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(3rd Generation Partnership Project) A cooperation of international standards bodies for the promotion of high-speed cellular services known as 3G. Established in 1998, 3GPP works on specifications for GSM carriers, and 3GPP2 deals with CDMA carriers. See cellular generations.

3GPP for GSM (UMTS Umbrella)
For GSM carriers, the first 3G specification was WCDMA, followed by HSPA. Based on the CDMA air interface, WCDMA was a departure from GSM's TDMA. For more information, visit www.3gpp.org. See WCDMA, HSPA, GSM, CDMA and TDMA.

3GPP2 for CDMA (IMT-2000 Umbrella)
For CDMA2000 carriers, the first 3G specification was 1X, followed by EV-DO. The same audio and video formats are used in 3GPP2 as in 3GPP with the addition of QCELP speech. For more information, visit www.3gpp2.org. See CDMA, CDMA2000, QCELP and IMT-2000.

Convergence into LTE
In time, GSM and CDMA carriers are expected to converge their networks into the Long Term Evolution (LTE) standard supported by both 3GPP and 3GPP2. Although carriers worldwide will adopt LTE at varying rates or perhaps not at all, the migration to LTE will be increasingly encouraged in order to obtain one global standard (see LTE).