October 18, 2001
Telecom administrations and the mobile communications industry have today reached agreement at a meeting in Tokyo on an international framework for methods to support the unrestricted movement of 3G terminals, also called IMT-2000 terminals. This is called “Global circulation”, [see explanatory note below]. The meeting was the 6th meeting of the International Telecommunications Union Working Party 8F for 3G matters 10 - 16 October.
This new agreement is to sit within a new ITU Recommendation that provides the technical basis for global circulation and avoidance of harmful radio frequency interference. It represents a world-wide view of many organisations - including operators, regulators and vendors - and is built on the experiences from existing mobile networks, which allows a solution without requiring any additional new administrative or regulatory burdens. Such regulation might otherwise have hindered the free development of new and exciting services for the 3G multimedia and wideband market and caused problems for the travellers carrying a 3G terminal.
As a result of this agreement, all necessary actions for global circulation will now be developed and implemented by national administrations and the appropriate industry bodies, who already have a wealth of experience in all the technical and commercial aspects that make it possible to access advanced personal services while travelling outsides one's home network.
Industry bodies The UMTS Forum (www.umts-forum.org) and GSA - the Global mobile Suppliers Association - (www.gsacom.com) especially welcome this agreement, signifying the successful conclusion of the preparatory work which they, together with other 3GPP (www.3gpp.org) Market Representation Partners and their memberships, have undertaken over the past few years.
“Once again, all the players in the international telecommunications field have illustrated their ability to find the optimum evolution paths to the new multimedia era”, commented UMTS Forum Chairman Dr Bernd Eylert. “One important obstacle to a successful launch of 3G systems and services has been cleared away.”
“This great result from Tokyo removes a potential barrier in the way of 3G's smooth path to market, overcoming possible additional burdens”, confirmed GSA President Alan Hadden. “This now allows manufacturers and the rest of the mobile industry to accelerate their plans to co-ordinate the introduction of IMT-2000 terminal devices into the market - on time and in quantity.”
About Global Circulation Global circulation of terminals is the right of users to carry their personal terminals into a visited country, and the ability to use them wherever possible. The successful deployment of the new third generation of IMT-2000 systems has to include the ability of users to:
- carry their terminals when they go from one country to another - to use those terminals, if accepted and connected by a network operator, in third-generation networks other than their home network - or to simply carry them even if they are not able to use them.
Without this agreement, some visitors might have faced some potential constraints when they need to access a radio network to use the personal information services that will be increasingly linked to their own handheld devices.
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