3GPP: The Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) is a global body dedicated to developing 3G specifications. 3GPP encompasses standards organizations from Europe, Japan, the U.S., Korea, and China, with 400 companies participating in the technical work.
In 1997-98, Nokia was active in establishing 3GPP as the organization to develop global 3G standards based on Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (WCDMA) technology. In 2000 Nokia promoted the transfer of Global System of Mobile Communications/Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution (GSM/EDGE) standardization to 3GPP. These standards mark the evolution path of GSM radio technology and have been successfully finalized in 3GPP.
Nokia has also been a prominent player in further evolving the WCDMA radio technology path towards providing higher data rates for packet access; the HSPA (High Speed Packet Access) standards were finalized in Release 5 and 6, and we are already seeing the first commercial products in the market. In Release 5 and 6 Nokia has also been a leading player in introducing and fully developing the IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) standards, providing a future-proof flexible communication core network platform for carrier-grade IP services.
As of June 2006, specification work for a new Nokia-promoted Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplex (OFDM) and Single Carrier Frequency Division Multiple Access (SC-FDMA) -based radio has been initiated. This is intended to address the emerging need for high-capacity, low-latency, cost-optimized, packet-only, carrier-grade mobile systems.
Bluetooth SIG: Bluetooth SIG is a trade association that is driving the development of a short-range wireless specification for connecting digital devices. Nokia is one of the nine promoter companies of Bluetooth SIG with 3Com, Ericsson, IBM, Intel, Lucent, Microsoft, Motorola, and Toshiba. In addition Bluetooth SIG has about two thousand Associate and Adopter members worldwide.
DLNA: Nokia is one of the founding members of the Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA). DLNA brings together industry leaders from the PC, consumer electronics, and mobile industries to simplify home networking and sharing of digital content among consumer electronics, PC, and mobile devices.
DLNA has over 300 member companies as of February 2006. The group is working to establish a platform of interoperability based on open industry standards so consumers can easily consume, manage, and distribute digital content in new ways.
DVB: The Digital Video Broadcasting Project (DVB) is an industry-led consortium of over 300 broadcasters, manufacturers, network operators, software developers, regulators, and other bodies in over 35 countries committed to designing global standards for the delivery of digital television and data services. Nokia focuses on the development of the DVB standard in areas related to digital TV set-top boxes and mobile datacast services.
ETSI: The European Telecommunications Standards Institute unites 650 members from five continents. Over 200 ETSI members actively participate in 3GPP, for which the organization also provides secretarial support (Mobile Competence Center MCC). ETSI also provides forum-hosting services for OMA. Nokia's other focus areas in ETSI include TISPAN, the global center point for NGN standards; Smart Card Platform (SCP); Broadband Radio Access Networks (BRAN), a body developing standards for local wireless networks; and ETSI's Joint Technical Committee BROADCAST with the European Broadcasting Union (EBU).
GCF: The Global Certification Forum, known as GCF, is an active partnership between network operators, device manufacturers and the test industry. Since its inception in 1999, the GCF membership has been responsible for creating an independent certification programme to help ensure the global interoperability between mobile devices and networks. Today GCF keeps pace with emerging technologies whilst at the same time reviewing the certification requirements for the more established devices features.
GSMA: The GSMA represents the interests of the worldwide mobile communications industry. Spanning 219 countries, the GSMA unites nearly 800 of the world's mobile operators, as well as more than 200 companies in the broader mobile ecosystem, including handset makers, software companies, equipment providers, Internet companies, and media and entertainment organisations. The GSMA is focused on innovating, incubating and creating new opportunities for its membership, all with the end goal of driving the growth of the mobile communications industry.
IEEE: The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers is a technical professional association of more than 365,000 individual members in 150 countries. IEEE is active in technical publishing, conferences, and standardization, covering areas from computer engineering, biomedical technology, and telecommunications to electric power, aerospace, and consumer electronics. IEEE Standards Association, amongst others, develops the 802.x local and metropolitan area wired and wireless standards. Nokia also sponsors an annual Internet Award through the IEEE Foundation. The award is given for exceptional contributions to the advancement of internet technology for network architecture, mobility, and end-user applications.
