The following basic objectives to be supported by the management specifications have been identified:

• to be capable of managing equipment supplied by different vendors including the management systems themselves.
• to minimise the complexity of PLMN management.
• to provide the communication between Network Elements (NEs) and Operations Systems (OS) or between OSs themselves via standardised interfaces (e.g. CORBA, SNMP, etc.) as appropriate and necessary.
• to minimise the costs of managing a PLMN such that it is a small component of the overall operating cost.
• to provide configuration capabilities that are flexible enough to allow rapid deployment of services.
• to provide integrated Fault Management capabilities.
• to simplify maintenance interventions by supporting remote maintenance operations.
• to allow interoperability between Network Operators/Service Providers for the exchange of management/charging information. This includes interoperability with other networks and services
  (e.g. ISDN/B-ISDN, PSTN and UPT) as well as other PLMNs.
• to enable the support and control of a growing number of resources. This would allow the system to start from a small and simple configuration and grow as needed, both in size and complexity.
• to re-use existing relevant standards (e.g. GSM, IN, ISDN/B-ISDN, ITU-T, TMF etc.) where applicable.
• to support the security management of PLMNs (e.g. key management, access control management, operation and administration of security mechanisms) with particular emphasis on new features such as automatic roaming and packet switched services.
• to provide and support a flexible billing and accounting administration, to support charging across PLMNs.
• to address the management and assessment of system performance and operation through the use of common measurements, etc. This would enable a Network Operator/Service Provider to assess actual performance against planned targets.
• to expose any information only once.
  (Example: In case an operator would like to change one parameter in a cell: Then all occurrences of this parameter, e.g. transceiver frequency, hand-over relationships, performance measurements, frequency hopping control, etc., should be changed by one action only.)
• to support the restoration of an Operations System (e.g. resynchronisation and atomic transactions).
• to have one (1) name convention for network resources under management in the 3GPP context. To perform network management tasks, co-operating applications require identical interpretation of names assigned to network resources under management. Such names are required to be unambiguous as well.

It is acknowledged that the introduction of new architecture to support new services or the introduction of new services themselves may impact the detailed requirements of some or all of the above.

A 3GPP System is made of the following components:

• one or more Access Networks, using different types of access techniques (GSM, UTRA, DECT, PSTN, ISDN, ...) of which at least one is UTRA;
• one or more Core Networks;
• one or more Intelligent Node Networks service logic and mobility management, (IN, GSM ...);
• one or more transmission networks (PDH, SDH etc.) in various topologies (point-to-point, ring, and
  point-to-multi-point...) and physical means (radio, fibre and copper ...).

The 3GPP system components have signalling mechanisms among them (DSS1, INAP, MAP, SS7, RSVP,...). From the service perspective, the 3GPP system is defined to offer:

• Service support transparent to the location, access technique and core network, within the bearer capabilities available in one particular case;
• User to terminal and user to network interface (MMI) irrespective of the entities supporting the services required (VHE);
• Multimedia capabilities.

TS 22.101 "Services Principles" identifies two major entities, which cover the set of 3GPP functionalities involved in the provision of the 3GPP services to the user. These are: Home Environment: Serving Network:

Every PLMN Organisation has its own management infrastructure. Each management infrastructure contains different functionality depending on the role-played and the equipment used by that PLMN Entity. However, the core management architecture of the PLMN Organisation is very similar. Every PLMN Organisation:

• provides services to its customers;
• needs an infrastructure to fulfil them (advertise, ordering, creation, provisioning ...);
• assures them (Operation, Quality of Service, Trouble Reporting and Fixing ...);
• bills them (Rating, Discounting ...).

Not every PLMN Organisation will implement the complete management architecture and related processes. Some processes may be missing dependent on the role a particular organisation is embodying. Processes not implemented by a particular organisation are accessed via interconnections to other organisations, which have implemented these processes (called X-interfaces in the ITU-T TMN architecture). The management architecture itself does not distinguish between external and internal interfaces.