3GPP comes to Melbourne

3GPP leaders will take part in an industry briefing at the University of Melbourne’s Centre for Disaster Management and Public Safety.

On 18 September, Australian policymakers, academics and industry representatives will have the opportunity to meet and deliberate on contemporary communications matters, when leaders from the 3G Partnership Project — 3GPP, the organisation that develops the technology standards that make our smartphones work — come to Melbourne to discuss the future direction of 3GPP standards, including 5G.

3GPP has been working with the University of Melbourne’s Centre for Disaster Management and Public Safety (CDMPS) to convene an event that will provide information about the important role performed by 3GPP in the development and maintenance of the open standards that support both current and future mobile networks.

The event will see a number of local and international leaders and experts gathering to share their views. The discussions will be led by:

Euan Ferguson: Co-Chair of the University of Melbourne CDMPS-CSDILA International Advisory Committee, and the 3GPP event convener. Ferguson has more than 40 years’ experience as a forester and fire and emergency management professional, including as Chief Officer of Victoria’s Country Fire Authority and Chief Officer and CEO of the South Australian Country Fire Service. He is a past Chair and President of the Australasian Fire and Emergency Services Council and past Chair of Australia’s National Aerial Firefighting Centre.

Adrian Scrase: Chief Technical Officer, ETSI. Scrase has operational responsibility for all activities associated with the production of ETSI standards and played a central role in the creation of the 3GPP in 2004. He is responsible for the operations of the 3GPP Project Co-ordination Group and is also Chair of the 3GPP Mobile Competence Centre, an international team with members from more than a dozen countries. Scrase was also principally involved in the formation of the ‘oneM2M’ Partnership Project and oversees ETSI’s support for that initiative.

Georg Mayer: 3GPP Core Networks and Terminals (TSG-CT) Chairman. Employed by Huawei Technologies, as TSG-CT Chair Mayer is focused on the coordination of 5G-related work both inside and outside 3GPP, participating in the IETF and working closely with several of the new stakeholders in 5G, such as public safety, railways, autonomous systems and IoT service providers.

Balázs Bertényi: 3GPP Radio Access Networks (RAN) Chairman. Bertényi has participated in the 3GPP for more than 15 years, gaining technical experience as a contributor in the TSG-SA and TSG-RAN Groups. He has served terms as Chairman of SA Working Group 2 and as Chairman of the 3GPP SA Plenary. In March 2017 he was elected Chairman of the RAN Plenary. At Nokia, he has worked on several different projects across the 3G core, GPRS, EPS, IMS and most recently, on 5G architecture and radio.

Tero Pesonen: TCCA Board Member and Director and Chair of the Critical Communications Broadband Group (CCBG) sub-group of the TCCA. Pesonen has been involved in PMR since 1997 and in particular with promoting and organising TETRA interoperability activities. As Chair of the CCBG, he is involved in bringing stakeholders together to create a common critical broadband future. As a TCCA Board Member he represents the Finnish government public safety operator, VIRVE.

Setting the standards

3GPP is developing a specific set of mission-critical standards to provide the world’s public safety and security agencies with a broadband communications capability that will enable these agencies to gather, analyse and share information at a scale never before seen to keep our communities safe.

3GPP unites seven of the world’s telecommunications standard development organisations to provide a stable environment in which to define the open standards underpinning current and future mobile cellular networks. 3GPP’s work aims to:

• support global operational communication technologies and capabilities for specific business- and mission-critical sectors of the communications market;
• provide a path to a connected society via LTE and 5G specification work to meet future use cases, specifically by evolving broadband access, meeting the need of machine-type communications and by providing ultrareliable and low-latency connectivity;
• progress dialogue at government, public safety, security agency, transport and industry stakeholder level.

Globally, the emerging favoured model is a hybrid one involving a partnership with mobile broadband network operators, who will need to demonstrate the same capabilities that we expect to get from our smartphones but at a ‘mission critical’ level. Australian federal and state governments have decided that the hybrid model is the best way to provide a broadband capability for Australia’s public safety agencies.

Melbourne’s 3GPP/CDMPS event will provide the opportunity for discussion about how best Australia can collaborate with 3GPP and its global partner organisations in the development and maintenance of mission-critical standards.

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Save the date

The 3GPP/CDMPS briefing is the first of its type in Australia and it therefore presents a unique opportunity to hear directly from the 3GPP leadership about the current status and strategic direction for standards, including future 5G plans.

Date: Tuesday, 18 September 2018

Time: From 1.15 to 5.00 pm

Venue: Room 108, Greenwood Theatre, Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, University of Melbourne, Grattan Street, Parkville

Registration: https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/3gpp-insights-on-global-mobile-telecommunications-tickets-48583571771

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Images courtesy Nokia.

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