A History of
Cellular Standards
From analogue voice to millimetre-wave broadband — a generation-by-generation technical overview of mobile telecommunications.
Generation 01
1G
Analogue radio, FDMA, and the dawn of commercial cellular telephony in the early 1980s.
Read writeup → Generation 02 2GDigital GSM, CDMA, SMS, and the shift to encrypted voice and basic data services.
Read writeup → Generation 03 3GUMTS, WCDMA, and HSPA — packet-switched broadband enabling the mobile internet era.
Read writeup → Generation 04 4GLTE, OFDMA, and an all-IP architecture delivering true broadband speeds to handsets.
Read writeup → Generation 05 5GNR, mmWave, massive MIMO, and network slicing for the connected-everything world.
Read writeup →