 Two organizations, the ETSI which is a regional organization and 3GPP which is a global organization have significantly contributed to the shape of NGN as we see today. In this module we'd see what has been their role with regards to NGN recommendations in the Y-Series. First we understand that ETSI tasked its own specialized technical committee called TSPAN which is the Telecommunications and Internet Converse Services and Protocols for Advanced Networking. Now, TSPAN on behalf of ETSI started working in collaboration with ITUT and this activity resulted in three releases from the ETSI community. TSPAN recommendations include the IMS, the IP Multimedia Subsystem which is nothing but it's a fixed voice over IP equivalent to replace the public switch telephone networks which were based on the circuit switching. Now the first release actually was taken up by the third generation partnership project group which was again collaborating with the ITUT. And now we see that in NGN there is one common IP Multimedia Subsystem standard for all networks and services across wide and wireless domains. This beauty or beautiful contribution from the TSPAN community is central to the collaboration that resulted between the ETSI and 3GPP. Now the first release was primarily for voice which was based on the session initiation protocol based applications which is equivalent to the SS7 signaling standard 7 used as in PSTNs and PLMNs. The second release of TSPAN addresses both non-IMS-based and IMS-based IP television. It addresses the broadcast TV over the internet. Consequently, TSPAN releases have contributed to the triple-play services if you recall our voice, video and data services over the internet stack. There's another dimension to the TSPAN specifications that it quadruple play. Quadruple includes an additional play which is when we include quality of service based high-end video which is transmitted along with tele-text service. Now when TSPAN and 3GPP started working together through their collaborative efforts, the TSPAN NGN release 1 specifications were mapped on to the release 7 specifications provided by the 3GPP group. Likewise, the TSPAN specifications number released 2 specifications were mapped on to the release 8 of the 3GPP. In this way, these organizations while being distinct have collaborated in the evolution of NGN documentation. 3GPP per se as an individual organization has played an important role in NGN standardization by number one adopting the IMS specifications as given by TSPAN. The same release that is release 8 also standardized the long-term evolution which is an advanced form of the after 3GVC 4G in the radioexercite called RAN radio access network. So this means the IP based migration of the 3GPP into the evolved UMTS Terrestrial Radio Access Network and the SAE which is basically the architecture for the LTE are all based on IP. Now this simultaneously helped 3GPP to be a more significant player because while on one end it contributed the IMS for the mobile networks and at the same time it based its core network functionality as in EUTRAN and SAE on IP. As far as the LTE is concerned because in Pakistan we are used to of seeing LTE and LTEA also known as the 4G networks it is interesting that while 3GPP was working on the standardization activity of NGN 4G was released. So 4G is essentially NGN an interesting analogy is sometimes from the ITUT standard perspective 4G is also called 3.9G not exactly 4G because it is a little short on the ITUT NGN recommendations. One unique attribute of 4G is as per the ITUT NGN guidelines the functionalities which were carried out in band sometimes and were shared by the network elements. Now there is a dedicated network infrastructure also called the overlay network that we discussed earlier once we were discussing SS7. Now we have in LTE separate transport and service stratum it means the services are offered on a different network elements and the traffic is actually carried on different network elements. And LTE also utilizes SIP for signaling on the IP multimedia subsystem. So LTE by all standards is NGN.