Short for the 3rd Generation Partnership Project, 3GPP is a collaboration agreement that was established in December 1998. The collaboration agreement brings together a number of telecommunications standards bodies. The original scope of 3GPP was to produce globally applicable Technical Specifications and Technical Reports for a 3rd Generation Mobile System based on evolved GSM core networks and the radio access technologies that they support (i.e., Universal Terrestrial Radio Access (UTRA) both Frequency Division Duplex (FDD) and Time Division Duplex (TDD) modes). The scope was subsequently amended to include the maintenance and development of the Global System for Mobile communication (GSM) Technical Specifications and Technical Reports including evolved radio access technologies. [Source: 3GPP Web site]
