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2G Technology

On Its Last Leg?

2G stands for 2^nd generation wireless mobile phone technology.  It was first commercially launched in Finland in 1991 on the GSM (Global System for Mobile) standard.  It was at this time when mobile telephones first appeared in all bulk splendor.  After it was introduced, the previous phone technology became known as 1G.  In contrast with earlier first generation telephony standards, 2G allows digital encryption and were more efficient in terms of handling data over its channel spectrum that enabled the carriers greater mobile phone penetration.

Advantages of 2G

At the time it was introduced, 2G offered clear advantages over the older analog first generation telephone technology.  Because it’s digital, you get the following:

• Compression and multiplexing of voice data can be done more effectively using various codecs and thus, allow more voice calls to be carried into the same carrier bandwidth; and
• Digital handsets emit less radio waves with the promise of smaller size which we see today compared with first generation mobile phones.  For mobile phone carriers, going digital also meant lower equipment acquisition and maintenance cost.

There’s a downside to it at that time as well – something 2G proponents would be more silent about.  Digital packets that carried voice data are an all or nothing proposition.  Whereas you may still be able to understand your caller with static or weak reception in analog mobile system, your digital handset will experience more drop calls as weak digital transmission won’t register on the handset at all. So you hear nothing.

Evolving New Technologies

Looking back, 2G mobile networks were good at voice services with painfully slow data transfers. After 2G, the increasing popularity of mobile telephony has made great business sense to further improve its efficiency with the development of 2.5G services that was used in the meantime as mobile carriers were upgrading their 2G networks to 3G or WCDMA standards.  Over the next few years, we expect the growing use of 4G networks.