3G in Africa. 3G UMTS, UMTS WCDMA, 3G Forum. South Africa, Nigeria, Mauritius

3G in Africa: UMTS (W-CDMA) & CDMA2000 1xEV

3G handsets 3G is a short term for third generation and refers to third generation mobile telephone technology. 3G usually refers to the popular UMTS technology that has been deployed by a few cellular networks in Africa.

3G standards

3G technologies are an answer to the International Telecommunications Union's IMT-2000 specification. Originally, 3G was supposed to be a single, unified, worldwide standard, but in practice, the 3G world has been split into four camps viz: UMTS (W-CDMA), CDMA2000 1xEV, TD-SCDMA, & Wideband CDMA.

3G in Africa can be split into UMTS (W-CDMA) and CDMA2000.

W-CDMA
W-CDMA is the latest addition to the GSM family. W-CDMA enables the provision of mobile multimedia services such as music, TV and video, rich entertainment content and Internet access. W-CDMA is an air interface technology on which 3GSM services are delivered – it is essentially the over-the-air transmission element. Global operators, in conjunction with the 3G Partnership Project (3GPP) standards organisation, have developed W-CDMA as an open standard.

UMTS (W-CDMA)
UMTS (Universal Mobile Telephone System), based on W-CDMA technology, is the solution generally preferred by cellular networks that used GSM, in Africa. UMTS is managed by the 3GPP organization also responsible for GSM, GPRS and EDGE.

UMTS was first deployed in Africa, by EMTEL in Mauritius (November 2004) followed by Vodacom in South Africa (December 2005).

CDMA 2000
The other significant 3G standard is CDMA2000, which is an outgrowth of the earlier 2G CDMA standard IS-95. CDMA2000's primary proponents include Nigeria and Congo DR. CDMA2000 is managed by 3GPP2, which is separate and independent from UMTS's 3GPP. The various types of transmission technology used in CDMA2000 include 1xRTT, CDMA2000-1xEV-DO and 1xEV-DV.

CDMA 2000, has data rates of 144 kbit/s to over 3 Mbit/s. Adopted by the International Telecommunication Union ITU.

Arguably, the most successful introduction of CDMA-2000 3G networks in Africa is in Nigeria where it was first deployed in the late 1990s.

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