CAF - The Role of Geography and Gender in Telecommunications Standards Participation

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The Role of Geography and Gender in Telecommunications Standards Participation Vicente Abrigo1 | Justus Baron 2 | Tatiana Rosá 3 1Universidad Diego Portales. vicente.abrigo@mail.udp.cl 2Northwestern University, Center on Law, Business, and Economics. justus.baron@law.northwestern.edu 3CAF Development Bank. trosa@caf.com Do meeting locations shape who influences telecom standards? Using quasi-random variation generated by 3GPP rules that rotate venues across cities, we study attendance at 2,241 workinggroup meetings (1999–2018). In a gravity-style linear probability model, geographic distance and national borders sharply reduce individual participation, even after controlling for role, seniority, and inventive activity. Crucially, the distance penalty is substantially larger for women and cannot be explained by differences in experience or technical expertise. By contrast, participation by core firms and senior technical leaders is comparatively insensitive to travel frictions. These results show that, despite cheaper communication and abundant air connections, spatial barriers still govern access to standard-setting and can tilt representation in a key arena of innovation policy. K E Y W O R D S Telecom standards, Standard-setting organizations, International Meeting locations, Travel frictions, Gender gap participation. Small sections of text that are less than two paragraphs may be quoted without explicit permission as long as this document is acknowledged. Findings, interpretations and conclusions expressed in this publication are

the sole responsibility of its author(s) and cannot be, in any way, attributed to CAF, its Executive Directors or the countries they represent. CAF does not guarantee the accuracy of the data included in this publication and is not, in any way, responsible for any consequences resulting from its use. ©2025 Corporación Andina de FomentoC A F - D O C U M E NT O D E T R AB A J O # 2 0 2 5 / 1 7

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El rol de la geografía y el género en la participación en estándares de telecomunicaciones Vicente Abrigo1 | Justus Baron 2 | Tatiana Rosá 3 1Universidad Diego Portales. vicente.abrigo@mail.udp.cl 2Northwestern University, Center on Law, Business, and Economics. justus.baron@law.northwestern.edu 3CAF Development Bank. trosa@caf.com ¿Influye la ubicación de las reuniones en quién tiene voz en los estándares de telecomunicaciones? Aprovechando la variación cuasi-aleatoria generada por las reglas de 3GPP para rotar sedes por región, analizamos la asistencia a 2.241 reuniones de grupos de trabajo (1999–2018). En un modelo de probabilidad lineal tipo gravedad, la distancia geográfica y las fronteras nacionales reducen marcadamente la participación individual, aun controlando por rol, antigüedad y actividad inventiva. De manera crucial, la penalidad por distancia es sustancialmente mayor

para las mujeres y no se explica por diferencias de experiencia o expertise. En contraste, la participación de las firmas núcleo y de líderes técnicos senior es relativamente insensible a fricciones de viaje. Los resultados muestran que, pese a menores costos de comunicación y más conexiones aéreas, las barreras espaciales siguen condicionando el acceso al proceso de estandarización. Pequeñas secciones del texto, menores a dos párrafos, pueden ser citadas sin autorización explícita siempre que se cite el presente documento. Los resultados, interpretaciones y conclusiones expresados en esta publicación son de exclusiva responsabilidad de su(s) autor(es), y de ninguna manera pueden ser atribuidos a CAF, a los miembros de su Directorio Ejecutivo o a los países que ellos representan. CAF no garantiza la exactitud de los datos incluidos en esta publicación y no se hace responsable en ningún aspecto de las consecuencias que resulten de su utilización. ©2025 Corporación Andina de FomentoABRIGO, BARON ANDROSÁ 2 1|INTRODUCTION Standardization plays a crucial role in the development of many modern technologies; and in particular for telecommunication technologies. The different generations of mobile telecommunications technology (2G, 3G, 4G, 5G, etc.) are defined by complex technical specifications that are developed in industry-driven Standards Development Organizations (SDOs). The most important forum for the standardization of mobile telecommunications technology is the 3GPP (Third Generation Partnership Project). Through 3GPP , experts and representatives from various organizations collaborate to establish and improve 3GPP’s Technical Specifications (TS). The technical work for the development and improvement of TS is primarily carried out in 3GPP’s working groups,