IETF: Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is an open community of network designers, operators, vendors, and researchers concerned with the evolution of the Internet architecture and the smooth operation of the Internet. The mission of the IETF is to produce high-quality, relevant technical and engineering documents that influence the way people design, use, and manage the internet in such a way as to make the internet work better. These documents include protocol standards, best current practices, and informational documents of various kinds.
The main task of the IETF is the standardization of the core protocols of the internet, including the Internet Protocol (IPv4, IPv6) itself, IP mobility, IP routing, Domain Name System (DNS), IP Security and Transport protocols. The IETF also standardizes some key Internet application protocols such as Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) and Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), which are the foundation for services like Voice over IP (VoIP), World Wide Web (WWW) and email. As most networks, such as enterprise, home and individual operator networks have become connected to the Internet, the IETF protocols have also become widely deployed in those environments.
IETF work is often used as the basis for the work of many other standardization organizations, such as OMA, 3GPP, 3GPP2 and W3C. Nokia has a strong and active presence in the IETF, and supports many of the key IETF protocols in both mobile devices and networking products.
ITU: International Telecommunication Union (ITU), part of the United Nations system of international organizations, is where governments, represented through their telecommunication administrations, and the private sector coordinate telecom networks and services globally. ITU consists of a Radiocommunication Sector (ITU-R), a Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T) and a Telecommunication Development Sector (ITU-D). Nokia is a member in all sectors and believes that ITU-R has an essential role in global radio spectrum management.
JCP: Java Community Process (JCP) is a framework under which the international Java community develops and maintains Java technology specifications, such as the language, virtual machine, and different application programming interfaces. JCP forms a de facto standardization process for Java-related specifications.
Khronos: Khronos is a member-funded industry consortium focused on the creation of open standard, royalty-free APIs to enable the authoring and playback of dynamic media on a wide variety of platforms and devices.
Linux Foundation: The Linux Foundation is a nonprofit consortium dedicated to fostering the growth of Linux. Founded in 2007 by the merger of the Open Source Development Labs and the Free Standards Group, it sponsors the work of the Linux creator and Linux kernel developers and is supported by leading Linux and open source companies and developers from around the world. For Linux to remain open and attain the greatest ubiquity possible, the Linux Foundation provides important services including legal protection, standardization, promotion and collaboration. In the voluntary and distributed world of Linux development, the industry continues to successfully use the consortia model to rapidly improve these value attributes for Linux.
MIPI: The Mobile Industry Processor Interface (MIPI®) Alliance is an open membership organization that includes leading companies in the mobile industry that share the objective of defining and promoting open specifications for interfaces in mobile terminals. MIPI Specifications establish standards for hardware and software interfaces typically found in mobile terminal systems. By defining such standards and encouraging their adoption throughout the industry value chain, the MIPI Alliance intends to reduce fragmentation and improve interoperability among system components, benefiting the entire mobile industry.
MWG: The Metadata Working Group (MWG) was formed in 2006 as a consortium of leading companies in the digital media industry, focused on the following goals:
Preservation and seamless interoperability of digital image metadata
Interoperability and availability to all applications, devices, and services
The intent of the MWG is to publish technical specifications that describe how to effectively store metadata into digital media files. These royalty-free specifications will be made available to manufacturers and service providers so that they may create products that store metadata in a consistent way, and that allow consumers to maintain control over their valuable information. Where possible, these specifications will rely on existing standards, and will aim to create a unified and cohesive approach to applying these standards.
NFC: The Near Field Communication Forum was formed to advance the use of Near Field Communication technology by developing specifications, ensuring interoperability among devices and services, and educating the market about NFC technology. Formed in 2004, the Forum now has 150 members. Manufacturers, applications developers, financial services institutions, and more all work together to promote the use of NFC technology in consumer electronics, mobile devices, and PCs.
