The process and data behind standard setting in wireless communications

Standard setting has gathered great attention in the academic and policy circles recently. At the heart of the focus are concerns around standard setting organizations and standards essential patents. Questions have been raised about whether there are “too many” standards essential patents, on how and when to access the value of these patents, and whether their owners can cause a potential hold-up of downstream manufacturers. Some concerns that the entire standards process may be held hostage by an incumbent minority have also been raised. However, missing from this dialogue has been an institutional understanding of the standard setting process, built with the help of technologists and engineers who actually participate in this process and are intimately familiar with it. Backed on an institutional understanding, empirical analysis based on relevant data-sets also needs to be scaled up. This paper tries to address these issues for widely adopted third and fourth generation (3G and 4G) wireless cellular standards defined by 3GPP. An institutional background and an extensive data collection effort in this paper lead to some initial findings that can be used to address some of the policy discussions under way today. PRELIMINARY AND INCOMPLETE: DO NOT CITE OR QUOTE ∗[email protected]. The views reflected in this paper are those of the author and do not reflect the views of Qualcomm Inc.