which meet multiple times per year. The importance of these meetings lies in their ability to bring together knowledge and experience from different parts of the world, ensuring that the standards developed are technologically advanced and widely accepted by the industry. In recent years, the frequency and scope of these meetings have increased significantly. This growth reflects the rapid evolution of telecommunications technology and the constant need to update and improve existing standards. Furthermore, the group of participating organizations has significantly increased, driven by new powers like China and smaller countries, as will be discussed later. As a result, attendance at these meetings has become increasingly important. However, the growing frequency of meetings and the global distribution of 3GPP’s active participants have made it more challenging for everyone to attend all relevant meetings. In this article, we exploit variation in meeting locations due to 3GPP rules to examine the factors influencing the decision to attend or not attend a standardization meeting, with a particular focus on how geographical distance affects meeting attendance. We pay special attention to how these effects vary across different groups, highlighting distinct patterns between men and women, as well as among senior employees and inventors. Several studies in the geography and innovation literature have shown that improving connectivity—whether through new roads (Agrawal et al., 2017; Berger and Prawitz, 2024) or more direct flights (Bahar et al., 2023)—significantly increases scientific collaboration by reducing interaction costs. However, even in 2024, despite more direct flights than ever, distance remains a barrier to collaboration, particularly for certain groups. Our paper further contributes to this literature by demonstrating that distance still influences collaboration decisions, with the impact being especially significant for women. Our approach draws on the gravity equation commonly used in trade literature, which emphasizes the role of geographic proximity and shared borders in shaping trade patterns (Bernard et al., 2007; Tinbergen, 1962). Although the gravity equation is traditionally applied

to firm export behavior, we adapt it to estimate a linear probability model that examines how distance, borders, and cultural factors influence individuals’ decisions to attend international meetings. Similar to the gravity model, our participation model functions as a reduced-form model of a static partial equilibrium for attendance decisions Bergstrand (1985). In this model, firms and individuals maximize their indirect utility by deciding which worker to send or whether to attend a meeting, based on both meeting and individual characteristics. Using administrative records from 3GPP standardization meetings from 1999 to 2018, we estimate a linear probability model for individual attendance at meetings. Our final dataset covers 2,241 meetings across 35 different working groups, including 125,492 individual attendance records with attendee details, such as name, role at the meeting (e.g., delegate or chair), organization (3GPP member company), and phone number. We supplement 3GPP records with information on attendees’ country of origin and gender, inferred from their phone numbers and first names (Wais, 2016). Additionally, we have 19,876 records ofABRIGO, BARON ANDROSÁ 3 individuals who registered but ultimately did not attend. The dataset is further expanded to 227,804 observations by including individuals who neither attended nor registered but, based on past attendance in the same working group, could have potentially participated. We also incorporate information on attendees’ patent activity from the OECD database, which is matched with the Searle Center’s Database of Declared SEPs (Baron and Spulber, 2018). Finally, we add data on cultural proximity between countries from the Centre d’Études Prospectives et d’Informations Internationales (CEPII). Our initial analysis shows that the farther potential attendees live from the meeting location, the less likely they are to attend. Furthermore, even after accounting for distance, attendees are more likely to participate if the meeting is held within their country of

