3G Cell Phones and Calling Plans

While many people in European Countries and Asian countries like Japan and Korea are very familiar with 3G phones and 3G calling plans, many people in the United States have heard the term but don’t know what it is or what it means to them. 3G stands for third generation wireless telecommunications technology. What this means to the average consumer is they will soon have the ability to transfer both Voice and data at a much higher bandwidth than 2G or 2nd generations’ phones.

Many experts in the wireless communications predicted that video or TV was going to be the ‘killer app‘ for 3G phones. This turned out not to be the case. In 2005 about 40% of Japan went onto 3G calling plans. While some people used the video service it wasn’t the most popular use. Consumers flocked to music downloads more than any other single 3G phone feature.

When 3G calling plans were introduced it was expected that it was going to unify the different types of a calling technologies, however this also proved to be an incorrect assumption. 3G calling plans come in four different flavors, W-CDMA, CDMA-2000, TD-SCDMA and Wideband CDMA. While 3G calling plans start to gain consumer acceptance many companies are holding off for 4G or WiMax calling, which hold the promise of even grater calling capacities.