3G Standards

The dream of 3G is to unify the world's mobile computing devices through a single, worldwide radio transmission standard. Imagine being able to go anywhere in the world secure in the knowledge that your mobile phone is compatible with the local system, a scenario known as "global roaming". Unfortunately, the process of unifying the numerous international standards has proved to be extremely difficult. After difficult negotiation, a 3G "standard" called IMT-2000 emerged as a rather unsatisfactory compromise. IMT-2000, in fact, represents several incompatible standards lumped together under one banner. The hope of IMT-2000 is that phones using these different standards will be able to move seamlessly between all networks, thus providing global roaming.

The rather fragmented nature of IMT-2000 has resulted in a proliferation of confusion acronyms (e.g., TDMA, UMTS, EDGE) often referred to as "alphabet soup". Possibly the most important acronym to remember is "UMTS": this is the 3G standard for Europe and Japan.

UMTS is the successor to the current ultra-successful GSM mobile phone standard in Europe. UMTS is being very heavily sold as the 3G standard (some sources use the terms "3G" and "UMTS" synonymously, though this is really not correct and just adds to the confusion).

The main global competitor to UMTS is CDMA2000, the 3G standard developed in the U.S. by Qualcomm. UMTS and CDMA2000 look set to battle it out for global supremacy. However, other less-publicised standards will not let those two have it all their own way. It is hoped that the following guide will act as a roadmap through the confusing subject of 3G standards. Let's start by stepping back a "G"...