There is lot of speculation about 3g services these days but Do we really know what the 3g services are, what it will bring to your cell phone and for using that what your carrier provider and cell phone should have ?
There is lots of docs and blogs are there on 3g technology technical specifications and all, but it is really worthless for layman or potential user of 3g services, so I thought of writing the blog which will be focusing on technical specs, usability and availability factors of the 3g services, network, and compatible handsets for it.
What Is 3g Network ?
A 3G network is high speed wireless broadband network, providing data speed of at least 14.0 megabits per second on down-link and 5.8 megabits per second up-link. ( Here G satnds for generation )
Dial up Internet-connection on a computer typically offers speeds of about 56 k bps on converse 3G network can provide the speed of 5.1 megabits per second or even more but it can not guarantee coz it depends on factors as network traffic, signal strength, location etc.
About 3g services and applications
3G services is all about accessing speedy internet i.e web applications on your smart phone, it will be simple as web browsing, chatting, social networking to complex as Mobile Tv, Video Conferencing, Video On Demand (VOD), Location Based Services and other applications available.
There are thousand's of free and paid mobile application's for windows and Android are already available on the internet and lots of products are coming to the market every day as number of big companies has aligned their business with the domain and coming up with the ecosystem which will connect data servers, desktops, laptops, hand held devices and other devices which can be connected to the internet like spool printers, scanners, wifi routers etc.
3G Network for your cell phones
After knowing bit about 3G technology, the question comes, How to know that your costly cell phone can use the 3G services or not. For this you need to dig up bit more and need to know the networks provided by your service provider and among them what network your cell phone supports.
Broadly networks provided by the service providers can be categorized in to EDGE, UMTS and HSPA.
EDGE : Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution is also known as Enhanced GPRS (EGPRS) . EDGE can provide data rates of upto 384 kbps where as GPRS only 112 kbps so we can say that EDGE network is approximately 3 times faster than GPRS.
EDGE is the data network supported by the first generation i Phones and these are not really 3G phones, EDGE can be refereed as 2.5G network with speed of 384 k bps theoretically.
UMTS: The Universal Mobile Telecommunication System (UMTS) is true 3G network with speed much higher than EDGE networks it delivers high-bandwidth data and voice services to mobile users.
UMTS is called as true 3G networks coz of its potential to support 2mbps data rates theoretically. It provide users with consistent service environment even in roaming by using VHL (Virtual Home Environment), by which while the user is roaming from his home network to other UMTS provider network can experience the consistent set of services, so will feel as if on his home network.
HSPA: With HSPA (High Speed Packed access) Mobile wireless network moved a step forward, HSPA is the combination of two mobile telephony protocol i.e HSDPA (High-Speed Down-link Packet Access) which will deliver upto 14 mbps in down-link and HSUPA (High-Speed Uplink Packet Access) return 5.8 mbps in up-link. With these capabilities HSPA networks is 3.5 G.
Lots of mobile handsets are there in the market with HSDPA support but for using 3.5 G network with full of its potential handset should support HSPA (i.e HSDPA + HSUPA)
WEB Access on the smart-phones : Web Access on your smart phone depends on Data networks your cell phone supports and network that your service provider offers.
To Be Continued.......
Sunday, January 10, 2010
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