Who writes the rules for the radio · chapter 1 of 4 · 4 minutes
1 Who decides how a phone talks to a mast
Why the radio has to be agreed on paper before anything is built, who inside 3GPP does that agreeing, and how much of 3GPP's output it accounts for.
Built from §1
1.1 Nobody owns the chain
A phone bought in one country has to work on a mast in another, built by a different company, running software from a third.
No single one of them can make that happen. It only works because everybody wrote down, before any of it existed, what goes over the air and what it means.
That written agreement is what a standards group produces. For the radio part of a mobile network, the group is TSG RAN.
1.2 Why the radio in particular
The radio is where the agreement bites hardest. Two boxes that disagree about a message on a wire can be patched afterwards; two boxes that disagree about the shape of a signal in the air simply never hear each other.
It is also the part with the most kinds of question in it at once. The signal, the conversation carried on that signal, the links between masts, the transmitter limits and the proof that one particular phone obeys all of them are five different skills.
That is why the job is not one committee but seven meetings, and why the next chapter is a list of rooms.
1.3 What TSG RAN is
TSG RAN is a plenary — the meeting where decisions are taken — plus six working groups, which do the drafting RAN.
The six are RAN1, RAN2, RAN3, RAN4, RAN5 and RAN6. Five of them still meet. RAN6 is the only one the catalogue marks as closed RAN6.
The plenary is not only a chair. It owns 198 documents in its own right [1], out of RAN's 1059 [2].
1.4 Three words you will keep meeting
Almost every piece of paper here is one of three things.
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A specification, written TS — a rule other people have to follow.
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A study report, written TR — homework a group did before deciding anything.
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A change request — the only way a specification that has been published is ever altered.
1.5 How big this is
RAN keeps 1059 active documents alive [2].
All of 3GPP together keeps 3599 [3], and 1059 of those belong to the radio side.
Meeting paper says it more loudly. The local record holds 811563 RAN meeting documents [4] out of 1629581 for all of 3GPP [5].
1.6 When the work happens
Nothing here runs continuously. It arrives in weeks.
The plenary meets four times a year, usually for four days 3GPPRAN#112. The five open working groups meet together in a week of their own — same week, same place, five days 3GPPRAN1#125.
The plenary then sits a few weeks after that week, so it decides on work the groups have just finished: groups on 2026-05-18, plenary on 2026-06-08 3GPPRAN1#125 3GPPRAN#112.
These are not small rooms. 396 people sat in the plenary at RAN#112 [7].
1.7 The document behind this course
Everything this course says about the radio itself comes from one specification: TS 38.300, the overall description of NR and the NG-RAN. NR is the 5G radio, and NG-RAN is the network of base stations that speaks it. It belongs to RAN2 TS 38.300.
Its first clause is unusually honest about its own limits:
Which groups own which documents is The six groups, and what each one worries about.
Where the numbers in this chapter come from
- 198 active RAN plenary specifications rows in the pygppe specification catalogue /var/www/whatthespec.net/data/database/api/spec_catalog.sqlite where wg='RP' and active='yes', read 2026-08-04
- 1059 active RAN specifications rows in the pygppe specification catalogue /var/www/whatthespec.net/data/database/api/spec_catalog.sqlite where wg is one of RP, R1, R2, R3, R4, R5, R6 and active='yes', read 2026-08-04
- 3599 active 3GPP specifications in total rows in the pygppe specification catalogue /var/www/whatthespec.net/data/database/api/spec_catalog.sqlite where active='yes', 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
- 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
- 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
- 396 people sat in the room at 3GPPRAN#112 Attendeesf2f of row for 3GPPRAN#112 in /var/www/whatthespec.net/data/database/api/portal_meetings.sqlite, read 2026-08-04
Check yourself
Answers appear when you pick one, with where they come from.
Q1.1 What is TSG RAN?
It is a technical specification group inside 3GPP. The plenary decides and also owns documents; the working groups draft them. RAN
Q1.2 How many active documents does RAN keep alive?
RAN holds 1059. The plenary's own share of those is 198, and 3599 is the total for all of 3GPP. 1059 active RAN specifications
Q1.3 What is the difference between a TS and a TR?
Specification and study report. Almost everything RAN produces is one of the two, or a paper arguing about one of them. TR 38.913
Q1.4 What does TS 38.300 set out to do?
It says so in its first clause, and it names the 38 series as where the detail lives. §1
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.