The Global Certification Forum (GCF) has joined 3GPP as a Market Representation Partner (MRP). GCF’s application was formally approved by the 3GPP Organisational Partners – seven standardisation bodies representing Asia, Europe and North America - at their recent meeting in India.
3GPP’s Market Representation Partners are industry organisations which have the ability to offer market advice to 3GPP and to bring into 3GPP consensus views of market requirements in areas such as functionality, features and services that fall within the 3GPP scope.
The new partnership builds on a long-established and successful working relationship between GCF and 3GPP: a significant majority of the test cases used to assess a device’s conformance with standards and interoperability across different networks are defined by 3GPP.
The Certification Criteria included within GCF reflect the consensus among operator and manufacturer members on features and functionalities being demanded by the global market.
Drawing on the experiences of its 280+ device manufacturers, major network operators and test industry members, GCF can contribute broad insights on the range of technologies being incorporated in current and future multi-mode devices and the bands being requested for multi-band devices. GCF is also uniquely positioned to flag any interoperability and performance issues being raised by its membership and provide feedback on cost efficient testing.
GCF signed the 3GPP Partnership Project Agreement at the 3GPP Organisational Partners meeting held in Delhi on 29 April 2016. Lars Nielsen, GCF General Manager, said, “We look forward to sharing our members’ insights into device testing and certification with 3GPP’s Organisational and Marketing Representation Partners. This closer contact will also help us ensure that device certification and testing develops to meet the fast changing needs of the mobile industry around the world.”
Welcoming GCF as an MRP, Giovanni Romani, Vice Chairman of RAN, said “GCF is one of the big clients of RAN5 – the terminal conformance testing group within 3GPP – and the relationship works well.”
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