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Glossary

PLMN (Public Land Mobile Network) in 3GPP: meaning and where it is specified

Published 2026-10-16Updated 2026-10-16

At a glance

Term
PLMN
Stands for
Public Land Mobile Network
Defined in
3GPP TR 21.905 V19.2.0, clause 4
Used in
TS 22.011, TS 23.002, TS 23.003

In plain words

PLMN stands for Public Land Mobile Network. TS 22.011 defines it as "a network established and operated by an Administration or RPOA for the specific purpose of providing land mobile communication services to the public.". The term appears in TS 23.002 under its PLMN section and in TS 23.003 for the PLMN identifier.

Source: 3GPP TS 22.011 V17.7.0, clause 1.2.1. © 3GPP Organizational Partners (ARIB, ATIS, CCSA, ETSI, TSDSI, TTA, TTC). Official text: https://www.3gpp.org/ftp/Specs/archive/22_series/22.011/22011-h70.zip

Sources

  1. 3GPP TR 21.905 V19.2.0, clause 4. © 3GPP Organizational Partners (ARIB, ATIS, CCSA, ETSI, TSDSI, TTA, TTC). Official text: https://www.3gpp.org/ftp/Specs/archive/21_series/21.905/21905-j20.zip
  2. 3GPP TS 22.011 V17.7.0, clause 1.2.1. © 3GPP Organizational Partners (ARIB, ATIS, CCSA, ETSI, TSDSI, TTA, TTC). Official text: https://www.3gpp.org/ftp/Specs/archive/22_series/22.011/22011-h70.zip
  3. 3GPP TS 23.002 V16.0.0, clause 3.1. © 3GPP Organizational Partners (ARIB, ATIS, CCSA, ETSI, TSDSI, TTA, TTC). Official text: https://www.3gpp.org/ftp/Specs/archive/23_series/23.002/23002-g00.zip
  4. 3GPP TS 23.003 V20.1.0, clause 12.1. © 3GPP Organizational Partners (ARIB, ATIS, CCSA, ETSI, TSDSI, TTA, TTC). Official text: https://www.3gpp.org/ftp/Specs/archive/23_series/23.003/23003-k10.zip

How this page was made

The facts box comes straight from the 3GPP TDoc list and specification archive as indexed by 3GPP Scout. An AI model (GPT-6 Luna) wrote the paragraph and named the source of each sentence. Code checked every quote word for word against the stored source text and every number against the cited source. A second AI model from another company (Claude Opus 5.5) reviewed the paragraph against the same sources. The 3GPP documents themselves govern.