GCF certification concept
GCF is the abbreviation of Global Certification Forum. Its Chinese translation is Global Certification Forum, and it is an international organization. Its members are composed of 142 operators, 33 terminal manufacturers, testing agencies and testing equipment suppliers. The GCF organization coordinated the mobile phone consistency testing standards and defined a test system to ensure that the mobile phone meets network deployment. At the same time, all member operators agree to this test system. That is to say, GCF recognition means that all member operators recognize the phone and will be free of additional testing in the future.
At the same time, GCF also recognizes test cases and test systems. The purpose of GCF is to ensure global interoperability of terminals through an independent authentication process, namely: "Tested Once, Accepted by All". GCF plays a very important role in the consistency testing of 3G. This is because 3GPP only formulates relevant testing specifications and organizes the compilation of unified test cases, but does not stipulate when to conduct consistency testing, how to conduct consistency testing, and what test compliance standards are. And GCF takes on this part of the work. GCF sets a series of milestones for consistency testing, and formulates test cases, planning platform certification processes, and terminal product certification and registration processes.
However, GCF does not engage in any testing, but leaves it to third-party testing institutions (such as Huake Testing) for testing. The GCF GSM/UTRA Working Group, Application Development Working Group, Field Test Working Group and Ad-Hoc Working Group meet every three months to acknowledge the test results, and the test cases and test systems will be recognized at the same time. When the industry's test cases and test systems meet the various milestone requirements of GCF, the industry's consistency testing for terminal devices really begins.
GCF accreditation means that all GCF operator members are recognized. GCF's requirements for WCDMA terminal certification testing must conduct WCDMA terminal certification testing. Terminal manufacturers must first clarify what functions and features the terminal supports to form an option table. Then, based on the 3GPP core standard, the option table determines what GCF CC test standards, purpose and method should be selected, and form a test requirement table. At the same time, according to the option table and the 3GPP test standards, the laboratory will develop a consistency evaluation table to reflect the degree of consistency between the terminal and the corresponding test standards; of course, the focus of the evaluation is on the corresponding test methods and testing purposes.