Telecom Network Technology Review

Wireless technology evolved from the fist generation for exclusive analog voice communication network to the 4th generation for All- IP network.

The first generation technology is analogue voice communication only, TACS is dominant technology in Europe, AMPS in dominant technology in U.S. After that, wireless technology was involved to the 2nd generation of wireless technology which can deliver data at 14.4kbps rate and digital voice traffic. GSM is dominant in Europe, IS-95A/B and TDMA are dominant in US market. IS-95A, which use CDMA technology developed by Qualcomm, can deliver data traffic at 14.4kbps, and IS-95B can deliver data traffic at 56kbps rate. Since these 2G technology were deployed, the wireless user can access Internet using cell-phone’s modem mode.

As the needs for "Wireless Internet" grows higher and higher, the network technology evolved to the second and a half technology which can deliver more higher bandwidth for data traffic. GPRS is dominant 2.5G technology in Europe, which can deliver data with 56kbps, however, CDMA 2000(IS-95C) , dominant in Asia market, can deliver data traffic up to about 153kbps.
These 2.5G technology enabled wireless data market more fluently and it can provide various multimedia messaging with animation and colorful image or picture against just simple text only SMS.

As the needs for multimedia and various application grows higher and higher, 3G technology started to be developed by two big organization, which are 3GPP and 3GPP2. 3GPP is a WCDMA supporting group for 3G technology, 3GPP2 is a CDMA20001X supporting group for 3G. In United Sates, AT&T and T-mobile are 3GPP supporting service provider, and Verizon wireless and Sprint are 3GPP2 supporting service provider.

3G technology enabled fluent multimedia service such as video downloading & streaming, video telephony, game, and various multimedia contents due to high bandwidth. CDMA2000 1X-EVDO can deliver data more than 153kbps and up to 2Mbps for exclusive user in a cell. Now CDMA2000-3X with EVDO revision A/B are deployed and it can deliver data at 1.8M~3Mbps rate. EDGE and WCDMA release 99can deliver data at 384kbps however WCDMA released 4 and 5 which can deliver data 5M ~ 14.4Mbps using MIMO technology. Now these Release4/5 are known as HSDPA and HSUPA.

And these technology will eventually evolve to All-IP based technology. 4G is being developed to enable broadband Internet access, high quality video conferencing and video presence, mobile TV, High definition TV content, and other integrating multimedia service by combined with IMS. These technology evolution will bring to us "any device” , “anytime” and “anywhere" communication environment.
Now 2.5 G and 3G technology are existing in the market. However, as the technology evolve, new technology will replace old legacy network technology.