The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there. But in technology, the past can feel so different that it’s a whole new planet. Let’s look back 25 years, to 1999: we were dealing with the Millennium Bug, while navigating the World Wide Web via dial-up. There were no smartphones yet, of course, but the mobile communications industry in 1999 was already a global juggernaut, with hundreds of millions of subscribers and a rapid rate of growth. The launch of 3G was coming up fast, and the mobile internet was poised to take over our lives.

In 1995, the European Community (EC) announced a change in telecom regulation with the R&TTE Directive, which removed requirements for interworking with networks (Type Approval), and was scheduled to come into effect in 1999. For the mobile industry leaders at the time, it was clear there would come a need for strong, well-managed certification of devices, to ensure problem-free interworking, as it was called then, or interoperability, as we would say today.

Following this announced regulatory change, the CTF (Certification Task Force) was started by industry operators in 1997 and joined by leading manufacturers. The CTF then evolved into the Voluntary Certification Scheme (VCS) that held meetings over a period of several months, leading to the “London Agreement” on 24th August 1999 by nine manufacturers, ten operators, and the GSM Association.

At this meeting in London, the principles of the Global Certification Forum were defined and agreed, being a key principle that decisions would require dual majority of both participating operators and device manufacturers. The Global Certification Forum was being effectively set up, where all operator members being part of the GSM Association (GSMA), device manufacturers, and other parties with an interest (observers) could participate in the certification activities. The rest, as they say, is history.

Milestones of GCF

Since the foundation of GCF, its certification programs have been helping the industry to deploy new mobile standards-based technologies, in all standards-based wireless communication generations from GSM to 5G. Through the years, GCF’s activities and certifications have evolved in line with the technology developments. As a result, tracking GCF’s milestones gives us an insight into the progress of our industry. The first device certified by GCF was the Nokia 6210, a GSM single band handset, back in the year 2000. Within the same year, the first dual-band GSM handset (Motorola V51) and the first handset supporting GPRS, Motorola T260, were also certified by GCF. The jump from circuit-switched to packet-switched with GPRS was an important step for the industry.

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