3 Seventeen groups, and where the weight sat

3.1 Why an area of work has no single owner

A specification has one owning group. An area of work like this one has none. The requirements are written by one group, the radio by four, the architecture by another, the protocols by four more, and management, charging, security and testing by the rest.

Nobody is in charge of the whole thing. What holds it together is letters between groups, and shared work item descriptions that name which group does which part.

That is the honest picture: seventeen groups in the register, sixteen of which have actually filed something ^[1] CT6.

3.2 The whole area, in five numbers

What	How many
documents	10771 [2]
meetings that carried one	179 [3]
companies and groups that sent one	900 [4]
work items and study items	37 [5]
specifications touched	53 [6]

That 10771 counts every document row whose work item column carries one of the 28 short names this area uses ^[2] — not every document that mentions Ambient IoT in passing, and not every document of every meeting these groups held.

3.3 Every group, counted

Group	Documents	Meetings	Letters sent	Work item names led	Specs owned	First	Last
RAN1 RAN1	2421	16	36	4	2	2024-02-15	2026-06-10
SA2 SA2	2125	17	139	4	5	2024-01-11	2026-06-02
SA3 SA3	1349	15	38	4	3	2024-04-07	2026-05-29
RAN2 RAN2	996	14	38	0	2	2024-04-03	2026-05-22
RAN3 RAN3	805	15	30	0	5	2024-04-05	2026-07-30
RAN4 RAN4	737	14	5	2	3	2024-04-08	2026-05-29
SA1 SA1	529	14	10	2	3	2022-04-29	2025-05-09
CT1 CT1	508	8	24	2	3	2025-04-24	2026-07-08
CT4 CT4	387	12	25	2	9	2024-08-09	2026-05-22
RAN RAN	315	14	2	1	1	2022-12-02	2026-06-04
SA6 SA6	247	6	0	2	4	2025-08-17	2026-05-25
CT3 CT3	172	8	0	3	2	2025-03-31	2026-05-26
RAN5 RAN5	58	2	1	1	2	2026-01-30	2026-06-11
SA SA	55	12	3	0	0	2022-12-07	2026-06-02
SA5 SA5	36	7	0	3	7	2025-02-07	2026-07-01
CT CT	31	5	0	0	0	2025-05-29	2026-06-01
CT6 CT6	0	0	0	1	0	—	—

RAN, SA and CT are not working groups. They are the three plenaries — the quarterly meetings that approve the work — which is why their document counts are small and their meeting counts are not RAN SA CT.

3.4 What the dates say

The first and last columns are the most useful thing in the table, because they show the work moving through the organisation in the order the process requires.

• SA1 starts and stops first. First document 2022-04-29, last 2025-05-09 SA1. Requirements are written once. When they are written, the group leaves.

• The radio and architecture groups arrive together in early 2024. RAN1 on 2024-02-15, SA2 on 2024-01-11, RAN2, RAN3 and RAN4 within days of each other in April RAN1 SA2 RAN2 RAN3 RAN4.

• The protocol groups arrive a year later, once there is an architecture to write protocols for: CT4 in August 2024, CT3 in March 2025, CT1 in April 2025 CT4 CT3 CT1.

• Testing arrives last. RAN5's first document is 2026-01-30 RAN5.

• RAN3 is still going. Its last document, 2026-07-30, is the newest in the whole area RAN3 ^[7].

3.5 How to read the table

Four of the columns answer different questions, and mixing them up is the usual mistake.

• Documents measures effort spent arguing and drafting. It is dominated by the area's 3973 discussion papers, which leave no trace in any specification ^[8].

• Meetings measures how long the group has been at it. RAN1's 2421 documents across 16 meetings is a group in the middle of a hard problem; SA5's 36 across 7 is a group doing small, well-understood edits RAN1 SA5.

• Letters sent measures how much a group has to coordinate with others. Across the area 351 letters went out ^[9], and how they are shared out is the clearest single signal of who was driving.

• Specs owned measures where the result landed. It has almost no relation to the other three: CT4 owns nine specifications on 387 documents, while RAN1 owns two on 2421 CT4 RAN1.

3.6 Where the weight sat

Three groups filed far more than any other: RAN1, SA2 and SA3 RAN1 SA2 SA3. That is worth knowing before you go reading, because it tells you where the arguments were.

RAN1's weight is one study. FS_Ambient_IoT_solutions alone carries 2357 documents, more than any other item in the area FS_Ambient_IoT_solutions.

SA2's weight is different in kind. It filed 2125 documents SA2 and sent 139 of the area's 351 letters between groups ^[9] — more than any other group.

That is what an architecture group does: it decides the shape, then tells five other groups what the shape means for them. SA3 and RAN2 each sent 38, and CT3, SA5 and SA6 sent none at all SA3 RAN2 CT3 SA5 SA6.

3.7 The odd one out

CT6, the smart-card group, leads the CT6 part of the phase 2 protocol work and has filed no document, attended no meeting under an Ambient IoT name, and owns no specification in this area CT6 AmbientIoT_Ph2-CT.

The data says that and no more. It does not say whether the work has not started yet or is being filed under a name this register cannot see. If you need the answer, the place to look is the CT6 document folder itself, whose address the register carries CT6.

3.8 Where to read on

Every group entry in the register carries the address of that group's document folder on 3gpp.org, its first and last Ambient IoT meeting, the work item names it leads and the specifications it owns SA2 RAN1 CT1.

That is the hop-off point for any group in the table. This school holds none of their meeting documents.

What each group actually did with its share of those 10771 papers is the whole of the next four chapters, starting with the radio in RAN1 and the radio problem.