Telecom: The Generations of Mobile Systems

As I work in the telecommunication business, I sometimes get the question about 5G. Strictly, as of today, 5G isn't formally specified even if some actors write about 5G. I've also seen companies marketing "3.9G" and even 3.5G services as "4G", so I'll try to clarify the different generations and the chronology

Talking about different generations is a way to distinguish the radio network technologies from each other. The collaboration forum 3GPP is using release versions to describe the evolution of the networks. 

Year	3GPP release	Name	Generation	Generation in marketing	Features
1981	None	NMT	1G	1G	Pure voice calls
1992	Phase 1/2	GSM	2G	2G	Voice calls
1997	Release 96	GSM	2G	2.5G	Support for data calls (14.4kbps)
1998	Release 97	GPRS	2G	2.5G	Increased speed for data calls
1999	Release 98	EDGE	2G	2.75G	Further increases in speed for data calls
2000	Release 99	UMTS	3G	3G	Much higher data speed
2001	Release 4	UMTS	3G	3G	Changes in the core network
2002	Release 5	HSDPA	3G	3.5G	High Speed Downlink Package Access
2004	Release 6	HSPA	3G	3.75G	High Speed Downlink/Uplink Package Access
2007	Release 7	HSPA+	3G	3.75G	Improvements on HSPDA/HSUPA
2008	Release 8	LTE	3G	3.9G or 4G	New Radio Network Release, SAE
2009	Release 9	LTE	3G	3.9G/4G	Improvements on HSPDA/HSUPA
2011	Release 10	LTE-Advanced	4G	4G	New Radio Network Release, SAE
2012	Release 11	LTE-Advanced	4G	?	Adapting to heterogenous networks
2014?	Release 12	LTE-Advanced			TBD
2016?	Release 13	TBD			TBD

Commercial operators have been eager to market their services as "4G", rather than the correct term "LTE" or "3.9G". If all other operators use the term "4G", it would be fatal for an honest operator to market the same services as "3.9G". I will elaborate more on both telecommunications and game theory in later blog posts. More information about telecom standards can be found at. Zahir Ghadialy's blog offers interesting posts about what is going on in the telecom business.