Today, there are a variety of mobile phone standardsoperating throughout the globe. Consumers cannot travel from one country toanother without having multiple phones in tow to comply with these multiplestandards. However, a new standard is being developed—one that not only bringsus closer to the concept of global roaming, but also provides a biggerdata/voice pipeline to accelerate Internet-enabled mobile devices. This emergingstandard, now in development and soon to begin initial deployment, is known as3G.

The term 3G is short form for Third-Generation wirelesstechnology: a technology that will help bring together two of the world’sfastest-growing industries—mobile communications and the "wireless"Internet. Advanced 3G handsets will allow users to access music, photos andvideos, while on the move. The long-term goal of 3G technology is to create aunified worldwide standard that allows for global roaming. However, with thenumerous standards in existence today, reaching this goal will definitely be achallenge.

Where Have We Been?

The first generation of cellular phones was based onFrequency Modulated (FM) analog technology. Most countries developed their ownsystems, but while these phones allowed for roaming within one region, theycould not be used across different countries.

This was especially problematic in Europe, where each countryhad its own standard. To address this problem, the European TelecommunicationsStandards Institute (ETSI) created the first Second-Generation (2G) digitaltechnology called Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM). GSM wasmandated in the early 1990s as the digital technology for all of Europe.According to the market research firm Dataquest, GSM has become the most widelydeployed digital cellular technology, with over 250 million subscribers.

Japan deployed a different technology—Personal DigitalCellular (PDC). The systems were designed to increase the voice capacity of theoriginal analog systems, as the First-Generation analog were becoming capacitylimited due to the explosive growth of the wireless industry. PDC is a TDMA-basedtechnology, operating in the 800 MHz and 1500 MHz frequency bands.

While Europe and Japan worked to standardize on one digitaltechnology, the US allowed for multiple technologies, including IS-95 CDMA (orcdmaOne), IS-136 TDMA, and GSM. Frequency was auctioned to the highest bidder,and wireless carriers choose the 2G technology they believed would provide thebest business opportunities. Unlike GSM in Europe and PDC in Japan, the US lacksa dominant 2G technology.

To get the world on track for the deployment of 3G standards,the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) started the IMT-2000 project—thetechnical framework for 3G. The goal of this project is to establish oneworldwide global standard for the next-generation of mobile communications.System definitions require the support of voice and data communications, withdata rates of 144 Kbps for high-speed mobility, 384 Kbps for low-speed mobility,and 2 Mbps for fixed-location terminals. The frequency bands 1885-2025 MHz and2110-2220 MHz were set-aside for the IMT-2000 project.

In 1998, the ITU accepted proposals for the IMT-2000 radioaccess network. They received 10 different suggestions for 3G terrestrial-basedRadio Transmission Technology (RTT). Over the last year and a half, these 10standards have been consolidated into five ITU-approved standards. Of these,three have emerged as logical extensions to existing 2G networks: Wideband CodeDivision Multiple Access (W-CDMA), TDMA-EDGE, and cdma2000.