Wireless world is ruled by standards – regulatory standards (FCC) and communications standards (IEEE, 3GPP).  Wireless handsets, PDAs and computers connect to the Internet and to voice services predominantly through Wi-Fi/802.11 or cellular/3GPP networks.

First cell phones appeared in the early 1970s.  G1 technology was analog and was deployed in the early 1980s.  Advanced Mobile Phone Service (AMPS) was deployed in the US. Nordic Mobile Telephony (NMT) was deployed in Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland.  Total Access Communications System (TACS), which is similar to AMPS, was deployed in the UK.

2G technologies, including GSM and CDMA, are digital voice technologies.  IS-54 and IS-136 are essentially Digital AMPS.

GSM, launched in the early 1990s, is a time division multiple access scheme supporting 7 users per 200 kHz channel.  Quad-band GSM phones support 850, 900, 1800 and 1900 MHz channels. GSM is the dominant standard today with well defined interfaces, many competitors and lowest cost to deploy. GPRS is the data interface commonly deployed with GSM voice. 

CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) was invented by Qualcomm.  In a CDMA network all users share same frequency band.  CDMA is the basis for 3G WCDMA (Wideband CDMA).  WCDMA uses 5 MHz channels. HSPA (high speed packet access) is the data service deployed with WCDMA.

The IEEE 802.11 standard originated in the data communications world in the early 1990s at the time when data networks operated over cables.  Wi-Fi was designed to work in unlicensed ISM and UNII bands and was originally called wireless Ethernet by its developers. Most major innovation in wireless signaling, including OFDM, OFDMA and MIMO, were originated by the IEEE 802.11 and 802.16 groups with further significant innovations introduced by 3GPP for LTE.  LTE is the latest and most modern wireless standard that brings major advancements towards enabling wireless broadband.