UMTS Forum is an open cross sector and independent organization founded on 16 December 1996 in

Zürich Zurich (; ) is the list of cities in Switzerland, largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is in north-central Switzerland, at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich. , the municipality had 448,664 inhabitants. The ...

Switzerland Switzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a landlocked country located in west-central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland ...

, as a non-profit association under Swiss law with the aim to enhance the modular 3G/

UMTS The Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) is a 3G mobile cellular system for networks based on the GSM standard. UMTS uses Wideband Code Division Multiple Access, wideband code-division multiple access (W-CDMA) radio access technolog ...

concept, which takes full regard of the trend of convergence of existing and future information networks, devices and services, and the potential synergies that can be derived from such convergence. Following successful global implementation of

, focus changed to upgrades and evolution of

. Currently mobile operators are implementing HSPA (

High Speed Packet Access High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) is an amalgamation of two mobile telephony, mobile Communications protocol, protocols—High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) and High Speed Uplink Packet Access (HSUPA)—that extends and improves the perfor ...

), which will be followed by LTE (

Long Term Evolution In telecommunications, long-term evolution (LTE) is a standard for wireless broadband communication for cellular mobile devices and data terminals. It is considered to be a "transitional" 4G technology, and is therefore also referred to as 3.9 ...

). This change is also reflected in activities of UMTS Forum. UMTS Forum is very active in different standardization and regulation organizations like

ITU The International Telecommunication Union (ITU)In the other common languages of the ITU: * * is a specialized agency of the United Nations responsible for many matters related to information and communication technologies. It was established ...

ETSI The European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) is an independent, not-for-profit, standardization organization operating in the field of Information and communications technology, information and communications. ETSI supports the de ...

3GPP The 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) is an umbrella term for a number of standards organizations which develop protocols for mobile telecommunications. Its best known work is the development and maintenance of: * GSM and related 2G and ...

, EC and CEPT (

European Conference of Postal and Telecommunications Administrations The European Conference of Postal and Telecommunications Administrations (CEPT) was established on 26 June 1959 by nineteen European states in Montreux, Switzerland, as a coordinating body for European state telecommunications and postal orga ...

Steering Group

* Jean-Pierre Bienaimé, Chairman * Thomas Sidenbladh, Vice Chairman *

Guillaume Lebrun Guillaume Lebrun is a French head chef in the Michelin starred Restaurant Patrick Guilbaud in Dublin, Ireland. He was born in rural France, as son of a baker. He wanted to do something with food later in life but taking over the bakery was impo ...

, Spectrum Aspects Group Chairman * Cengiz Evci, Chairman Manufacturers Group * Peter Zidar, Chairman Operators Group * Werner Wiedermann, Vice Chairman Operators Group * Adrian Scrase, ETSI Observer

References

UMTS Forum
{{Webarchive, url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121202125620/http://www.umts-forum.org/ , date=2012-12-02
UMTS Forum's Steering Group
Organizations established in 1996 UMTS