At first sight mobile communication of the third generation may seem very attractive and advantageous for everybody:
1. on the one hand users will get high quality services such as excellent
2. new revolutionary services like video calls or VoIP calls over the internet
3. sound quality
4. fast mobile internet connection
5. thus can count on getting super-profits within a short period of time
6. on the other hand the mobile operators will get access to the newest market of such services with a high level of demand
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The existing variety of mobile telecommunication protocols and standards is really confusing. If you try to find out what 3G is by logging on to the internet and typing the abbreviation in the search bar, you can easily find yourself still there a few hours ago reading about various subtypes of the new technology and feeling more and more confused and annoyed at how incomprehensible the existing types of mobile standards are. If you have done this before, then you probably know that you better not try to analyze technical specifications for each of the standards you've read about – the result may be deplorable.
Indeed, the variety of the existing protocols and standards is a confusing heap of information understood only by specialists working in this sphere. All that's left for an average man is to believe that the 3G technologies are really going to change the world the way that first generation mobile phones did in the past. Although the same average man may also be familiar with the fact that a technology called Wi-Fi is also an incredibly advanced thing that enables its subscribers to get high speed internet wirelessly.
Here a logical question arises. If there is Wi-Fi, and it has always been there (well, not always, but for a long time already – today you can hardly find a new laptop without a Wi-Fi receiver built in) why there is any necessity to invent something new like UMTS and present it like something absolutely incredible to the public.
The difference between them is the difference between the principles of their work. 3G networks use the same cellular schemes as the GSM ones, i.e. they are located in the form of numerous cells covering big areas of land. Wi-Fi works simply as a radio transmitter with much smaller areas of coverage. That's why Wi-Fi is no rival for UMTS. WiMAX is. WiMAX is a technology that is considered to be a modified version of Wi-Fi, its successor so to say. The difference between them is that WiMAX is a long-range technology covering many miles of land and using licensed frequencies.
So is WiMAX a worthy opponent for 3G? Well, it's hard to say for sure right now. The third generation mobile networks are being already widely used all over the world, whereas WiMAX is a somewhat younger technology. So long as WiMAX has not been designed for voice transfer (we're not talking about voice transmission in VoIP – this type of telecommunication is easily achieved by any type of a broadband internet connection) scientists are now working on the creation of a new mobile version of WiMAX. And they are already making some progress. The technology they have developed is called mobile WiMAX and it is already being adopted by some developing countries seeking to "jump" right over the third generation technologies that they were late to introduce.
Although mobile WiMAX has a great potential, there's still a lot of development to be done before investors may get interested in building a new network on the basis of this technology.