Technology Is Among Us

Where there are people, there will be technology, because the world needs it to survive. In the present, technology is all around us. Every where you go you run into some type of technology, whether you know it or not. Advancement in technology makes everyday things easier than they have ever been before. But as an evolving society, new technologies are what drive the world today: 3G mobile communications, Voice over Internet Protocol, Bluetooth, and connecting your home to the internet are the new driving forces, but where will they take us?

3G mobile communications

3G is one of the latest technologies in mobile communication networks. You might ask yourself, what is “3G”. Well, 3G means third generation. Analog phones are considered first generation, digital phones are second generation, and third generation is basically really fast digital phones. According to phonescoop.com, 3G offers high data speeds, always-on data access, and greater voice capacity.

3G technology is primarily being used in mobile devices such as cell phones and laptops. With more bandwidth, 3G offers many new services. One of which is video conferencing and video messaging. Another is the ability to email large attachments including video email. One company has already jumped on board with 3G. Verizon with its V-Cast offers services such as, streaming music videos, 3D video games, and news and entertainment videos. V-Cast is also going to offer TV shows exclusively for your 3G phone. Another use of 3G technology is for your laptop. Using a 3G PC card, you can connect to the internet and use applications that require broadband speeds.

The 3G technology standards are dependent

upon the country. Different countries use different standards but all the standards are compliant to the International Mobile Telecommunication 2000 (IMT-2000) initiative from the International Telecommunications Union (ITU). In general there are only a few standards that represent Europe, Japan and North America, Code Division Multiple Access 2000 (CDMA-2000) and Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (W-CDMA) which is the basis of both the Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) and the Freedom of Mobile Multimedia Access (FOMA). All of these standards offer about the same data speeds which range from 128 Kbps (over twice the speed of dial-up) to 2Mbps (over 35 times the speed of dial-up) depending if you are stationary or on the move.

W-CDMA is or will be used through much of Europe through UMTS and FOMA is the standard for Japan. W-CDMA was developed by Japan and was used to create their FOMA service. W-CDMA is based from a 2G standard of CDMA by using the general multiplexing scheme, per Wikipedia. In May of 2000, W-CDMA was accepted by ITU. FOMA is the first 3G service and was launched in Japan on in 2001. UMTS is the widely used standard in many European counties. UMTS is managed and standardized by 3G Partnership Project (3GPP). UMTS has not been very successful in taking off in the US because the spectrum allocated for UMTS is supposed to be 1900 and 2100 MHz. Both of these in the US are already in use. 1900 MHz is used by 2G PCS, and 2100 MHz is used by satellite communications.

North America’s answer to 3G is CDMA2000, which is also based from CDMA technology. CDMA-2000 is compatible with older CDMA technologies where W-CDMA is not. CDMA2000 is a competing standard to UMTS. There are many versions of CDMA2000 but the one currently being put into effect is CDMA2000 1xEV-DO (1x Evolution-Data Optimized.

3G is the next step in mobile technology and opens the doors to a number of possibilities. As bandwidth usage