The 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) will next week hold a special one-day event in Melbourne to brief executive-level representatives of Australian and New Zealand governments, academia and industry on the important role performed by 3GPP in the development and maintenance of open standards to:

• Support the global operational communication technologies and capabilities for specific business and mission-critical sectors of the communications market;

• Provide a path to a connected society via LTE, 5G and 6G specification work to meet a futuristic set of use cases; and

• Move forward in ANZ based on an established dialogue at government, public safety, security agency, transport and industry stakeholder level.
   

3GPP unites seven of the world’s telecommunications standard development organisations to provide a stable environment in which to define the open standards underpinning current and future mobile cellular networks. With 3GPP’s quarterly plenary being hosted by Telstra in Melbourne on 9–14 September, the 3GPP leadership team agreed to extend their visit by a few days in order to exchange information with the ANZ community. A special government-only stream will be held on the morning of 17 September at MCEC, while an afternoon session will be open to members of industry, academia and other critical communications user organisations.

“Having this event in Melbourne on 17 September is a bit of a rarity,” said Kevin Flynn, 3GPP Marketing and Communications Officer. “Standards delegates tend to escape as soon as the [plenary] meeting closes … but with most delegates coming a long way for these 3GPP plenaries, we are grateful to have the opportunity to add this to the usual schedule.”

Representatives from 3GPP, ETSI and TCCA will be presenting on the current status and strategic direction for 3GPP systems through evolving generational features for a growing number of user communities. Progress on key topics such as mission-critical voice, data and video (MCX), Future Rail Mobile Communication Systems (FRMCS) and off-network capabilities will be reported, alongside details of the 3GPP plan for 5G, 5G-Advanced (including the current Release 19 standard) and future 6G work. TCCA will meanwhile explain the work it is doing with the Global Certification Forum in building an MCX conformance, certification and interoperability testing regime to support the evolution of a multivendor end-to-end ecosystem.

“This is a rare opportunity for the ANZ community to understand the progress of the standards [and] the enhancements that are in progress; to provide feedback to the 3GPP leadership on user requirements and use cases; and to discuss openly the possibilities the work commencing on 6G may benefit future functionality enhancements,” said TCCA CEO Kevin Graham. “Understanding the standards evolution roadmap also allows ANZ industry to consider the market opportunities for academic curriculum, R&D and local product development of products and applications to have local and potentially international appeal.”

According to Graham, all stakeholders in critical communications will benefit from attending the event, including representatives from “network operators, regulatory bodies, the vendor community, systems integrators, consultants and vendor channel partners serving business and mission-critical user organisations, emergency services, public safety, rail, transport, utilities, energy, oil, gas and mining”. Flynn added that the 3GPP team hopes to meet a variety of standards users and experts, claiming the most valuable part of the event “may come from the Q&A and the offline discussions”.

“We have our top leadership in Melbourne, so I do hope that we can shine a light on the 5G work and the plans for the next generation,” he said.

For more information and to register, visit https://tcca.info/3gpp-tcca-leading-global-mobile-standards-connection-is-the-lifeline/.

Photo Courtesy iStock.com/skynesher