3G cellular standards and characteristics

The concept of 3G cellular standards or IMT-2000 began in the early 1980’s at the International Telecommunication Union. After fifteen years of research and development, hard work, patience and persistence, the 3G standard was born. The technical specifications and the blueprint was approved and made public. 3G uses the communication spectrum between 500 MHz and 3 GHz to seamless transmit and receive information between cell towers. All national and international telecommunications along with the Government unanimously approved the 3G standard.

Consumer applications, enterprise applications and value added services can be developed based on a single protocol. 3G technology is the result of ground breaking development work carried out by international telecommunication unions like 3GPP, 3GPP2, ITU-R, ITU-T and UWCC. Complete interoperability and networking was achieved successfully. Convergence in multiple services including cellular phones, landlines, voice and video can be distributed using 3G technology.

Consumers will be able to travel internationally thanks to the effortless global roaming features that can be deployed using 3G systems. 3G can deliver mind blowing speeds of up to 2 Mbps. 3G is technically 100 times faster than the earlier 2G technology. There are six important features or characteristics of 3G systems. They are compatibility, flexibility, affordability, modular design, high data rates and security. 3G is compatible with existing GSM technologies like 2G and EDGE. 2G continues to be prevalent in underdeveloped, developing and third world countries like India, Brazil, China, Africa and Russia. 3G is capable of giving compatibility to this existing technology through effortless migration paths.

3G is also flexible unlike existing GSM systems. 3G can support multiple platforms, multiple interfaces and multiple protocols. A telecommunication giant in a foreign country need not worry about mergers and acquisitions anymore. 3G addresses this problem effortlessly by providing a flexible interface to support a wide range of devices and applications. 3G supports CDMA, FDMA and TDMA. CDMA stands for Carrier Division Multiple Access. FDMA is the abbreviation for Frequency Division Multiple Access and

TDMA refers to Time Division Multiple access. 3G systems are priced attractively. It is not expensive and these services can be easily bought by consumers, small businesses and educational institutions. 3G is also designed in such a way that it can be expanded in the near future. 3G networks are also more secure compared to existing GSM technologies. 3G networks uses a new block cipher for authentication thereby making it safe and secure.