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Mobile Industry Launches "European Friends of 3GPP" Cannes, France – 20 February 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. Welcoming the launch of 'European Friends of 3GPP', 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." Ericsson is actively contributing to the 3GPP technical specification work for open global standards. “The European Friends of 3GPP initiative will help us and other companies a lot in the 3GPP specification work in order to meet the market demands and create an ability for faster development and roll-out of 3G networks” says Dr Gunnar Sandegren, Vice President of Technology & Business Strategy at Ericsson’s business unit mobile systems WCDMA & GSM. These views were supported by Dirk Weiler, Vice President Standards and Fora at Siemens Information and Communication Mobile, who said: "It is important for the whole 3GPP community to ensure adequate meeting participation of the members of 3GPP. The EF3 initiative therefore is not only in the interest of European members, but helps to keep the leading role of 3GPP in our business." Mr Karl Heinz Rosenbrock, Director-General of ETSI, added his endorsement: "I welcome the initiative from the ETSI membership as it will lead to more meetings in centrally located places in Europe, and thus to a substantial reduction in travelling expenses for the majority of the experts active in 3GPP." Marc Rouanne, president of Alcatel's mobile networks activities, said: "Alcatel is proud to join this European initiative which reinforces our view that 3GPP is the leading place for 3G mobile standardisation". Ross MacLeod Vice President UMTS Systems at Nortel Networks, added : “This proposal should ensure the industry maintains the highest quality as it continues to deliver the 3GPP standards on time to meet the market needs”. “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.”
NOTES TO EDITORS The 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) was established for the preparation and maintenance of a complete set of globally applicable technical specifications for a Third Generation mobile system based on the evolved GSM core networks and the Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (W-CDMA) and Time Division Synchronous Code Division Multiple Access (TD-SCDMA) radio access technologies supported by 3GPP partners. 3GPP membership consists of three categories – Organizational Partners, Market Representation Partners and Individual Member companies. More than 450 companies from around the world now participate actively as Individual Members. 3GPPTM is a trade mark of ETSI registered for the benefit of the 3GPP Organizational Partners. For more information on the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), visit the 3GPP web site: http://www.3gpp.org For further information about this news release please contact
Alcatel: Laurent Dunoyer de
Segonzac - Phone: +33 (0)1 40 76 15 04
Ericsson: James Borup
- Phone: +46 70 590 9261 ETSI: Phone: +33 4 92 94 43 12 - E-mail: press@etsi.fr Lucent
Technologies: Kurt Steinert - Phone: 973 3868438 MMO2:
David Nicholas - Phone: +44 (0)771 575 9176 Nokia: Heikki Ahava - Email: nokia.networks@nokia.com
Nortel: Claire Cranton
- Phone: +44 7720 507 272 Orange: Nicholas Green - Phone: +44 7976 957 810 Siemens:
Florian Kreutz - Phone: +49 172 861 609 Vodafone:
Anna Cloke - Phone: +44 7000 500100
T-Mobile :
Stephan Althoff - Phone: +49 (0) 228 536 1717
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