ten takes years, can be a first step, paving the way for accelerated resolution of tech- nical issues within each company and thus for accelerated deployment. 9.1.5 Standards and politics Standards also have a political side, much of which is not often seen as beneficial. In ac- tuality, even this political dimension has neutral, problematic, and beneficial aspects. Downloaded from Digital Engineering Library @ McGraw-Hill (www.digitalengineeringlibrary.com) Copyright © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies. All rights reserved. Any use is subject to the Terms of Use as given at the website. General Cellular Standards General Cellular Standards A neutral aspect of the politics of standards important to our understanding of the world of CDMA is the way in which standards typically develop differently in North America and in Europe. In North America, standards are often proposed by one or more companies and then developed by a cooperative effort of businesses. Standards often first appear either in proposals from companies to relatively unbiased industry groups, such as the IEEE, or from industry consortia with an unabashed agenda, such as the CDG. From these organizations, standards often move up the hierarchy of officialdom to quasi-governmental or international organizations such as ANSI and ITU. In Europe, standards are developed to simplify industrial and economic development throughout the European Union. Consortia have an international flavor. In fact, some might argue that creating, arbitrating, and managing standards is the European Union's biggest job. In any case, the ITU is the body based in Europe that is most rel- evant to cellular telephony. The ITU has two groups relevant to our work, the tele- phony group (ITU-T) and the radio group (ITU-R). Both groups create and certify stan- dards relevant to cellular networks. Because the ITU is worldwide rather than European, standards often move from ANSI to ITU. Another dimension of the neutral politics of standards for wireless telecommunica- tions is the relation