Short for the
3rd Generation Partnership Project, 3GPP is a collaboration
agreement that was established in December 1998. The collaboration agreement
brings together a number of
telecommunications standards bodies. The original
scope of 3GPP was to produce globally applicable Technical Specifications and
Technical Reports for a 3rd Generation Mobile System based on evolved
GSM core
networks and the
radio access technologies that they support (i.e., Universal Terrestrial Radio
Access (UTRA) both Frequency Division Duplex (FDD) and Time Division Duplex (TDD)
modes). The scope was subsequently amended to include the maintenance and
development of the Global System for Mobile communication (GSM) Technical
Specifications and Technical Reports including evolved radio access
technologies.
[Source: 3GPP Web site]