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3GPP work taken on-line
May 18, 2020
The 3GPP TSG and Working Group chairs have today notified the community that all 2020 meetings will now be planned as electronic meetings, by default. This decision will allow all groups to plan their e-meetings around the plenary weeks:
- TSGs#89 CT/RAN/SA; week of Monday 14 September 2020.
- TSGs#90 CT/RAN/SA; week of Monday 7 December 2020.
In their emails to the groups, the TSG chairs expressed optimism for the re-commencement of face-to-face meetings, but advised that if the circumstances improve to the extent that physical meetings can be resumed, meeting announcements and invitations must be sent out no later than 8 weeks ahead of the meeting start date.
All groups can now plan for the second half of the year, assuming that meetings will be held remotely, but with a process in place that would allow the leadership to bring the work back to physical meetings – with that 8 week period of notice - when the situation allows.
e-meetings provoke update to working procedures
May 17, 2020
On May 15, the 3GPP Project Coordination Group (PCG) approved a new Annex to the 3GPP Working Procedures, to cover “Special procedures for exceptional situations restricting travel” and has agreed its immediate activation, to allow 3GPP to function in the absence of physical meetings.
The PCG has the responsibility of activating and deactivating this Annex.
The Annex documents which e-meetings can hold votes and how the vote will be conducted. More work is now envisaged, so that 3GPP TSG and working group elections can be held during the period where ‘Annex I’ is activated.
The full text of the decision is as follows:
5G for Industry 4.0
May 13, 2020
By Devaki Chandramouli, Work Item Rapporteur
5G System support for Industrial IoT (Vertical_LAN in Release-16)
In order to be able to deploy 5G for new and diverse use cases, including industry 4.0 and factory automation, the 5G system must work in harmony with the communications technologies used in such industries. For this purpose, 3GPP has now made significant progress towards the integration of the 5G system with IEEE 802.1 working group specifications covering Time Sensitive Networking (TSN).
The ‘Vertical_LAN’ work item, in 3GPP Release-16, introduces the following three new and distinct 5G enablers for Industry 4.0;
MCx Plugtests event gets on-track
May 12, 2020
3GPP Partner ETSI will host the 5th MCx Plugtests remote event, taking place from September 21 to October 2, 2020.
The event has evolved over the past three years, from an initial focus on Mission Critical Push To Talk (MCPTT). The test cases now also cover a variety of Mission Critical Data (MCData) and Mission Critical Video (MCVideo) features.
The 5th MCx remote Plugtests will validate the interoperability of a variety of implementations using different test scenarios based on 3GPP Mission Critical Services in Release-15 and on new features for railway communications – specifically for the FRMCS (Future Railway Mobile Communication System).
Search and download specs, docs, CRs and more from the 3GPP FTP Server:
Adjustments to Rel-16 & Rel-17 Timelines
Changing 3GPP to help the verticals
Georg Mayer on TSG SA#87-e (webinar)