Europe : RFI Global Services Ltd hosted the recent Global Certification Forum (GCF) meeting where the industry reached its targets for the start of 3G certification on mobile phones.

Formal certification will be implemented from 8 February 2005. The industry has been working towards this date for over two years and the members of the GCF have made this happen working with tight deadlines and short timescales. RFI played a key part in the start of certification as the validation partner for Anritsu and has invested significantly in equipment and people to support certification by providing test and consultancy services for terminal vendors.

Richard Jacklin, Director of RFI's Cellular Business said "It was important to RFI as a global provider of cellular testing and approval services to be associated with such a significant industry milestone for handset network interoperability. GCF has proved that it can implement and manage the certification of new standards evolving in the mobile phone market".

RFI hosted the event at its new Basingstoke headquarters and light relief was provided from paper reviews and decision making in the form of a Murder Mystery evening. The meeting saw one of the GCF's largest attendances in its history with over 100 industry stakeholders represented.

The GCF has now accomplished the 80% of 3GPP approved test cases, which was considered as a threshold/ minimum level to commence certification

RFI Global Services (RFI) supplies comprehensive regulatory and compliance services to the wireless and related technology industries around the world.

Specific areas of expertise include compliance management, regulatory investigations and applications, development and conformance testing.

The scope of RFI's UKAS accreditation covers both testing at its permanent laboratories and off-site locations. RFI is a Notified Body for the R&TTE Directive, a Competent Body for the EMC Directive, a Telecommunications Certification Body (TCB) under the US-EU Mutual Recognition Agreement, a Bluetooth Qualification Test Facility (BQTF) and has two Bluetooth Qualification Bodies (BQB).

his is a review of the 3G Motorola V980 handset and was undertaken in February, 2005 by Kevin Thomas of 3G.co.uk. This review covers the phone only and does not address the performance of Vodafone's 3G Network.

Motorola has today announced the creation of a dedicated 3G mobile phone design centre in Basingstoke. The company’s mobile devices business will be deploying existing employees to the centre as well as creating new engineering and product development jobs.