Core Network Standards and Interfaces

(This section refers to the Ericsson UMTS Core Model)
The Ericsson core network architecture fully aligns with the 3GPP release 99 standards and complies with the interfaces worked out by the 3GPP. The separation of the control and user plane functions can be seen as an enhancement to the release 99 reference model and aligns with a number of important standardization initiatives in IETF, ETSI, IT-U and other different industry forums.

As a result of the various control plane/user plane separation initiatives in different standardization forums, a gateway control protocol (H.248) has now been standardized by ITU-T.