School of Specs TSG RAN — the group that specifies th…Quick start

What they wrote, and where to read it · chapter 4 of 4 · 4 minutes

4 Where to look yourself, and what the record does not say

How a feature travels from a question to a rule, the four documents worth opening at any meeting, where each kind of paper is addressed, and the things this data cannot answer.

Built from §1

4.1 From a question to a rule

Work in RAN moves through the same five steps every time, and each leaves a document you can count.

R1. Somebody asks the plenary to open a study. 737 such requests exist, and not all are taken up — RP-261197, a proposal to survey satellite regulations, is recorded as "not pursued" [1] RP-261197.

R2. A group does the homework and writes a study report, meeting by meeting in public: 2684 draft reports are in the record [2].

R3. The plenary turns the answer into real work with a work item description. 3627 of those exist [3].

R4. The work lands in a published specification.

R5. From then on it changes only by change request — 190421 of them [4]. The plenary approves them in bundles, and 7012 such bundles are on record [5].

Of the 3230 pieces of work a plenary document has opened [6], only 217 are studies [7].

And none of those types is the commonest document. 257341 RAN documents are marked simply "discussion" [8].

4.2 When to look

The next two plenaries are already booked: Madrid on 2026-09-14 and Boston on 2026-12-07 3GPPRAN#113 3GPPRAN#114.

Between two working-group weeks there is often an extra one, written "bis". RAN1, RAN2, RAN3 and RAN4 all met again from 2026-04-13 in Saint Julian's; RAN5 does not take it, and went from 2026-02-09 straight to 2026-05-18 3GPPRAN1#124-bis 3GPPRAN5#110 3GPPRAN5#111.

4.3 Four documents worth opening

Every meeting leaves the same handful of papers, and they are the cheapest way in.

  • The agenda, written by the chair — RP-260830 at RAN#112 RP-260830.

  • The report of the previous meeting, written by the secretariat and tabled a quarter later — RP-260831 RP-260831.

  • Each group's status report — RP-260832 for RAN1 RP-260832.

  • A group's own minutes — R5-261705 is RAN5's record of its previous meeting R5-261705.

4.4 Where the paper lives

  • A specification has an information page on 3gpp.org, addressed by its number with the dots taken out [9], and its files sit in an archive folder named after the series and the number [10].

  • Each group has one folder of its own on the 3GPP file server RAN1.

  • A meeting has a page on the portal [11], and the list of its documents has an address of its own [12]. A single document is a zip file under the meeting's folder [13].

4.5 What the record does not say

This is the half people skip, and it is where wrong statements come from.

No names. The data carries a company or a role and never a person.

No reasons. A status is approved, revised, noted, withdrawn or not pursued, and stops there.

No versions, no release dates, no freeze dates.

No document text. 470 of the 1059 active RAN documents are parsed into readable text on this machine [14]. The rest are not.

No membership and no votes. Attendance is the only people-number, and only where the portal recorded one 3GPPRAN6#18-Decision Teleconference.

No full archive. Only 23 RAN meeting folders are mirrored here [15].

Nothing about 6G beyond one fact: a study report numbered 38.914 exists, and one draft of it was agreed at RAN#112 TR 38.914 RP-260870.

4.6 Where to go next

The overview course of this track is the same subject in seven chapters and about a morning — the working groups in more detail, the numbers behind their size, and the radio stack layer by layer.

The in-depth course of this track goes further again, mechanism by mechanism, for somebody who has to work with the documents.

The document itself. TS 38.300 says in its first clause exactly what it settles and what it leaves to others §1. Every clause this course cites opens beside the text, and the course's sources page lists every register entry it used, each with the question that produced the number.

Where the numbers in this chapter come from

  1. 737 RAN meeting documents of type 'SID new' rows in the pygppe meeting-document table /var/www/whatthespec.net/data/database/api/api.sqlite where tdoctype='SID new' and the number starts with a RAN prefix, read 2026-08-04
  2. 2684 RAN meeting documents of type 'draft TR' rows in the pygppe meeting-document table /var/www/whatthespec.net/data/database/api/api.sqlite where tdoctype='draft TR' and the number starts with a RAN prefix, read 2026-08-04
  3. 3627 RAN meeting documents of type 'WID new' rows in the pygppe meeting-document table /var/www/whatthespec.net/data/database/api/api.sqlite where tdoctype='WID new' and the number starts with a RAN prefix, read 2026-08-04
  4. 190421 RAN meeting documents of type 'CR' rows in the pygppe meeting-document table /var/www/whatthespec.net/data/database/api/api.sqlite where tdoctype='CR' and the number starts with a RAN prefix, read 2026-08-04
  5. 7012 RAN meeting documents of type 'CR pack' rows in the pygppe meeting-document table /var/www/whatthespec.net/data/database/api/api.sqlite where tdoctype='CR pack' and the number starts with a RAN prefix, read 2026-08-04
  6. 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
  7. 217 of the RAN work items are studies folders under /var/www/whatthespec.net/data/data/wis whose metadata.json has a tdoc_code starting 'RP-' and either an acronym starting 'FS_' or a name starting 'study', read 2026-08-04
  8. 257341 RAN meeting documents of type 'discussion' rows in the pygppe meeting-document table /var/www/whatthespec.net/data/database/api/api.sqlite where tdoctype='discussion' and the number starts with a RAN prefix, read 2026-08-04
  9. address of one specification's information page read from /var/www/whatthespec.net/pygppe/site/3gpp/spec_details.php (info_url), 2026-08-04
  10. address of one specification's file folder SPEC_ARCHIVE_BASE in /var/www/whatthespec.net/pygppe/libs/pygpp_storage_core/pygpp_storage_core/fetchers/specs.py, 2026-08-04
  11. address of one meeting's portal page meeting_base_url in /var/www/whatthespec.net/pygppe/libs/pygpp/pygpp_globals.py, 2026-08-04
  12. address of one meeting's document list 3gpp_tdocs_list_url in /var/www/whatthespec.net/pygppe/libs/pygpp/pygpp_globals.py, 2026-08-04
  13. address of one meeting document shape of the stored link column of /var/www/whatthespec.net/data/database/api/api.sqlite; the example is the first document of RP-112 by number, read 2026-08-04
  14. 470 of the 1059 active RAN specifications are parsed into text on this machine active RAN rows of the pygppe specification catalogue /var/www/whatthespec.net/data/database/api/spec_catalog.sqlite whose number without dots is a folder under /var/www/whatthespec.net/data/friendlyspec/json, counted 2026-08-04
  15. 23 RAN meeting folders are mirrored on this machine sub-folders of the six group folders under /var/www/whatthespec.net/data/data/meetings/ftp.3gpp.org/tsg_ran, counted 2026-08-04
  16. 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

Every source this course is built on

Check yourself

Answers appear when you pick one, with where they come from.

Q4.1 Once a specification is published, how is it changed?

Q4.2 What is the commonest kind of RAN meeting document?

Q4.3 A document's status reads "not pursued". What may you say about why?

Q4.4 How much of RAN's text can be read on this machine?

This chapter was written against TS 38.300 version 19.3.0, and built from a source register generated 2026-08-04. A newer version of the document may say something else.