3g - Article and Reference from OnPedia.com

3G

3G (or 3-G) is short for third-generation mobile telephone technology. The services associated with 3G provide the ability to transfer both voice data (a telephone call) and non-voice data (such as downloading information, exchanging email, and instant messaging).

3G Standards

3G technologies are an answer to the International Telecommunications Union's IMT-2000 specification. Originally, 3G was supposed to be a single, unified, worldwide standard, but in practice, the 3G world has been split into three camps.

UMTS (W-CDMA)

UMTS (Universal Mobile Telephone System), based on W-CDMA technology, is the solution generally preferred by countries that used GSM, centered in Europe. UMTS is managed by the 3GPP organization also responsible for GSM, GPRS and EDGE. FOMA, launched by Japan's NTT DoCoMo in 2001, is generally regarded as the world's first commercial 3G service. However, while based on W-CDMA, it is not generally compatible with UMTS (although there are steps currently under way to remedy the situation).

CDMA2000

The other significant 3G standard is CDMA2000, which is an outgrowth of the earlier 2G CDMA standard IS-95. CDMA2000's primary proponents are outside the GSM zone in the Americas, Japan and Korea. CDMA2000 is managed by 3GPP2, which is separate and independent from UMTS's 3GPP.

TD-SCDMA

A less well known standard is TD-SCDMA which is being developed in the People's Republic of China by the companies Datang and Siemens. They are predicting an operational system for 2005.