Classroom Companion: Business

15.2.2 
 ETSI
The European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) was established in 
1988 as an offspring of the Conférence européenne des administrations des postes et 
des télécommunications (CEPT). ETSI is an independent standardization organiza-
tion for the EU and associated European states (e.g., Switzerland, Norway, and 
Turkey). Industries and organizations of these countries are the full members of 
ETSI. In addition, there are several organizations and industries from other coun-
ties outside Europe that are associated members, for example, USA, Japan, People’s 
Republic of China, India, Brazil, Australia, and Canada. Currently, ETSI has over 
800 full and associated members (countries, industries, and organizations).
ETSI is now regarded as world’s most influential, progressive, and successful 
standardization organization on all aspects of information and communications 
15.2 · Standards Organizations

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technologies, including new fields such as machine-to-machine (M2M) technolo-
gies and the Internet of Things (IoT). ETSI has taken over many of the roles ITU 
had previously, publishing more than 2000 standards every year.
15.2.3 
 3GPP
The third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) is responsible for developing the 
standards for public land mobile networks 3G, 4G, 5G, and beyond. 3GPP has also 
taken the leadership in developing Internet standards for applications in mobile 
systems such as new voice-over-IP standards, the IP multimedia subsystem (IMS) 
for application in all-IP mobile systems, and access technologies and architectures 
for the Internet of Things.
3GPP is a partnership of the major standardization organizations in the USA, 
Europe, and Asia. The technical support team is located at the headquarters of the 
European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) in Sophia Antipolis, 
France. The standardization work is based on voluntary contributions from more 
than 370 member organizations.
All standards made by 3GPP can be accessed and loaded down free of charge 
by anyone and are, in this respect, free open-source standards (The 3GPP specifica-
tions can be loaded down free of charge from 
7
http://www. 3gpp. org/specifica-
tions/releases
). One of the most successful technological evolutions in ICT is the 
evolution of the digital mobile telephone service, starting with implementation of 
GSM in 1991. The events leading to the standardization of mobile communica-
tions are reviewed in 
7
Box 
15.1
.