Horas and konnichiwa untuk semua

Many in Indonesia are confused about which cellular service is 3G (UMTS, IMT-2000) and which is not. Well it is confusing and I don’t claim to be 100% sure about which are which, but let me try to clear the confusion, partly using the picture*) on the right.

GSM is a 2G technology, and Telkomsel’s Halo/Simpati, Indosat’s Matrix/Mentari are first based on this. Telkomsel once claim that its EDGE service is 3G, well it is not. EDGE is better classified as 2.5G, since it enhanced data transfer speed on GSM. 3G is CDMA based umbrella of standards, that’s why EDGE can’t be part of it. Before 3G, there was already CDMA-based networks, i.e., cdmaOne (also known as IS95a/b), and this should be categorized as 2G technology though it is supposed to be superior than GSM in terms of voice quality and low power communication. This is mostly used in Korea, USA and Japan. In Japan KDDI was the only operator that used CDMA since early stage. 3G, which is based on CDMA, is mainly comprised of two technologies now: W-CDMA and cdma2000. cdma2000 is an upgrade to cdmaOne. The first cdma2000 version is cdma2000 1xRTT, or more widely known as simply CDMA 1X. Though some considered this as 2.5G, this meets the requirement of IMT-2000, and the licensor of CDMA, Qualcomm, has always considered CDMA 1X as 3G. The update to CDMA 1X is 1xEV-DO and 1xEV-DV, and later 3xRTT, which provides faster data transmission. While W-CDMA’s upgrade to wider bandwidth for data is HSDPA.

OK, now here is the table that shows which service belongs to which technology, both in Indonesia and Japan.

*) Picture are taken from http://www.xilinx.co.jp/esp/wireless/cellular_networks/2_5g.htm