2008
3G
3G or 3rd Generation is called the International Mobile Telecommunications-2000 or IMT-2000 in professional terms. The International Telecommunication Union or ITU has given definition to a family of standards applicable to mobile telecommunications and referred to it as the 3G.
3G covers technologies under GSM EDGE, CDMA 2000, UMTS, DECT, and WiMAX. Wireless telephone lines, video calls, wireless data transfers and everything within the mobile handset environment are services under the 3rd generation.
The difference of 3G from its predecessors, 2G and 2.5G, is that it can accommodate simultaneous use of data and speech services. Downlink rates reach up to 14.0 Mbit per second and the uplink rates reach up to 5.8 Mbit per second.
Network operators are given the chance to provide a wider range of advanced services with the help of 3G networks. At the same time, greater network capacity is achieved through improved spectrum in 3G networks.
The 3G standards have been defined by the ITU so that more diverse mobile applications can be continuously supported.
The GSM in 3G telephony is not limited to voice transfers only. Circuit-switched data transfers can be delivered at speeds reaching 14.4 Kbps at downlink. However, 3G supports mobile multimedia applications with the use of packet-switched data that has better spectrum efficiency and bandwidths.
When it comes to security, 3G networks are more secure than 2G networks. Before attaching to the network, the User Equipment authenticates the network to make sure that it is the intended and not an impersonator network.
3GPP and 3GPP2 are continuously making efforts to further extend and improve the 3G standards. These two are working on an all-IP network infrastructure using advanced wireless technologies such as MIMO.
Some currently developed features of the 3G display characteristics of the IMT-Advance or 4G which will be the successor of 3G in the near future. However, 4G bandwidth requirements of 1Gbit per second for stationary and 100Mbit per second for mobile operation is not yet achieved. This makes the technologies fall short of the 4G classification and more pushed towards being classified as the 3.9 G or Pre-4 G technologies.
