I will not bombard you with 3G technical details but I will just tell you what 3G is, in its simplest form and the impact it brings to our lives.

The term "Third Generation Wireless" (3G) refers to new technology that combines the convenience and mobility of wireless communications with the global interconnectivity and high-speed interactivity of broadband Internet access.  3G is also used to refer to the next generation of wireless communications technology, the "first generation" having been analog cellular, and the "second generation" being today's digital cellular networks. 3G is a generic term covering a range of future wireless network technologies, including WCDMA (Wide-band CDMA), CDMA2000 (Code Division Multiple Access), UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System), GPRS (General Packet Radio Service), and EDGE (Enhanced Data rates for Global Evolution).

The main offering 3G brings to the table is speed (bit-rate), enabling true convergence to be realized by users - convergence of data, voice, and video.  3G is not limited to mobile phones alone like what others think.  The goal of 3G is to enable the use of convenient handheld devices to communicate, view, or download Internet-accessible information anywhere at any time of day or night.  3G can be used in telephone and computer like devices, miniature televisions or hybrids that will allow Internet connection, transmission of large-scale data and moving contents photographed by digital cameras and videos, and software downloading.

3G can also make us realize what true Mobile Business is all about (I prefer calling it M-Business than M-Commerce).  M-Business is not just purchases done using mobile devices but it is also about new usage scenarios and technologies that overcome the limitations of mobile devices to support users in the context of a broad range of time critical activities.  Example of M-business are: mobile banking services, mobile ticketing, mobile payment, mobile dispatching, mobile transport management, mobile sales force management and a lot more.

3G may also be used to develop "smart" environments that allow detailed information to be gathered, analyzed, and communicated between people, computers, automobiles, storefronts, stoplights, and so forth due to the availability of information coming from the world's computer joined together by the Internet in mobile devices.

In order to realize these services, 3G improves the data transmission speed up to 144Kbps in a high-speed moving environment, 384Kbps in a low-speed moving environment, and 2Mbps in a stationary environment.

The essential qualities and characteristics of a 3G wireless system are:

-  Bit rates reaching up to 2 Mbps.
-  Variable bit rate to offer bandwidth on demand.
-  Multiplexing of services with different quality requirements on a single connection, e.g. speech, video, and packet data.
-  Delay requirements from delay-sensitive real-time traffic to flexible best-effort packet data.
-  Quality requirements from 10% frame error rate to 10-6 bit error rate.
-  Coexistence of second and third generation systems and inter-system handovers for coverage enhancements and load balancing.
-  Support of asymmetric uplink and downlink traffic (web browsing causes more loading to downlink and uplink).
-  High spectrum efficiency.
-  Coexistence of frequency-division duplex (FDD) and time-division duplex (TDD) modes.

The success of 3G will depend on the four sectors on the field: telecommunication providers who operate the network, the cellular phone companies who make the phones, the content providers who will provide the content and the subscribers, and the users who will use 3G.  If these four sectors reached its maturity in their respective roles in developing and using 3G, then we can realize the Virtual Home Environment in which a roaming user can have the same services to which the user is accustomed when at home or in the office.

Other factors contributing to the success for next generation mobile communications are:

-  High-speed access, supporting broadband services such as fast Internet access or multimedia-type applications.
-  Flexibility, supporting new kinds of services such as universal personal numbering and satellite telephony.
-  Affordable to uses (expected to be eventually at same price range or cheaper than current cellular systems).
-  Compatibility with existing cellular infrastructure, thus offering an effective evolutionary path for existing wireless networks.

3G is an initiative of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) and regional standards bodies.  3G aims to provide universal, high-speed, high-bandwidth (up to 4 Mbps) wireless services supporting a variety of advanced applications.