residence or in a country where they share a common language. Nevertheless, these chilling effects of borders and distance are not experienced by all 3GPP participants. We find that distance plays a greater role for women’s participation in 3GPP meetings, which could condition their future career opportunities. Importantly, while distance has a less significant effect on the participation decisions of more senior individuals and more accomplished technical experts; the fact that women’s participation is more elastic to distance cannot be explained by differences in experience or technical expertise between women and men. Furthermore, both distance and border effects do not affect the participation decisions of the employees of the organizations that are most involved in 3GPP . Related Literature. Our paper contributes to several strands of literature. First, it relates to the economics and management of standardization in telecommunications, particularly the role of standardization bodies’ rules in shaping participation and representation. Closer to our research, (Chiao et al., 2005) and (Lerner and Tirole, 2006) examine how an SDO’s support for technology developers or adopters influences institutional partners’ participation, while (Farrell and Simcoe, 2012) explores how institutional incentives shape participation through a war of attrition. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first paper to examine individual participation in global SDO meetings, highlighting how meeting locations influence participation and potentially affect the representation and decisions on telecommunications standards. Second, our paper relates to gravity models, which consistently explain various flows, particularly trade (Tinbergen, 1962; Bernard et al., 2007; Helpman et al., 2008), as well as migration (Ortega and Peri, 2013; Bertoli and Moraga, 2013), commuting (Cavalleri et al.,

2021), and tourism (Santana-Gallego et al., 2010; Khadaroo and Seetanah, 2008). Recent studies apply this to innovation, showing that technical standards impact hydrogen trade by reducing barriers (Ashari and Blind, 2024) and complementing findings on standards as trade facilitators or barriers (Fontagné et al., 2015). We contribute to this gravity-innovation literature by using gravity models to explain attendance at international innovation-related meetings. Third, our paper contributes to research on connectivity and innovation collaboration. Since Jaffe et al. (1993) showed that innovation spillovers are geographically constrained, much research has examined how connectivity enhances these spillovers. Studies find that improving connectivity, such as through new roads (Agrawal et al., 2017; Berger and Prawitz, 2024) or direct flights (Bahar et al., 2023), boosts scientific collaboration by reducing interaction costs. In 2024, however, distance remains a barrier for certain groups. Our paper highlights that distance still influences collaboration, with effects more pronounced for women. Finally, the literature on gender inequalities extensively documents how mobility and willingness to travel affect professional opportunities and the gender wage gap. Studies show that women often prefer shorter commutes, which can lead to lower wages (Liu and Su,ABRIGO, BARON ANDROSÁ 4 2024; Le Barbanchon et al., 2021). These mobility choices, shaped by disproportionate family responsibilities, create barriers to travel-required events like conferences and meetings (Kwan, 1999; Fan, 2017), limiting access to professional development and leadership roles and reinforcing gender gaps (Lee and McDonald, 2003; Aguilera, 2008). While much of this literature focuses on traditional work settings, our study examines how mobility affects

women’s participation in technology standardization meetings, where mobility barriers impact women in a high-paying, specialized field. The article is structured as follows: The next section discusses the institutional context. Section 3 presents the database used for our estimates, as well as general descriptive statistics. Section 4 presents descriptive findings regarding observed geographic patterns in meeting attendance. Section 5 discusses the empirical model and identification strategy; Section 6 presents the model results; and finally, Section 7 discusses potential mechanisms, implications, and avenues for further research. 2|INSTITUTIONAL CONTEXT Within 3GPP , experts and representatives from various organizations participate inWorking Groups (WG)to discuss and develop specific Technical Specifications (TS). Individuals have to be authorized by a company or organization that is a member of 3GPP to participate in a WG as delegates on their behalf.1 Each WG focuses on a particular aspect of the technology or a specific technical area. Individuals contribute documents containing ideas and technical solutions aimed at developing or enhancing a standard. These contributions are discussed in meetings organized by the group, where consensus is sought on the TS to be included in the next version of the standard . Standardization Meetings (Meetings)are events organized by the working groups within the 3GPP framework, where delegates from member organizations convene to discuss, decide on technical contributions submitted by WG members prior to each meeting. In some WGs, WG members may submitchange requests (CR); which are formal requests to make specific changes to a TS. In this case, the different CRs received by a group are debated during the meeting, and some CRs are approved and forwarded to the Technical Specification Group (TSG) plenary for final approval. In other WGs, individual delegates submit discussion papers with their views on necessary changes to a TS; and a specification editor drafts a CR once a consensus in the group has emerged. In either case, WG meetings are crucial for the

