4 Looking it up yourself, and what the record will not tell you

4.1 Reading the number before you open the document

A 3GPP number tells you what kind of thing you are holding. The first two digits give the subject area, and the letters in front separate a Technical Specification, which is the standard, from a Technical Report, which is usually the study behind one §4.0.

The version number does the same job for maturity. Three digits, x.y.z: the first is the Release, the second counts technical changes and the third counts editorial ones §4.0A.

Both are baked into the file name, which is why a directory listing on the file server is already useful:

4.2 Following one change to the end

Every 3GPP specification ends with a change history annex, and it is the most underused page in the document. It names each Change Request that changed the text, the meeting that decided it, and the version that came out §Annex A. Purely editorial fixes by the staff are explained there too §4.6.6.

From a line in that annex you can go outwards. The full change-request database sits on the file server ^[1], and the portal shows the Change Requests of one specification or one meeting together with their decisions ^[2]. The main site carries the meeting calendars, the minutes, the documents and the latest specifications ^[3]. If you want to write one rather than read one, 3GPP publishes its own step-by-step guide to the form ^[4].

Three more documents answer questions people keep asking elsewhere. The drafting rules are their own document TR 21.801 v19.1.0. The shared vocabulary is another TR 21.905 v19.2.0, holding 579 defined terms ^[5]. And each Release gets a plain-language description of what its work items delivered TR 21.919 v19.0.0, while a list document per kind of system says which specifications you actually need to build it TS 21.205 v19.0.0.

4.3 Reading an RFC

An RFC carries its own metadata in the header block at the top: its category, the standard or best-current-practice number it carries if it has one, and what it obsoletes or updates RFC 7841. Which of the four streams it came from is stated there as well, so you can tell an IETF standard from an independent submission without leaving the page RFC 7841.

The current list of working groups and areas is deliberately not in any RFC. It lives on the website, because it changes ^[6].

4.4 What this record cannot tell you

Being able to check things means also knowing where checking stops. Six questions this material simply does not answer:

• Who the Organizational Partners are. The working-methods document mentions them and the calendar records that they meet, but no file here names them §3.2, 3GPP OP.

• How a 3GPP vote is carried. Who may vote and with what weight is in the 3GPP Working Procedures, one level above the working methods ^[7].

• When any Release was frozen. Freeze dates are set in the 3GPP work plan §4.10.3.4, and the work plan is not part of what is read here.

• Who was in the room. Nothing here says how many delegates attend, how many companies are members, what membership costs, or who chairs anything.

• Anything about one IETF working group. The archive holds RFCs and nothing else — no charters, no minutes, no mailing-list threads, no drafts.

• Which organisation is better. The counts measure how much has been written, and nothing else. They cannot say which body is faster, more open or more careful, and any sentence claiming so is somebody's opinion.

4.5 Where to go next

Read the working-methods document itself — every 3GPP rule in this course came out of it TR 21.900 v20.0.0. It runs to 97 clauses ^[8], and this site carries it clause by clause ^[9].

For everything else there are two front doors: the 3GPP site for calendars, meetings and specifications ^[3], and the IETF site for the current list of working groups and areas ^[6].

And every number in this course carries the exact query that produced it and the day it was asked. The 1,629,581 meeting documents counted in the last chapter ^[10] are one of them; the sources page of this course lists them all.