Active Blog News - Computer & Network Information

3g is a cellular (cell phone) wireless network defined as an upgrade to the old 2g network. However, 3g is not just an upgrade to the old network, it's a completely different infrastructure from the prior generation.

"The second generation brought us voice, text messaging, and  Internet on PDAs and BlackBerrys. Problem is that it was (is) slow and unreliable. 2g runs at about the same speed as a dial-up modem or  48k bytes.  3G runs at about the speed of a DSL modem or about 96 to 256 k bytes and has proven to be much more reliable. With 3g it is now practical to run small online applications like accounting, as well as limited streaming video.

3g has taken billions of dollars and many years to implement. In fact, Summerville SC just received 3g in October of 2009, and several parts of the country are still running 2g networks.

What's next? 4g network of course. However, if you’re wondering what fourth-generation wireless service mean to you, you’re not alone. Sprint Nextel has bet over $3 billion on a technology called WiMAX to deliver 4g service to its customers. Although WiMAX is likely to become the standard, none has been officially appointed to date.

The 4g wireless services expectation is that it should support data-transmission speeds as high as, and in excess of, 100Mbps, with the promise of QoS (Quality of Service) and even traffic prioritization. This is the same level currently experienced by 100mb Ethernet for the last 10 years. With such features, it becomes possible to imagine a mobile employee using a cell phone to participate in a video conference or watch a real TV (television) high-quality video stream.

It won’t come cheap for carriers, however. According to the Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA), carriers in the United States are expected to spend $4.4 billion each on WiMAX infrastructure equipment. As with 3g, expect 4g to be rolled out in major cities first.