standardization process as they allow participants to defend their contributions, review and discuss other participants’ contributions, and participate in the final decision making on technical specifications. Approval of standards is achieved through consensus, meaning there should be no sustained opposition from participating members. These meetings ensure that the standards developed are technically sound and widely accepted by the industry. Meetings’ location. Most 3GPP meetings are held in countries or regions where 3GPP individual members are based (Europe, North America, Asia). According to 3GPP documents, meeting locations are chosen to reflect the geographical diversity of participants. Each working group selects its meeting location based on the following 3GPP rules: (1) within a series of up to six regular meetings, a working group should not meet in the same country more than once per year; (2) airports in the region must provide a minimum of 50 flights in and out per day; and (3) if the airport is not an international hub, it should be served by at least two different international hubs.2 1A small number of individuals may also serve in administrative roles as representatives of 3GPP itself. 2For a comprehensive list of the rules and recommendations for meeting locations, please visit https://www.ABRIGO, BARON ANDROSÁ 5 Table 1 shows the distribution of meetings from 1999 to 2018 for the top 20 cities. Overall, cities hosting meetings are spread across the global north, and apart from Sophia Antipolis in France and San Francisco in the United States, they hosted a relative similar number of meetings (Column 3). Columns 4 and 5 show that the probability of attending a meeting does not vary significantly between cities, based on both the original 3GPP records (Column 4) and our extended sample (Column 5). [Insert Table 1 here]

3|DATA AND DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS

3.1|Data We use administrative records of 3GPP standardization meetings from 1999 to 2018. The final dataset used for our analysis covers a total of 2,216 meetings of 35 different working groups. For each meeting, we have information on the meeting location (at the city level), and the date the meeting occurred. We also use 125,492 individual attendance records; including the name and surname of the attendee, their role at the meeting (e.g. delegate or chair), the organization they represent (a company that is a member of 3GPP), and their phone number. We also have 19,876 observations of individuals who registered for the meeting, but ultimately did not attend. We expand the dataset to include individuals who did not attend and did not register to participate in a particular meeting, but who (based on past attendance in the same WG) could potentially have participated ,as explained in Section 5, thus increasing the dataset to 227,804 observations. We complement the 3GPP records by adding information on attendees’ country of residence and gender. We use telephone number prefixes (country codes) to assign attendees to a country of residence. In the case of Canada, the US, and China, we match them with a region or state within the country. If an attendee did not report any phone number for a given meeting, the last known phone number within the previous two years was used to assign individuals to a country of residence.3 Attendees’ gender was inferred from their first names, using the genderizeR package (Wais, 2016; Baron et al., 2024). Additionally, we use data from CEPII (Centre d’Études Prospectives et d’Informations Internationales), focused on research in gravity equations, to include common cultural factors between the country of the potential attendee and the meeting location. These

variables control for aspects such as shared primary language, predominant religion, and historical colonial ties between countries, which are used as controls and robustness checks in the analysis. CEPII is a leading French research center in international economics, founded in 1978, that provides detailed data widely used in academic research and policy evaluations, such as (Fontagné et al., 2015) and (Chaney, 2018). Finally, we also use data on patents for which the individuals in our attendance records data are listed as inventors. We use theOECD Triadic Patent Families Database; which includes a dataset of the individuals listed as inventors of patents that belong to triadic patent families.4 We matched this dataset with theSearle Center’s Database of Declared SEPs (Baron and Pohlmann, 2018). A company that believes that a patent it owns may be or 3gpp.org/delegates-corner/meetings/hosting-a-meeting 3We generally use the latest known number. In cases where individuals switched back and forth between multiple phone numbers during the past two years, we used the most frequently reported number. 4Apatent familyis defined as a group of patents originating from the same invention; whereby atriadic patent familyis a patent family which includes patents that were granted by at least the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), the Japanese Patent Office (JPO), and the European Patent Office (EPO). Inventions protected by such triadic patent families are usually particularly valuable and important inventions.ABRIGO, BARON ANDROSÁ 6 becomeessentialto a 3GPP TS must declare this patent to 3GPP . Declared (potential) SEPs are patents that are particularly relevant to standards development at 3GPP . Following Baron and Pohlmann (2018), we also use the CPC classification of declared SEPs to identify

