Mobile Industry Launches "European Friends of 3GPP"

date: March 9, 2002

Companies in the mobile communications industry have announced the creation of an initiative to be known as 'European Friends of 3GPP', or EF3. The initiative is intended to fund the organisation and support of 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPPTM) meetings in Europe.

Meetings of specification activities such as 3GPP are frequently hosted and managed by participating companies at their own expense. However, the worldwide interest in the technologies being specified often leads to very large meetings, which pose considerable financial and organisational burdens for the host, especially where that is a single company.

By seeking to arrange and fund meetings in accessible locations with the support of the active members of 3GPP in Europe, 'European Friends of 3GPP' has been created to reduce the financial and administrative burdens on individual companies. It is expected that many of these members will join the initiative. The following companies have today signed the Letters of Intent: Alcatel, Ericsson, Lucent Technologies, Nortel Networks, Siemens, and Vodafone. Orange, MMO2, Nokia and T-Mobile have announced their intention to sign in the near future. These companies are being assisted by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), which is the European "Organisational Partner" in 3GPP. The signatories are all Members of ETSI.

Under the new initiative, ETSI will work with the signatories to find suitable venues that are accessible to all for 3GPP meetings within Europe and provide the necessary logistics, the aim being to ensure the most efficient use of resources and a consistent set of services for delegates.

The purpose of the initiative is to maximise the effectiveness of the contribution of 3GPP participating companies in Europe to the work of the Partnership Project in designing emerging 3rd Generation mobile technologies.

Professor Michael Walker, Group Research and Development Director of Vodafone remarked: "With EF3, we will be able to send our delegates to standards meetings with less travel, so they will be able to concentrate on the task without jet-lag. I hope that most active European members of 3GPP will join us."

“The EF3 group will help smooth the path towards industry – wide co-operation at the roll-out of 3G services” said Paul Mankievich Chief Technical Officer of Lucent Mobility Solutions Group. “We’re very supportive of this effort to speed the commercialisation of 3G technology.”

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