The ceremony took place during a meeting of the Organizational Partners of the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP™) at the historic hill-top village of St-Paul-de-Vence, in southern France. 3GPP is an association of standards organizations from around the world (referred to as Organizational Partners), supported by other industry groups (Market Representation Partners) and several hundred member companies.

The signing ceremony welcomed the China Communications Standards Association (CCSA) and the USA's Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions (ATIS) as new Organizational Partners.

Mr Karl Heinz Rosenbrock, Director-General of the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), one of the founding Organizational Partners, led the formalities.

Susan M. Miller (ATIS) and Karl Heinz Rosenbrock (ETSI) - at the signing ceremony

Mr Rosenbrock remarked: "ATIS has a long track record as a leading standards organization within the telecommunications industry. By contrast, CCSA is newly-created, but it represents a formidable body of technical abilities that have already been contributing to the work of 3GPP for a number of years. With this formal acceptance of these organizations within the project, we can look forward to even closer co-operation and a sharing of truly international skills that will make the 3GPP technologies an unbeatable success."

The Chairman of the 3GPP Project Co-ordination Group, Dr Kyu-Jin Wee, of the Telecommunications Technology Association of the Republic of Korea said: "It is a delight to welcome these associations as partners in 3GPP. Their active commitment to the project confirms the world-wide support for the technologies that 3GPP is specifying, and will help to ensure successful deployment of systems based on these technologies in all regions of the world."

The participation in 3GPP of organizations from around the world is helping to ensure a truly global deployment of the technologies, making life increasingly convenient for the growing number of international travellers.

3GPP's specifications cover several technologies that form part of the IMT-2000 "family" defined by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU): Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (W-CDMA), Time Division Code Division Multiple Access (TD-CDMA), and Time Division Synchronous Code Division Multiple Access (TD-SCDMA). These are all advanced radio communication technologies that will ensure effective multimedia mobile communications for users wherever they may be.

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