"Wireless videophones and high-speed Internet access are a reality with the world's first "Third Generation" mobile serviced, which were launched on October 1st 2001 by NTT DoCoMo in Tokyo, Japan."

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Executive Summary

         “Wireless videophones and high-speed Internet access are a reality with the world’s first “Third Generation” mobile serviced, which were launched on October 1st 2001 by NTT DoCoMo in Tokyo, Japan.”

        These has symbolized that human had enter a new era in mobile network technology. Facing with the ever advancing technologies, mobile network had integrated deep into our daily life style, cater for the needs to interact between friends and business organizations in a more effective, efficient and convenient way. At this moment, as we are discussing, there is a lot of network companies busily preparing for 3G or the Third Generation in mobile telephone devices. The precursors to this technology had began and entered the markets in year 2001 and 3G itself is due to have proliferated in the earnest by 2005. Singapore Telco, Singtel had announced a trail on the 3G network within CBD area at the last quarter of 2003.

        If 3G delivers what the developers promise, by 2004 we can look at broadband speeds via our mobile phones, plus a variety of new generation mobile devices that combine PC, PDA, camera, you name it, functionality.

        With 3G, data speeds will reach upwards of 2 Megabits per second (Mbps), which will give us high speed Web access and superlative quality video access via our trusty mobile communication devices. 3G also promises roaming capability throughout Europe, Asia and North America.

        3G devices will deliver all that GPRS (General Packet Radio Services) can do, except a whole lot faster. Just imagine, how about catching up with that important client who never has time for a face to face meeting when he’s in a taxi on his way to an airport at the other side of the globe? Consider watching your favourite television programmes on the MRT on your way home from work. How about consider connecting to your network, downloading files, transferring data, zipping off an email? With transfer speeds of more than 2 Mbps, tasks like these can be completed within seconds.

        Nokia’s concept team, for example, are currently considering four different categories for their 3G terminals:

  • Communicators – These would be business tools, allowing users to quickly and efficiently log onto their networks, transfer information, wrote emails and synchronise information with conventional PC devices.
  • Media phones – These would perhaps give access to Internet services and include Personal Information Management, audio and data functions.
  • Imaging phones – Sending of photos and video clips to our friends on the other side of the world within seconds.
  • Entertainment phones – How about playing a game with friend at the other side of the globe. Or sending your distributor teams a video clip of your new office?

To introduce, switch or implement a new technology can never be an easy task. It involved a lot of technology know how, equipments and researches. The bottom line is, a huge sum of money will be required.

        Take for example, other than GPRS technology, some other technology will be required to kick off the 3G network system. One of them is WCDMA, or Wideband Code Division Multiple Access, a wideband radio technique providing high data rates, and EDGE, or Enhanced Data rates for Global Evolution, a high-speed modulation technique that triples the capacity of GPRS.

        The various networks have spent a lot of money on this technology and will spend even more before the services are launched. In UK mobile networks have paid 22 billion just to use the required radio spectrum. According to Gartnet Dataquest’s survey in May 2002, Singapore will spend an estimate of US$19.9 million in 2003 and US$102.9 million in 2004 on the WCDMA infrastructure alone.

        That is not all, according to reports from Europe and Japan, which had started the 3G networking, had been under a lot of criticize. Most of their problems were mainly from the handsets and the network integration.

        Those countries in the preparation for the 3G launch had been very cautious on the setup. Europe and Japan experience will serve as a guidance for their future operation.

Introduction

        3G wireless networks are capable of transferring data at high speeds of up to 384Kbps. Average speeds for 3G network will range between 64Kbps and 384Kbps, quite a jump when compared to common wireless data speeds in the U.S that are often slower than a 14.4Kb modem. 3G is considered high speed or broadband mobile Internet access, and as time to come, 3G networks are expected to reach speeds of more than 2Mbps.

        In order to know the evolution of 3G, it might be interesting to get an idea on the history on the revolution of mobile networking .

History of Mobile Networking System

First Generation (1G),

        The first generation of mobile cellular telecommunications system appeared in the 1980s. The first generation was not the beginning of mobile communication, as there were several mobile radio networks in existence before then, but they are not cellular systems. The capacity of those early networks was much lower than that of mobile networks. And the support for mobility was weak.

        In mobile cellular networks the coverage area is divided into small cells, and thus the same frequencies can be used several times in the network without disturbing interference. This increase the system capacity. The first generation used analog transmission techniques for traffic, which was almost entirely voice. There was no dominant standard but several competing ones. The most successful standards were Nordic(TACS), and Advanced Mobile Phone Service (AMPS).

        Note that although the world is now busy moving into 3G networks, these first-generation networks, and many existing networks are growing.

First Generation networks ( Extract from “Introduction To 3G Mobile Communication”)

System                                Countries

TACS/ETACS                Austria, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, China, Hong Kong, Ireland,

                                Italy, Japan, Kuwait, Macao, Malaysia, Malta, Philippines,

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                                Singapore, Spain, Sri Lanka, UAE, UK

AMPS                                Argentina, Australia, Bangladesh, Brazil, Brunei, Burma,

                                Cambodia, Canada, China, Georgia, Guam, Hong Kong,

                                Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Mexico, Mongolia,

                                Nauru, New Zealand, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea,

                                Philippines, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, Sri Lanka,

                                Tajikistan, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkmenistan, USA,

                                Vietnam, Western Samoa

Second Generation (2G),

        2G evolve in the year 1991, in Finland. Second generation mobile network system use digital radio transmission. Thus the boundary line between first and second generation systems is obvious: it is the analog/digital split. The second generation networks have much higher capacity than the first generation systems. ...

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