5 What the meeting actually did

5.1 What was started

The largest single thing a plenary does is let work begin. At SA#112, 30 new work items and study items were approved ^[7], and 11 existing ones were updated ^[8].

Four of the approved ones show the range:

• Post-quantum cryptography migration, a new work item description SP-260663

• Withdrawing the Release 18 and Release 19 specifications of the 256-bit cryptographic algorithms, also a new work item description SP-260664

• A study on additional capabilities for emergency communications, a new study item description SP-260654

• An AI-based speech codec for satellite voice — the long argument of this meeting, and the subject of its own section below SP-260696

Starting work and withdrawing work sit side by side in that list, and both arrive as the same kind of paper.

5.2 What was finished

26 specifications and technical reports were approved ^[9]; 6 more were only noted for information ^[10].

Two of the 26 are worth naming:

• The satellite integration study report — the report of the study on putting satellite components into the 5G architecture SP-260692

• TR 21.919, the technical report that summarises every Release 19 feature SP-260604

One category came out empty. No work item exception sheets were approved at all: that annex of the report reads "No entries found." ^[11]

5.3 What was held over

Five documents were postponed ^[13]. Two of them are about how 3GPP runs itself.

The change-request process for 3GPP Forge. The proposal to change how change requests work for specification attachments held in Forge did not go through — the report says "This was postponed." SP-260411, ^[14]

Every working group's terms of reference. The terms of reference say what a group is allowed to work on. One group's update was on the table SP-260470; the plenary held the whole set over so all six can be looked at together.

Two further documents were withdrawn during the meeting ^[15], one of them the revision of a paper from ten public bodies about designing 6G to be secure from the start. The first version of that paper was noted; the revision was pulled SP-260584, SP-260643.

5.4 The long argument: a speech codec trained on data

The work item that took the most getting through was an AI-based speech codec for voice over satellite.

The paper trail is two numbers. The first was revised SP-260417; the revision was approved SP-260696, and the draft report of the meeting records it in four words.

What makes it worth studying is that the approval did not settle the hard part. The question of where the data to train the model may come from was not answered in the room; it was pushed up to the Project Co-ordination Group.

5.5 The other long argument: how 3GPP writes specifications

Agenda item 9 was the study on modernising the specification format for 6G, and it drew 11 documents ^[16].

It ended with a trial and no commitment:

• The study's own report and its draft technical report were both noted SP-260406, SP-260407

• Qualcomm argued for markdown and git SP-260544

• Ericsson and Nokia demonstrated 3GPP Forge SP-260600

• The chair's guidance was endorsed SP-260679, ^[17]

The guidance itself is the outcome to quote, and it commits to nothing beyond carrying on.

Alongside it, the guidance tells the study to keep one trial running that was already under way ^[18]. Forge appears in this record as a place 3GPP specifications and change requests might live; the record does not define it further than that.

5.6 What the record does when people disagree

The plenary asked SA WG2 to do a naming job, with a date attached.

The next line of the report is four words long.

The objection is written down next to the decision and the meeting carries on. There is no vote count anywhere in the report, no record of who else was for or against, and no reason given by either side.

A related naming question was settled in the same stretch of the meeting: "It was decided to use '6GC or 6G CN'." for the 6G core network ^[19].

5.7 The post

A plenary is also a post office. 18 liaison statements came in ^[20] and 2 went out ^[21].

Almost every incoming letter was simply noted. Exactly one ended "replied to" — the letter from ETSI TC EMTEL about accessibility parameters in emergency communications SP-260363 — and the reply is its own approved document SP-260655.

A rival draft of that same reply, written by a different company, ended "merged" SP-260613. The other outgoing letter was the one fixing 6G terminology SP-260697.

Everything on this page is read out of the meeting's draft report and its document list. The report says "Status: Draft - for comment" on its cover ^[22].