All explanations on different data connection speeds from 1G through to 4G

[boz]

I thought this might answer questions regarding data connection speeds.

•1G phones, standing for the 1st generation of mobile phones, were satellite phones developed for boats mainly - but anyone could get one in one’s car in the beginning of the 90s for several thousand dollars. Networks such as Iridium, Global Star and Eutelsat were truly worldwide (although for physical reasons, think of a satellite as a fixed point above the equator, some Northern parts of Scandinavia aren’t reachable), and everybody thought at that time that satellite phones would become mainstream products as soon as devices got smaller and cheaper. This vision proved wrong when the GSM conretely came to life in 1990/1991 in Finland.

•2G: the second generation of mobile telecommunications still is the most widespread technology in the world; you’ve basically all heard of the GSM norm (GSM stands for Groupe Spécial Mobile in French, renamed in Global System for Mobility). The GSM operates in the 850Mhz. and 1900Mhz. bands in the US, & 900Mhz. and 1.8Mhz. bands in the rest of the world (eg did you know Bluetooth stands in the 2.4Ghz. area, just like your…microwave!? But that’s another story, not related to this article) and delivers data at the slow rate of 9.6 Kbytes/sec.

•2.5G: For that last reason (9.6 Kbytes/sec doesn’t allow you to browse the Net or up/download an image), telco operators came up with the GPRS (remember all the hype around the Wap) which could enable much faster communications (115Kbytes.sec). But the market decided it was still not enough compared to what they had at home.

•2.75G: EDGE (I just called it 2.75G, 2.5’s not the official or unofficial number at all), which is a pretty recent standard, allows for downloading faster. Since mobile devices have become both a TV and a ‘walkman’ or music player, people needed to be able to watch streaming video and download mp3 files faster - that’s precisely what EDGE allows for and that’s for the good news. The bad news is that if EDGE rocks at downloading, it’s protocol is asymmetrical hence making EDGE suck at uploading ie broadcasting videos of yours for instance. Still an interesting achievement thanks to which data packets can effectively reach 180kbytes/sec. EDGE is now widely being used.

•3G: also called UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications Standard). Aimed at enabling long expected videoconferencing, although nobody seems to actually use it (do you know any?). Its other name is 3GSM, which says literally that UMTS is 3 times better than GSM. One issue though: depending on the deployment level of the area you are in and your device, your phone will (have to be) handle(d) from the GSM network to the UMTS network, and conversely - making billing more complex to understand for the consumers. One of the major positive points of UMTS is its global roaming capabilities (roaming is the process that allows you, at a cost, to borrow bandwidth from a telco provider that’s not yours; you usually use roaming when calling from abroad).

•3.5G or 3G+: HSDPA is theoretically 6 times faster than UMTS (up to 3.6 Mbytes/sec)! Practically speaking, this would mean downloading an mp3 file would take about 30 secs instead of something like 2 minutes. Not bad, uh?

•4G: still a research lab standard, at least to my knowledge and no frequencies have been allocated as yet. Data rates are expected to reach 100 Mbytes/sec.

[waveydavey]

Nice mate. Do you know where HSUPA fits into all this? 3.75G?

[boz]

It has to be mate! It was the most easily understandable explanation I could find in a hurry for one of my posts.

[boz]

Have a look at this link hsupa.com - Home

It gives you all you need to know about HSUPA, even gives a nice chart with some horses in!

[marttin]

Originally Posted by boz

•1G phones, standing for the 1st generation of mobile phones, were satellite phones developed for boats mainly ...

Hi Boz,

Thank you for this post - an excelent idea to give some details about mobile technologies classification.

Regarding 1G I think the introduction is incomplete yet. Actually as 1G are considered the early (cellular) analogue technologies from 1980s. Popular standards was - NMT (Nordic Mobile Telephony) - Europe, and AMPS (Advanced Mobile Phone Services) - North America.

UMTS (originates from GSM standard) and CDMA2000 (originates from Qualcomm's CDMA) are available 3G standards currently. Chinese are pushing hard to develop their own 3G standard - called TD-SCDMA, but I doubt they will be ready for the Olympics in 2008.

Difference between 3G/3G+ and 4G are, as you mention data rates, but another major difference is technologies implemented. In 3G/3G+ we have a combination of circuit-switching and packet-switching technologies. 4G - as you mention still in research labs (no standard yet), is packet-switching based only. The idea with 4G is to have pure IP mobile network.

Interesting is that cellular technology was developed in late ... 1940s - if remember correctly in 1947 in Bell Labs

Cheers
PS. BTW, GSM (2G) also has roaming capabilities

[waveydavey]

Originally Posted by boz

Have a look at this link hsupa.com - Home

It gives you all you need to know about HSUPA, even gives a nice chart with some horses in!

Cool horses chart, but it could do with having HSDPA in the comparison.

[tonybro]

Boz,

I think you're a bit out on 1G.

1G was analogue cellular and I was selling it from about 1988. Satellite phones were a different kettle of fish entirely connecting into providers such as InMarSat (International Maritime Satellite - primarily for marine purposes and I think had 5 or 6 geostationary sats that didn't cover certain parts of the earth - mainly far north/south). In the UK Analogue cellular took over from System 4 radio telephones. The famous Motorola 'brick' and the 'Transportables' were analogue units. I had the Transportable!! Phones such as the BT Ivory cost £1800 plus calls at £0.35p per minute inside the M25, £0.25p outside!

Early nineties things moved to digital and GSM in Europe.

Satellite is still going strong with small, self-contained laptop sized installations that can give up to 1Mbps but it costs. Mainly used in Oil exploration.

[trumpton]

I can remember having a 1G analogue mobile. It had one of those extendable antenna things that you had to pull out to get a decent signal. The sort of thing you'd see Del Boy with on Only Fools and Horses.

[bruisah]

All interesting stuff - I just thought I'd throw in my tuppence!

HSDPA is being rolled out by many operators, so is becoming more widely available. I believe that operators are currently running test deployments of HSUPA, but I wouldn't expect to see it widely available for another 6 to 12 months (speculation on my part).

With regards to GSM and data rates, before GPRS came along, networks toyed with providing two 'time slots' to users for data use (GSM is all entirely circuit switched, meaning you get allocated a time slot in a cell for making your calls). These 'double timeslots' enabled you to get more than 9,600kb/s bandwidth, though (IIRC) you only got ~14,400 kb/s, but you paid for the privilege. In addition, a GSM data call was charge by time (the same as a call as it is circuit switched, the same as a voice call), whereas packet switched data calls (GPRS/3G) are charged by data transfer volume, not duration. Hence some folks leave their data connection up 24x7!

The arrival of 2.5G (GPRS) interestingly, is the 'backend' part of 3G. In other words, the radio interface to the network is still GSM, but GPRS switched on the core network elements that enable 3G (we're talking SGSNs, GGSNs, and the various interfaces between these new network nodes and the more traditional GSM nodes such as HLR/VLRs and MSCs).

The arrival of 3G simply added a new radio interface to allow much higher bandwidth (Code Division Multiple Access (3G) instead of Time Division Multiple Access (GSM)).

The new radio interface (called UTRAN - UMTS Terrestrial Radio Access Network) is where the money is! The backend is still 'just' GSM and GPRS technologies merged...

A.

[tonybro]

Nice one Bruisah! I think that brings us bang up to date, well us Europeans anyway!