Even though the first networks are already live, 3G manufacturers and operators will meet in Beijing next week to decide whether the testing regime for equipment needs to be tightened up.
A group within the Global Certification Forum, the organisation set up by the 3G community to co-ordinate standards setting, is proposing that the text forms of the various test standards produced by the 3G Partnership Programme (3GPP) do not go far enough.
Instead, it wants test standards written in the TTCN software language recognised as the "normative" tests for interoperability.
The move comes as test company Anritsu criticised competitor Anite Telecoms for declaring that it is "the only company capable of providing 3G development and conformance test systems with proven 3GPP test cases".
Anite has licensed tests written by specialist Sasken Communication Technologies based on the prose versions of the tests in advance of the TTCN versions being released. Among others, Anritsu has decided to wait for the TTCN versions to become available.
Peter George, marketing manager of Anritsu's manufacturing division, said: "In an ideal world, there shouldn't be a problem testing to the prose specification. But the prose specification is a high-level description. There are a lot of low-level settings that are only defined in the TTCN."
Bob Morley, Anite's product marketing manager, says the TTCN tests are taking a long time to appear and his company therefore decided to go with the prose-based tests.
"The industry has always been able to produce tests cases against prose. That was the case with GSM," he said. "We decided this was the quickest way to get solutions to market, and the tests have been proven against a reference implementation. The TTCN is only derived from the prose anyway."
Anite's Morley warns that moving to TTCN as the sole basis for 3G testing could slow the process down.
But Anritsu's George believes TTCN would be better because the process of writing the software helps defines many low-level characteristics that will end up being rolled back into the prose.
According to George, the first batch of TTCN tests based on the March 2002 release of 3G standards will be ready by the end of this year. A second batch is expected by the end of 2003 but he reckons this will not hurt the rollout.
"There will be other limiting factors," said George.