technology classes that are particularly relevant to 3GPP standards. Empirical measures.Our main variable of interest is the distance between a meeting attendee’s place of residence and the meeting’s location. We construct this variable by computing the geodesic distance between the center of the attendee’s country of residence and the city where the meeting took place. In the case of individuals residing in the US, Canada, or China, we observe the place of residence more exactly using the region code in the phone number (and accordingly define the place of residence as the geographic center of that region). In order to account for border effects we construct a dummy variable that takes value 1 if the meeting happens in the same country where the attendee lives and 0 otherwise. Additionally, to control for cultural distance, we include dummy variables for common language, shared religion, and former colonial relationships. To account for attendees’ characteristics, we construct three different measures. First, we compute their seniority as the number of years since the first meeting they ever attended. Second, using patent data, we compute the total number of patents for each inventor within the broader relevant technical field. Third, we compute the number of patents in the 3GPP-related technology classes for which each attendee was listed as an inventor; which is a general measure of an individual’s technical expertise and accomplishments as telecommunications engineer. We also calculate the number of declared SEPs for which the individual was listed as an inventor; this variable more directly indicates an individual’s contribution to the development of technologies standardized within 3GPP . Participation decisions are likely determined not only (and perhaps not primarily) at the level of the individual 3GPP participant, but at the level of the 3GPP member organization (i.e. individual participants’ affiliations). Affiliations differ in many respects, e.g. companies may have different incentives than public research institutes, and companies that primarily

participate in 3GPP in order to learn how to implement 3GPP standards have different incentives from companies that participate in order to contribute their technological inventions to 3GPP standards. At this stage of the research project, and following Baron and Kanevskaia (2023), we focus on a very general measure, a dummy variable indicating whether a company is among theTop 10 stakeholdersof 3GPP . Top 10 stakeholders are defined as the ten organizations most represented in 3GPP meetings (highest all-time attendance counts in our dataset).5 This measure captures both the fact that these companies are large and powerful within the realm of 3GPP standardization, and that these companies have significant stakes in 3GPP standards development (i.e. while there are other, larger companies in the dataset, these other companies are less invested in 3GPP standards development). Table 2 shows the main descriptive statistics for our variables in 3GPP records. [Insert Table 2 here] 4|GEOGRAPHIC PATTERNS IN 3GPP MEETING’S ATTENDANCE We begin our analysis by documenting geographic patterns in meeting attendance. We document three key patterns: changes in meeting locations over time, changes in the composition of the attendee population in terms of country of residence, and the representation of women among attendees over time and across regions. 5The Top 10 stakeholdersa are Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson AB, Huawei Technologies, LG Electronics, Motorola (incl. Motorola Solutions), NEC Corporation, Nokia, NTT, Qualcomm, and Samsung Electronics.ABRIGO, BARON ANDROSÁ 7 4.1|Meeting Locations First, as documented in Figure 1, nearly 80% of 3GPP meetings took place in the US, China, Europe, and the UK. While this percentage remained relatively stable from 1999 to 2018, the

