Seven leading global mobile phone operators said on Thursday they had formed an organization to examine how broadband wireless technology might evolve beyond current 3G standards. "The Next Generation Mobile Networks (NGMN) initiative, which has this week become a limited UK company, has created a set of requirements for a future wide area mobile broadband network," they said in a statement.

The seven companies are: China Mobile , KPN , NTT DoCoMo , Orange , Sprint Nextel , T-Mobile and Vodafone .

NGMN will work alongside existing (wireless) standards bodies to shape the development and standardization of the next generation of mobile technologies, they said.