3G Third Generation of Mobile Telephony
3G refers to the third generation of mobile telephony (that is, cellular) technology. The third generation, as the name suggests, follows two earlier generations.However, to get from 2G to 3G, mobile operators had make "evolutionary" upgrades to existing networks while simultaneously planning their "revolutionary" new mobile broadband networks. This lead to the establishment of two distinct 3G families: 3GPP and 3GPP2.
The 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) was formed in 1998 to foster deployment of 3G networks that descended from GSM. 3GPP technologies evolved as follows.
• General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) offered speeds up to 114 Kbps.
• Enhanced Data Rates for Global Evolution (EDGE) reached up to 384 Kbps.
• UMTS Wideband CDMA (WCDMA) offered downlink speeds up to 1.92 Mbps.
• High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) boosted the downlink to 14Mbps.
• LTE Evolved UMTS Terrestrial Radio Access (E-UTRA) is aiming for 100 Mbps
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