UMTS revisited

The seeds of Third Generation Mobile Systems (TGMS) as represented by the Universal Mobile Telecommunication System (UMTS) and Future Public Land Mobile Telecommunication Systems (FPLMTS) were sown in 1986 with the parallel activities of Project R2029 of the European RACE Definition Phase in the first Framework Programme and the establishment of the global Interim Working Party 8/13 (IWP 8/13) on FPLMTS, which in 1991 became CCIR (now ITU-R) Task Group 8/1. In February 1992, immediately following the Costa Rica meeting of Task Group 8/1, WARC-92 in Malaga identified some 230 MHz of spectrum in the 2 GHz band for use by FPLMTS. This paper reviews the progress to date on TGMS in RACE, ETSI and ITU-R, the work of RACE Special Interest Group 4 (SIG 4) on the UMTS Vision, and current developments within the RACE Mobile Project Line Assembly (MPLA)