The birth of 3G

Article Written By: David Maine5

Following the development of the first, second generation (2G) network systems, telecommunications specialists began to work on 2Gandrsquo;s more advanced relative, 3G. Inevitably, several potential protocols emerged between rival manufacturers began trying to push their own products as the market standard. Differing from previous second generation mobile systems, which were more a loose aggregation of competing digital systems, the exact understanding of 3G has been standardised by the international IMT-2000 process.

The IMT-2000 process set out a system of specifications to be followed by all producers of 3G products. Although the original goal of the process was to create a unique technological standard for all 3G technologies to work with, competition within the industry put paid to that aim and in the end a number of competing 3G technologies emerged.

The first trial of a 3G network in May 2001 took place in Tokyo, Japan. The company that carried out the testing, NTT DoCoMo, also launched the very first 3G network commercially in October of 2001. One year later the first 3G networks to use the rival CDMA2000 protocols were set up by the South Korean KTF and SK, and the American firm Monet. Later in 2002, the second 3G network to be introduced in Japan was launched by Vodafone KK.

The following year, the first European 3G network was launched, by the Hutchison telecom group under the new andlsquo;Threeandrsquo; brand, after which all other major mobile service providers followed their lead.

As the third generation of networks were being finalised, some new extensions to the 2G technologies were introduced under the 2.5G banner, such as GPRS. These new products provided some of the same promised features of 3G products, such as limited multimedia functionality and web browsing, but they could not meetthe data transfer or multimedia requirements of the 3G standard. Just after these, a system called the EDGE was introduced, and this was on paper able to reach the speeds demanded by the 3G standard- unfortunately it could not reach these specific speeds in outside of the development lab.

The 3G network licence costs were far from cheap and this forced many within the industry to doubt 3G as a profitable network system. However, by the beginning of 2008 there were over 300 million subscribers to 3G networks, which had generated 120 Billion US dollars in revenue throughout 2007. The South Koreans and Japanese no longer sell 2G phones and the 2G networks andndash; now yesterdayandrsquo;s news, are steadily being shut down to make way for 3G, and in the near future, 4G networks.

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