Hello World! - What is 3G ?

First thing first, what does 3G stand for ? Third Generation Mobile Communication System. Did you think some bombastic, teeth breaking technical words for it ? So you have already guessed since it is third generation, so where are those two generations ? 1G and 2G and may be a 2.5G ? Surprisingly you are correct. They do exist! Strange eh ? Then just imagine why its abbreviated 3G only, while “Mobile Communication System” does not appear! Well, technically and usage point of view, 3G is no longer a mere communication system! We will soon find that out.

So what was 1G? It existed way back in 1980s! Does it still exist ? Strangely it still does. Not only it exists, it is used in many areas too! And it will always score over 2G! but not 3G. 1G was plain voice based wireless communication. And the voice was completely analog. Here it is, voice is always analog technically, and it will always remain analog. But then it is called analog, because it was transmitted in analog form too! You have seen them, also heard them. You might have seen traffic police or highway petrol police shouting on a big MIC? They specially do when you try to ignore their signals. Also you might have seen heard an equipment called walki-talkie ( I like this name) ? Well all these equipments were part of 1G! It uses technologies like NMT, TACS etc. and the worst part was they are not standardized!

Then came the 2G in 1990. It will sound little more familiar! The voice became digital, in fact in 90s everything became digital! Music and video becoming digital has impacted lour life the most in all ways! These 2G systems use the standards like GSM, CDMA, TDMA. But still it was voice centric! And SMS Centric! 160 number became a full stop. It gave birth to a all together new language, SMS language. Evry wrd is shrtnd 2 fit in dat 160 lmt. (If you could read that, then you have a mobile phone!)
With the advent of internet, the need to access internet, specially emails, while moving became a necessity. (Hope by now, you know why BlackBerry is so popular!) So they introduced GPRS/EDGE etc. These are still widely used. Specially in developing countries like India. (Well, GPRS is still not available in North-East part of India). This is known as 2.5G.

Then came the big word 3G. Here its all about data! Its no longer a communication! But DATA Transfer! So essentially the it has to have high speed data transfer capability! The best part is, it is totally standardized now! The BIG DADDY of all communications systems, the named ITU (International Telecommunication Union) made a recommended specification called IMT2000 in the year 2000. And that recommendation is what we no have in 3G! So, it is no longer Internet Telephony, but Telephonic Internet! It has arrived in many countries in 2003, but it has not arrived in two most populous countries namely China and India! So, It has not simply arrived to 2.5b people on earth! But it is arriving here too. In 2009!
What is in store for us mere mortals in 3G? Can it cook my rice? Can it wash my clothes? Can I actually see if the software engineer is debugging his code or orkutting ? in 3G, the answer is yes! It can almost do everything one can think of ! It may even run your car in place of gas! Keep reading this BLOG, you will along with myself, find out how and when! And also we will find out who will be 3G big players and users.