3G Cell Phones Explained

Many of the new phones being offered by the big carriers are being advertised as being "3G" ready. The average mobile phone consumer often will not know what 3G is or why it's important to them. To be a better informed consumer lets investigate exactly what 3G is.

What Is It?

3G stands for Third Generation and refers to the third generation of technology in the mobile industry. 3G follows 1G and 2G technology.

1G

The first real cell phones are considered to be 1G (First Generation). The networks for these early cell phones used analog signals. The phones used on the networks were big and clunky, with no abilities aside from voice.

2G

The technology categorized as 1G was in place up until the early 1990's, when it was then replaced by the 2G technology features. With 2G came a break away from the analog signals and a move towards the digital spectrum. 2G brought with it the introduction to providing multimedia content and increased bandwidth. A lot of the technologies classified as 2G are still being used in cell phones today.

2.5G

Before the complete rollout of 3G technologies, 2.5G was introduced. Primarily used as a marketing term, 2.5G is not an officially recognized technology; but it can be used to refer to the "in between" stage of moving away from 2G and moving completely into the 3G realm. 2.5G uses the existing 2G infrastructure while enabling some of the benefits of the 3G technologies, including increased multimedia abilities and improved data transfer speeds.

3G

The technologies that now qualify as 3G include increased functionality of mobile phones; with increased speeds and bandwidth being the biggest appealing factors. Multimedia functionality on the networks also improves, by leaps and bounds, with the move to 3G technologies.

While 3G capable phones are incredibly appealing to cell phone buyers they may find that not all of the functionality their phones are capable of available to them. Carriers in the US have yet to fully roll out their 3G networks in all markets. AT&T is leading the market right now, with their 3G networks being available in most major metropolitan markets; however the biggest AT&T seller, the iPhone, is not 3G capable. Apple has stated that a 3G version might be possible in the future when 3G is more widely available in the US.

T-Mobile is trailing behind AT&T when it comes to their 3G network. Until recently, none of the 3G capable phones T-Mobile sold could have their full functionality used; simply because the 3G infrastructure is not yet fully in place across the T-Mobile markets. T-Mobile has recently launched their 3G network in New York, allowing New York customers the ability to take advantage of the full functionality of their 3G capable phones.

3G will, soon, become the standard technology in the mobile industry; it is just up to the wireless carriers to ensure that they quickly meet the demands of their users who want to take advantage of the 3G technologies as soon as possible.