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Satellites are expected to play an important role in the future IBC and UMTS; owing to their flexibility and also their capability of covering large areas they are expected to complement the terrestrial component of the mobile networks and could be successfully exploited in all phases of the IBC deployment. The EU sponsored Programme for Research in Advanced Communications for Europe (RACE) has, since its start in 1 984, been conceived in two phases. Phase I, started in 1989, was concentrating on the system engineering, specifications and key technologies, while Phase II, which started in 1993, is concentrating on integration and the prototyping of new services and applications. The second Phase of the Programme has now reached full maturity and some of the results being achieved by Projects, are contained in this paper. The Consensus Management Project (CMP)1is responsible for consensus management activities within RACE II; this includes the management of the TG and STG structure for the preparation of the RACE Common Functional Specifications/Common Practice Recommendations (CFS/CPR) and contributions to the standardisation bodies. RACE CFS and CPR are published at the end ofeach year by CMP. Since 1994 an Addendum, collecting the latest results, is published in August. (see note in section 8). Within the RACE community, STG2.5 "Satellite Systems", building on the results achieved by the Project R1044 "IBC Development and Implementation Strategies", has developed more detailed Reference Configurations for satellites2; a similar activity is now starting in STG 2.4 "Mobile Communications"3 . Activities are currently in progress within RACE and ETSI SMG5 on the different aspects of integration of Satellite Systems into IBC and UMTS. This paper presents some of the results so far achieved in this work but it does not necessarily reflect fully the views of RACE or of SMGS.
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