The technology with the best claim to be a global system is GSM.

Wireless2000 forecasts that 254 million GSM telephones will be sold worldwide in 2004 compared to 180 million cdmaOne telephones and 48 million TDMA phones. It projects sales of the emerging third-generation (3G) phones in 2004 at 10.6 million in Europe, 6.8 million in Japan, and 6.8 million in the Americas. It is clear that the expectation is for second generation networks to be extremely significant for many years to come. Even when significant penetration has been achieved with 3G technology, 3G and 2G systems will operate alongside each other with dual-technology handsets being common.

The expected take-up from the Asia Pacific region is one of the industry milestones. The vast majority of expected growth this decade will come from this region. The reaction of Japan and China to 3g will be watched with close

2.5 G Phase 1 of the standardization of GSM900 was completed by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) in 1990 and included all necessary definitions for the GSM network operations. Several tele-services and bearer services have been defined (including data transmission up to 9.6 kbps), but only some very basic supplementary services were offered. As a result, GSM standards were enhanced in Phase 2 (1995) to incorporate a large variety of supplementary services that were comparable to digital fixed network integrated services digital network (ISDN) standards. In 1996, ETSI decided to further enhance GSM in annual Phase 2+ releases that incorporate 3G capabilities. GSM Phase 2+ releases have introduced important 3G features such as intelligent network (IN) services with customized application for mobile enhanced logic (CAMEL), enhanced speech compression/decompression (CODEC), enhanced full rate (EFR), and adaptive multirate (AMR), high data rate services and new transmission principles with high-speed circuitswitched data (HSCSD), general packet radio service (GPRS), and enhanced data rates for GSM evolution (EDGE).

HSCSD HSCSD is a special mode in GSM mobile phone networks which allows a higher bandwidth or data rate for line-switched data connections. For HSCSD, several GSM data channels are bundled together providing a multiple of their capacity. For example, two GSM channels, each with 14,400 bits per second, can be bundled so that 28,800 bits per second can be used for uplink and downlink. In an asymmetric configuration, HSCSD can bundle three GSM channels on the downlink, each with 14,400 bit per second, providing a total of 43,200 bits per second. In uplink, however, a single channel of 14,400 bits per second is usually all that is required. HSCSD requires special terminals - and not all HSCSD capable devices are suitable for all channel configurations.

GPRS An interesting aspect of GPRS is how it achieves its high speeds to over 100 kbps when circuit-switched data today is limited to 9600 or 14.4 kbps. GPRS uses the same radio channel as voice calls, a channel that is 200 kHz wide. This radio channel carries a raw digital radio stream of 271 kbps which for voice calls is divided into 8 separate data streams, each carrying about 34 kbps. After protocol and error correction overhead, 13 kbps is left for each voice connection or about 14 kbps for data. GPRS can combine up to 8 of these channels, and since each of these can deliver up to 14 kbps of data throughput, the net result is that users will be able to enjoy rates over 100 kbps. However it is anticipated that it will be unusual for any particular handset to operate a speeds above 56 kbps. The GPRS standard defines a mechanism by which a mobile station can request the amount of bandwidth it desires at the time it establishes a data session. GPRS can be added to GSM infrastructures quite readily. It takes advantage of existing 200 kHz radio channels and does not require new radio spectrum. This leads to the possibility of new, advanced services being introduced for a modest investment. The principal new infrastructure elements are called the Gateway GPRS Support Node (GGSN) and the Serving GPRS Support Node (SGSN). These offer functionality analogous to that offered to voice services by the serving MSC and the gateway MSC. The GGSN provides the interconnection to other networks such as the Internet or private networks, while the SGSN tracks the location of mobile devices and routes packet traffic to them. 22 UMTS Technology Overview U101 AIRCOM International Ltd 2002

UMTS Technology Overview U101 23 AIRCOM International Ltd 2002 IS-95B cdmaOne (or IS-95) is very much a voice-only, or at least voice-dominated, service. In responding to a similar customer demand for higher data rate services as that experienced by GSM operatiors, IS-95B offers similar enhancements to that offered by GPRS and HSCSD to GSM networks. In total, proposals for 17 different IMT2000 standards were submitted by n American National Standard (ANS) where:xxx is the part number, and R is the revision level. UMTS Technology Overview U101 31 AIRCOM International Ltd 2002