A further aspect is that the telecommunications world is characterized by the need to provide services which are internationally compatible and function across different operators. This means that the interoperability of the products launched by different infrastructure producers must be ensured. This demand can only be fulfilled when the strict standardization of all relevant interfaces between network nodes or sub-networks is guaranteed.

The success story of the GSM standard as the worldwide dominant second generation technology provides a perfect illustration of both of these aspects. This standard, developed as a European initiative under the auspices of the original ETSI standard, is now part of the 3GPP standardization movement which includes American, Japanese and Korean representatives in addition to the ETSI members. The 3GPP’s task was and is the identification and evaluation of future mobile broadband technologies in order to then enable the technical and economic standardization of the most suitable solution. The task of the standardization is to lay the foundations to ensure that the required and sufficient interoperability of the products is achieved later, in the implementation phase.

As the name suggests the original reason for founding the 3GPP organization was to define and agree upon a mobile standard for the third generation. The very clearly stated objective was that the standard to be developed was to be able to provide ­mobile data services with bandwidths which were previously only ­possible using wireline technologies. The result was the UMTS standard. The first commercial networks based on this standard were introduced at the beginning of this century.

The timing of the market entry, which coincided with the ­bursting of the so-called Internet bubble, was certainly not optimal. But the maximum bandwidths offered in the first roll-out phase (up to 384 kbit/s to the user and up to 128 kbit/s from the user to the network) were also no real competition at a time when DSL technology was enabling 1-2 Mbit/s in the user’s direction in the fixed network. The result was that the consumer reaction to UMTS was rather reserved, and the telecommunications operators felt the consequences: the billions invested in licenses and network technology didn’t provide the promised returns.  In this situation, the standard did however win out with one major strength: it could and can be extended or upgraded. This capability is not a coincidence, but is the result of very careful standardization work based on strict principles. These include the precise definition of the service characteristics to be provided on the one hand, and on the other implementation guidelines which are kept as generic as possible so that the producers’ later product differentiation is not hindered unnecessarily. Particular attention is paid to the interfaces over which signaling and usage data is transmitted between the different producers’ products following implementation. No room for interpretation is ­allowed in order to ensure that a network of different producers’ nodes operates smoothly.