Mobile phones are known as “cell” phones because they use a cellular network - land that is separated into cells that cover that area with specific frequencies.
2G Networks
2G networks are the original cellular networks. They consisted of two global standards:
Both of these were good for voice comms, but had poor data support since they were circuit switched networks that required upgrades for packet-switching.
GSM
Originally it was an EU standard and had 90% of the market, and allowed for worldwide coverage. In the US, this was used by AT&T and T-Mobile, which allowed all phone data and configuration to be stored in a Subscriber Identity Module card (SIM card).
Originally the GSM standard used multiplexing to allow multi-user voice and data communication.
CDMA
This allowed all users to communicate at the same time, where each call would have a unique code that allowed routing and filtering of data between devices.
The common US users of this were Verizon and Sprint, and in this model the handsets themselves were controlled by the network provider. However, there wasn’t much adoption of this system elsewhere.
3G
As mobile network requirements grew, the 3rd gen technologies were introduced in 1998. This allowed increased speeds in the order of several megabits per second.
With this extra bandwidth we got access to GPS, mobile television, and video-on-demand capability.
4G/LTE
The 4th generation, known as Long Term Evolution (LTE) is based on GSM and EDGE (Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution). The main point here is that LTE converged the GSM and CDMA providers into a single standard.
Additionally, this standard supports rates of 150 Mbit/s.
Some areas support LTE-A (advanced) that doubles the throughput of LTE networks to 300 Mbit/s.
5G
The fifth generation of cellular networking was introduced in 2020. This uses higher frequencies that will eventually support 10 Gbit/s transmission from a single mobile device.
The impact of 5G networks is a significant IoT impact, wherein we can have much larger data transfers that allow for significantly faster monitoring, notification, and cloud processing.
PRL Updates
One of the updates that our mobile devices receive is the “Preferred Roaming List”, which allows your mobile device to connect to the correct tower for the network it is using.
This can be done over-the-air (OTA).