Seven Standards Development Organizations (SDOs) are set to create a cooperative M2M standards activity.

In doing this, they intend to pull together multiple industries to create specifications that will improve the return on investment on standards work and create a worldwide potential for M2M applications. This approach has been inspired by the 3GPP model and during the establishment of the M2M initiative, the SDOs have looked to 3GPP and its market-focus and global participation as a bench mark.

3GPP systems are also expected to be a vital enabler for M2M from the outset.

A press release, issued simultaneously by the SDOs, announced that “the global initiative will be established early in 2012 and will then initiate the technical work to meet the challenges of rapidly evolving industries.”

There were some emotional moments – after hours - on the Tuesday evening of the 3GPP SA meeting, in Berlin. Nothing to do with the progress of Carrier Aggregation or Machine to machine priorities, but around a bunch of odd looking phones, brought here for the 3GPP ‘OLD MOBILE PHONE COMPETITION’.

The rules were few, but strict. Each contender had to be present & demonstrate their phone and had to attempt a voice call over the local network.

From the weighty and barely transportable Motorola 1000 through the ancient Ericsson GH197 and original Nokia 2110, to the almost indestructible Siemens S10 brick and the classic house building material that was the Nokia Communicator…the surprising fact is that given a good power supply and an active SIM card, these phones still work and do what they were designed to do – communicate.

Three of the 3GPP TSG Chairmen were caught on camera at the recent LTE Asia conference in Singapore, discussing Legacy access and LTE interworking, the role of the Evolved Packet Core, the impact of machine type communications and several other topics:

Join the thousands of visitors who have seen the Spectool LTE System Overview videos that have been inspired by two significant 3GPP Releases. LTE was first published in Rel-8 of the standard - with LTE-Advanced and Rel-10 taking LTE to the 4th Generation.

The narration on the video allows you to better understand the graphics as they unfold.

The first film on Release 8, gives a good introduction to both the radio and architecture aspects of LTE systems.

Explanations of the role of the evolved NodeB, without the need for a separate control node, the introduction of OFDMA as a key element for a more efficient use of spectrum and the roles of the packet data network gateway (PDN-GW) and the mobility management entity (MME) serving gateway are all packed in to the Rel-8 overview.

The second video, contains a Release 10 overview, with its main focus the access part of the network, ensuring that back-ward compatibility to earlier releases, but sets the bar higher in terms of improvements in line with the requirements of an IMT-Advanced network, as well as operator and end user expectations for LTE as we move forward.

Attendance at the LTE India Conference, 27 May 2011, in New Delhi and some important meetings with Indian engineers & industry leaders looks set to encourage future participation in 3GPP.

In a separate development C-DOT – the state owned Indian Centre for Development of Telematics – has re-stated its intention to encourage Indian invention in the 4G domain.