UMTS Universal Mobile Telecommunications System development of standards for the third generation

The standards for the UMTS Universal Mobile Telecommunications System are being developed by the ETSI (European Telecommunications Standardisation Institute). The UMTS is a set of standards aimed at the global market. It will be a real third generation Global System for Mobile Communications adding new features and introducing relevant technological innovations while evolving from both GSM and ISDN networks. The UMTS is based on the carefully selected market requirements and belongs to the IMT-2000 family. The UMTS standardisation is a market driven process being developed in a close cooperation with the UMTS Forum and GSM MoU. The UMTS supports both existing services and will be capable of offering quite new revolutionary services including multimedia and access to Internet with a speed of 2 Mbit/s for a single user. This article gives an objective view of the UMTS standardisation in Europe.