Q: What's 4GMF ®?
A: Fourth Generation Mobile Forum ®.

Q: What's the objective and mission of 4GMF?
A: To setup an industrial alliance in proposing and defining the 4G mobile communication standards for the US, China markets as well as other emerging markets in the Asia-Pacific regions.

Q: Why is this 4GMF so urgent in the region?
A: As OECD report stated, current 3G did not fundamentally improve the 2G mobile architecture, and therefore 3G becomes very limited in further technology development and is a transitional solution only. 4G can greatly improve the wireless and mobile communication architecture, and therefore US, China and the regions will definitely focus on 4G technology in long-run.

Q: What's 4G technology?
A: 4G will basically focus on Open Wireless Architecture (OWA) with cost-effective, spectrum-efficient high-speed wireless transmissions (including wireless mobile and wireless access). In a word, 4G will converge existing wireless technologies into an open platform so that the individual wireless modules are extensible and upgradeable, and can be from different vendors.

Q: Why is it very beneficial for the mobile users?
A: With this new 4G technology, users can integrate their mobile phone, wireless access equipment, office phone, home phone, etc into ONE single personal communicator (personal phone) with ONE personal communication number.

Q: Why is 4G very critical in terms of spectrum utilization?
A: 4G supports dynamic spectrum access and recycling technologies which is very important to improve the spectrum utilization. Current 3G and 2G use static spectrum allocations, and waste huge spectrums in the commercial bands. Without this 4G improvements, all mobile phones will be shut-off by year 2030 due to unavailability of wireless spectrum.

Q: What's the elements of future 4G radio?
A: The future 4G radio is first, a computer, then an Open Wireless Architecture (OWA) terminal.

Q: Should 4G mobile focus on high-speed wireless transmission (for example, 100Mbps or 1Gbps) only?
A: Definitely Not! 4G mobile should focus on Open Wireless Architecture (OWA) rather than high-speed wireless transmission only, both from theoretical and practical studies. The later should be limited to Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) system because we do not have so much spectrums for mobile communications, and the mobile spectrum efficiency is extremely low!

Q: Can you provide a simple example of such 4G systems which we can see the market very soon?
A: A simple example of such 4G-OWA systems is the "WiFi / WiMax / GSM" 3-in-1 open mobile phone which will be deployed very soon. The WiFi supports VoWiFi and Data services. Normally WiFi and WiMax plus backhauls can support full mobile communications in the city. In case of unavailability of such networks, the phone goes back to GSM mode. By using this 4G-OWA technology, the spectrum efficiency can be increased by at least 40%. By year 2010, we will be able to deliver the commercial GSM / cdma2000 / TD-SCDMA / WiFi / WiMax / Bluetooth 6-in-1 single mobile phone based on this 4G-OWA technology.

Q: What's the main subsystems of such 4G mobile phone?
A: RF (Radio Frequency unit), BB (Base-Band processing unit), Networks and infrastructure, OS (Operation Systems unit) and Application/Service platform unit.

Q: Are there any companies already working on such 4G systems?
A: Lots of companies (most are Fortune 500 companies) have already worked on such 4G technologies, for example, Intel on converged WiMax/WiFi platform, TI on dynamic spectrum access, Alcatel on open basestation architecture, Cisco on open wireless router, Oracle on open enterprise mobility platform, Mentor Graphics on open OS platform, Samsung on open terminal platform, etc. We just need 4GMF to put everything together and make it an industrial standards.

Q: What's the timeframe for 4GMF standards development?
A: 4GMF was launched in March 2007, and the first version standards will come out before 1Q2010, so that US and China can launch such initial 4G services by early 2012.

Q: Is 4GMF an international standards?
A: Yes! it is registered internationally and will be a global industry standards of 4G mobile communications. But the initial markets will be targeted for US, China and the A/P regions.

Q: Do you have enough technical backups for 4GMF program?
A: Yes! we have five major international 4G & B3G technology conferences to backup the technology flows for the 4GMF missions. Every year we receive thousands of 4G technical submissions worldwide to support the technology development for the 4GMF technical activities.

Q: Is 4GMF a governmental platform?
A: No! 4GMF is a non-governmental standardization program. 4GMF is an independently operated standardization and technology-development organization, supported by sponsors, partners, endorsers and members across the global.

Q: Who will be involved in 4GMF standardization activities?
A: Both local and international vendors, operators, providers, investors, policy-makers and research bodies, etc will be involved in this important standardization process.

Q: Will the 4GMF results be submitted to ITU?
A: Not necessary ! 4GMF is an industrial standard starting from Asia-Pacific markets. ITU only regulates spectrum allocation policy and issues recommendations only for global mobile communications. ITU never publishes standards for systems development and implementation. However, 4GMF strongly supports ITU mission on IMT-Advanced (the post program after IMT-2000).

Q: What's the difference between 4GMF and NGMN?
A: NGMN is only targeted for the higher layer mobile services and applications evolved directly and indirectly from WAP Forum, Open Mobile Alliance. However, 4GMF covers the standardizations from physical layer, MAC layer to the network layer, transport layer as well the service/application layers. Therefore, 4GMF work includes RF, base-band, networks, OS and applications.

Q: Is 4GMF protected internationally?
A: Yes, 4GMF (Fourth Generation Mobile Forum) is protected in both USA, China and internationally. If you find any company using this trademark in any country, please report it to legal<at>4GMF.org accordingly. 4GMF has attorney base offices in US, China, UK, Germany, France and Japan.