Application Enablement Standards in 3GPP

By Suresh Chitturi, 3GPP Working Group SA6 Chair  - Article first published in HIGHLIGHTS Issue 03, Oct. 2021.

With the most recent 5G standards (Release 15 to Release 17), and the advent of the industry 4.0 revolution, there has been a greater emphasis within 3GPP to develop features that go beyond typical end-consumer expectations (e.g. higher speeds, better coverage), and towards capabilities that can enhance the communications for vertical industries such as public safety, automotive, drones, factories of the future, IoT… and in a manner that such capabilities are natively available within the 5G system.

While radio and core network standards are essential to the robust functioning of 3GPP networks, application enablement standards have been receiving significant attention in the recent years. With the help of these standards, it is now possible for 3rd party application developers and vertical specific application providers to seamlessly integrate and leverage the underlying capabilities of the 3GPP system to its full potential.

Within the 3GPP Technical Specification Group Service and System Aspects (SA), TSG SA WG6 (SA6) is the application enablement and critical communication applications group for vertical markets. The main objective of SA6 is to provide application layer architecture specifications for 3GPP verticals, including critical communications applications, service frameworks and vertical application enablers.

And the winner is… 3GPP

February 7, 2022

The Tech Emmy® is awarded for the development of technologies that either represent so extensive an improvement on existing methods or are so innovative in nature that they have materially affected television production. On January 26, 2022, The National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (NATAS) announced the 73rd Annual Technology & Engineering Emmy® Award winners and for the first time 3GPP is a recipient.

For the work on “Standardization of HTTP Encapsulated Protocols”, 3GPP proudly shares the honors with colleagues from the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG), for specifications on Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (DASH) and with colleagues from Apple and MLB Advanced Media for HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) work.

A predecessor of the DASH specification was originally developed in 3GPP Rel-9 in 2009 under the acronym 3GPP Adaptive HTTP Streaming (AHS). In July 2010, 3GPP members responded to MPEGs Call for Proposals on HTTP Streaming and 3GPP AHS was selected as the baseline for MPEG DASH specifications.

In tremendous efforts, MPEG and 3GPP jointly developed DASH and published dual specifications in 3GPP TS 26.247 and ISO/IEC 23009-1. The beauty of the technology results from its simplicity to permit seamless media streaming experiences over the Internet and mobile connections to any device without complex QoS provisioning.