distribution among these countries evolved over time. In particular, Chinese companies significantly increased the number of meetings hosted, from almost none in the 2000s to hosting nearly 15% of the total meetings in 2018. In contrast, companies in the EU and the UK transitioned from hosting nearly 60% of meetings in the 3G era (the 2000s) to less than 20% in 2018. U.S. companies remained stable, hosting approximately 20% of the meetings throughout the entire period (see Figure 2). [Insert Figure 1 here] [Insert Figure 2 here] 4.2|Country of Residence of Attendees Second, half of the meeting attendees reside in the US, China, or Europe (including the UK). At the start of the period, nearly 80% of attendees lived in Europe or the US. However, by 2018, around 15% of attendees lived in China and almost 40% lived in other countries. This increase is primarily explained by the participation of individuals living in South Korea, India, and Taiwan. Figure 3 shows the total number of attendees by country of residence from 1999 to 2018. While the majority of 3GPP meeting attendees reside in only a few countries , we can observe a lower concentration compared to the distribution of meeting locations. Throughout the entire period, attendees residing in Europe accounted for 19%, those in the U.S. for 18%, those in China for 12.25%, and those residing elsewhere made up the remaining half. [Insert Figure 3 here] Figure 4 shows the share of attendees by country of residence out of the total attendees from 1999 to 2018. While a significant number of attendees still reside in the US, China, the EU, or the UK, there is a noticeable increase in participation from individuals residing in other countries. This increase in participation is primarily driven by individuals living in

South Korea, whose representation increased from 3% to 6%; in India, which surged from 0.01% to over 1%; and in Taiwan, where participation rose from 0.02% to over 2%. [Insert Figure 4 here] 4.3|Share of Women Among Attendees Third, women represent only an average 12% of total attendees during our sample period. Even though we observe a slight increase of women participation over the years, increasing from 9% in 1999 to around 14% in 2016-2019, women are still underrepresented in 3GPP meetings. While the genders disparities are common across all countries of residence, they are particularly pronounced among individuals living in Europe and the US (with a share of female attendees of only around 10%), whereas 30% of attendees living in China are female. Figure 5 shows the number of male and female attendees by country of residence from 1999 to 2018 for the US, China, Europe, and the UK. Appendix Figures A.1 and A.2 show the attendance of men and women from around the world. [Insert Figure 5 here]ABRIGO, BARON ANDROSÁ 8 4.4|Travel Behavior of Individuals Over Time Fourth, over time, individuals attend more 3GPP meetings and travel greater distances to attend them. From 1999 to 2017, individuals, on average, double the number of 3GPP meetings they attend and increase the number of kilometers they travel by 45%. Panel (a) in Figure 6 displays the average distance, in thousands of kilometers traveled per attendee per meeting from 1999 to 2017. On average, an individual traveled 4,500 kilometers to attend a 3GPP meeting in 1999, while they traveled around 6,500 kilometers

in 2018, representing an increase of almost 40%. This trend is observed for both men and women. Although women are less likely to attend (Figure 5), conditional on attending, men and women travel approximately the same distance on average. Panel (b) in Figure 6 shows the average number of meetings attended by individuals from 1999 to 2017. Both men and women attend significantly more meetings in 2018 than in

1999. Women increased their participation from an average of almost 5 meetings per year in 1999 to almost 11 in 2018, doubling their participation. Men also doubled the average number of meetings per year, from almost 6 meetings per year in 1999 to almost 11 in 2017.

While during the first years of our sample period the attended meetings gap increased between men and women, at the end of our period men only attend, on average, one more meeting than women per year, that is, they attend on average 10% more meetings. [Insert Figure 6 here] Appendix Figures A.3 shows the distribution of the number of attended meetings per year for both men and women. When comparing both distributions, we observe a longer right tail for men and a higher density accumulated around less than 5 meetings per year in the case of women, suggesting sex heterogeneities in the distributions of the number of attended meetings. 5|EMPIRICAL STRATEGY 5.1|Creating a Panel The registration records of 3GPP meetings provide certain information about individuals who registered for the meetings. While this data covers individuals who registered for a meeting but ultimately did not attend, this group represents only about 15% of the total number of registrations. Individuals who registered to participate in a meeting but ultimately decided not to attend are likely to be different from individuals who knew from the outset that they would not participate in a meeting. To conduct a comprehensive

analysis of participation decisions within the context of 3GPP meetings, it is essential to also consider individuals who did not register for the meeting, but had the potential to attend (counterfactual observations). To identify these non-attendance decisions, we define potential attendees as individuals who have e