OASIS: OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) is a not-for-profit consortium that drives the development, convergence and adoption of open standards for the global information society. The consortium produces more Web services standards than any other organization along with standards for security, e-business, and standardization efforts in the public sector and for application-specific markets. Founded in 1993, OASIS has more than 5,000 participants representing over 600 organizations and individual members in 100 countries.
OMA: The mission of the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) is to facilitate global user adoption of mobile data services by specifying market-driven mobile service enablers that ensure service interoperability across devices, geographies, service providers, operators, and networks, while allowing businesses to compete through innovation and differentiation. The Nokia Openness Site gives information on Nokia products that implement various OMA specifications.
OMTP: The OMTP group aims to define recommendations for operator terminal requirements to deliver openly available standardized application interfaces. These recommendations will provide customers with a consistent and improved user experience across different devices, while also enabling individual operators and manufacturers to customize and differentiate their offerings. The OMTP group was formed in June 2004. Nokia is a sponsor of OMTP activities.
TCG: The Trusted Computing Group (TCG) is an industry standardization body developing and promoting open specifications for trusted computing hardware and associated software interfaces. TCG's work spans different platforms, including PCs, servers, PDAs, and mobile phones. TCG specifications aim to create a more secure computing environment without fragmenting the security market.
UPnP: The UPnP Forum is an industry initiative to enable simple and robust connectivity among stand-alone devices and PCs from many different vendors. The forum consists of more than 800 hundred vendors, including industry leaders in consumer electronics, computing, home automation, home security, appliances, printing, photography, computer networking, and mobile products. UPnP technology is all about making home networking simple and affordable for users.
USB Implementers Forum: The USB Implementers Forum, Inc. is a non-profit corporation founded by the group of companies that developed the Universal Serial Bus specification. The USB-IF was formed to provide a support organization and forum for the advancement and adoption of Universal Serial Bus technology. The forum facilitates the development of high-quality compatible USB peripherals (devices) and promotes the benefits of USB and the quality of products that pass compliance testing.
Board members include Agere Systems, HP, Intel (the current chair), Microsoft, NEC and Philips. Nokia is actively involved in promoting new standards which promote the use of USB within the mobile device industry.
W3C: The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), with its approximately 450 members, is developing common protocols and data formats that promote the evolution of the World Wide Web and its interoperability. Markup Languages (e.g. HTML/XHTML, CSS, SVG, SMIL), Web Services (e.g., SOAP, WSDL), XML (Schema, XPath, XSLT) Multi Modality Browsing (e.g. Voice XML) and the Semantic Web (e.g. RDF, OWL) are just a few of the technologies specified by the W3C. These specifications provide the basis for Web applications and Internet services. Organizations join this open standards organization to work and exchange ideas with its Members, including the world's foremost Internet and technology companies. The value of membership is further increased by the world-class expertise of the large fulltime W3C technical Team, which contributes to and coordinates W3C's Activities.
WFA: In 1999, several industry leaders came together to form a global, non-profit organization, called Wi-Fi Alliance, with the goal of driving the adoption of a single worldwide-accepted standard for high-speed wireless local area networking. Today, there are more than 300 members from more than 20 countries and the figure is growing.
As Wi-Fi networks continue to expand through businesses, homes, and now public hotspots that provide wireless access locations for people on the go, compatibility is critical. The Wi-Fi Alliance develops tests and conducts Wi-Fi certification of wireless devices that implement the universal IEEE 802.11 specifications. The end result leads to the confidence that both home and enterprise users need to continue to get the most out of Wi-Fi.
WiMAX Forum: The WiMAX Forum™ works for the deployment of broadband wireless networks based on the IEEE 802.16 standard by ensuring the compatibility and interoperability of broadband wireless equipment. Formed in June of 2001, the nonprofit association promotes the adoption of IEEE 802.16-compliant equipment by operators of broadband wireless access systems.
Most major telecommunications manufacturers are members (Alcatel, Ericsson, Lucent, Motorola, Nortel, Samsung, Siemens). Nokia joined as a principal member in November 2004.
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