3GPP Mobile Multimedia Services [Standards in a Nutshell

The 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) is developing and standardizing a wide range of advanced mobile multimedia services along with their radio access and network technologies. 3GPP targets to match or exceed the user experience of the personal computer (PC)-based services over the Internet, while at the same time facilitating unlimited receiver mobility, thus enabling ubiquitous service access for the user. This article gives an overview of the mobile multimedia services standardized by 3GPP. Those services can be classified based on their characteristics and target application scenarios into conversational, streaming, and other services. The related enablers, namely the media codecs and formats, are also presented.