What Wireless Users Need To Know About Networking Standards
Source: OS Opinion
The label "3G" is minimally important, at best, to the consumer, who is chiefly interested in how well the phone works, not what label international standards bodies have slapped on it.
A new generation of wireless technology is coming. Cell phones smaller than a credit card will prioritize phone calls, download the entire Internet at once, and cook eggs just right, ushering in an era of peace and prosperity unknown to human history. Or something to that effect.
But getting there seems to be a lot less than half the fun, and it entails a confusing tangle of technology and terminology that might lead the average person to conclude that the smartest move would be simply to never stray more than five feet from a regular old landline phone.
Observers who have not earned engineering degrees -- or the equivalent, via untold hours at trade shows and tech conferences -- are likely befuddled by all the buzzwords: 2.5G, 3G , CDMA (that's CDMA IS-95, CDMA2000 1XRTT, CDMA EV-DO and WCDMA) and GSM (which includes GPRS, EDGE and UMTS).
