How standards actually get made
How the work is done
The machinery behind 3GPP and the IETF: who writes a standard, how a proposal becomes a published document, and what a release really is.
9 subjects · 27 courses · 240 chapters · 1218 questions
A school for standards
A school for standards. 3GPP and IETF documents, the groups that write them, and the meetings where they are decided — taught in plain English, with every statement linked to the paragraph it came from.
What this place is
3GPP, and IETF
The two bodies that decide how a phone talks to a network and how the internet carries what it says. Their documents are written for people already in the room. Here they are opened up.
Not only documents
How standards work at all: who writes them, how a proposal becomes a published version, what a release is. Then the groups themselves — who owns which document, and what the last meeting decided.
Trainings you work through
Every chapter ends in questions. Every course has a final test. Every question says where its answer comes from, so being wrong tells you what to read.
The promise this school makes
Nothing here is written from memory. Every statement points at a clause of the real document, a paper from the real meeting, or a number counted out of the real data — and the link opens it.
A chapter that cites a clause which does not exist never reaches the site: the build fails instead. That check is mechanical and honest about its limit. It proves a clause number is real; it cannot prove a sentence describes that clause correctly. So the clause itself is always one click away, in the document's own words.
The subjects
The 5G system architecture
One document
3GPP TS 23.501 — which functions a 5G network is made of, what each one is responsible for, and how they talk to each other.
Ambient IoT — a tag with no battery
An area of work
Devices with no battery, studied from Rel-18, specified in Rel-19 and extended in Rel-20 phase 2. Sixteen groups have filed documents against the work. What it is for, who did what, and where to read on.
Sensing — the network as a radar
An area of work
An area of 3GPP work that crosses the groups: using the network's own radio to detect and locate things. Studied in Rel-19, specified for Rel-20. What the work is for, who did what, and where to read on.
TSG RAN — the group that specifies the radio
A working group
3GPP's radio access group and its six working groups: who owns what, how a radio feature is agreed, and how to read what they produce.
CT1 — the group that writes what your phone says
A working group
3GPP's core-network protocol group: what it owns, how it decides, and how to read what it produces.
Inside one plenary: TSG SA#112, Singapore, June 2026
One meeting
What a 3GPP plenary decides, how it decides it, and how to read the paper trail of any meeting yourself.
IMS — the call as an internet session
An area of work
An area of 3GPP work that opened in Release 5 and is still being written for Release 20: the part of the network that sets a call up and carries it as an internet session instead of as a circuit. 345 work plan rows, 241 specifications, fourteen groups. What the work is for, who does what, and where to read on.
Satellites — a base station in orbit
An area of work
An area of 3GPP work that crosses the radio groups and the system groups: reaching a phone or a sensor straight from orbit, with no mast in between. Nine releases of it, 155 named pieces of work, and a shelf of specifications that already exists. What the work is for, who did what, and where to read on.
What is in here
- Courses
- 27
- Chapters
- 240
- Words written for you
- 354,477
- Questions
- 1218
- Document clauses on the site
- 3,362
- Documents in full
- 5