Cheat sheet

TSG RAN — the group that specifies the radio

3GPP's radio groups in under an hour

The shape of it

1 Who writes the rules for the radio

2 What they wrote, and where to read it

1.5 Who decides how a phone talks to a mast
The radio is not a corner of 3GPP. Of the 1629581 meeting documents in the local record ^[1], 811563 are RAN's ^[2], and 3230 separate pieces of work have been opened by a RAN plenary document ^[3].
2.9 The six groups, and what each one worries about
The split is by kind of question, not by feature. One new capability is worked on in several rooms at once — the signal in RAN1, the messages in RAN2, the interfaces in RAN3, the limits in RAN4, the tests in RAN5.
3.2 What NR is, read off the document itself
The base station terminates all of layer 2 and the radio connection protocol. It does not terminate the core's own signalling. That one line is most of the boundary between what RAN specifies and what the core groups specify.
4.6 Where to look yourself, and what the record does not say
You can now say what TSG RAN is, who does what inside it, what the 5G radio looks like in outline, and where to check any of it. That is the whole of this level.

1.7 Who decides how a phone talks to a mast
So it is a map, not a manual. Quoting TS 38.300 settles what the parts are and who is responsible for what. It settles nothing about how a message is encoded — that is in another document, usually owned by another group.
2.9 The six groups, and what each one worries about
"Biggest group" is a trap. RAN4 owns the most documents, RAN1 fills the biggest room, and the two answers point at different rooms. Say which measure you mean.
3.4 What NR is, read off the document itself
RRC_INACTIVE is not "idle with a nicer name". In idle the radio context is gone and the core pages the device. In inactive the base station still holds the context, so coming back is a resume rather than a fresh setup.
4.5 Where to look yourself, and what the record does not say
The counts on this site are counts of what one machine holds, not of what 3GPP holds. Three active catalogue rows carry no usable group at all, so a per-group total is a very good number and not a proven one ^[4].

Every one was counted out of a file on this machine. Hover a row to read the question that produced it.

1.7 Who decides how a phone talks to a mast
The present document provides an overview and overall description of the NG-RAN and focuses on the radio interface protocol architecture of NR connected to 5GC (E-UTRA connected to 5GC is covered in the 36 series). Details of the radio interface protocols are specified in companion specifications of the 38 series.
3.4 What NR is, read off the document itself
RRC_INACTIVE is a state where a UE remains in CM-CONNECTED and can move within an area configured by NG-RAN (the RNA) without notifying NG-RAN. In RRC_INACTIVE, the last serving gNB node keeps the UE context and the UE-associated NG connection with the serving AMF and UPF.

6 the course explains, out of 264 the document defines — all of them.

The 15 clauses of TS 38.300 this course is built from.

The 47 named sources it cites, by what they are.

Specification 21

Meeting 8

Working group 7

Meeting document 6

Pattern 5

The same subject, overview — Enough to follow the conversation and know what to look up.
The same subject, in depth — The working reference: every mechanism, every parameter.
Every question of this course — 16 of them, on one page.
The final test — 10 questions, 60 per cent to pass.
The whole of TS 38.300 — all 617 clauses.
Every source behind the course — 1194 of them, each with its method.

1629581 meeting documents of all of 3GPP in the local database — rows in the pygppe meeting-document table /var/www/whatthespec.net/data/database/api/api.sqlite, read 2026-08-04
811563 RAN meeting documents in the local database — rows in the pygppe meeting-document table /var/www/whatthespec.net/data/database/api/api.sqlite whose document number starts with one of RP-, R1-, R2-, R3-, R4-, R5-, R6-, read 2026-08-04
3230 work items were opened by a RAN plenary document — folders under /var/www/whatthespec.net/data/data/wis whose metadata.json has a tdoc_code starting 'RP-', of 9406 work items in all, read 2026-08-04
3 active catalogue rows carry no usable group — rows in the pygppe specification catalogue /var/www/whatthespec.net/data/database/api/spec_catalog.sqlite where active='yes' and wg is empty, '-' or '0', read 2026-08-04