (EDGE). Later, its scope was extended even further to encompass the development and maintenance of other standards for the 4th generation (LTE) and 5th generation of mobile communications.