Wireless WAN Technologies

At one time, it was taken as gospel that wireless technologies, especially WAN technologies, could never be completely acceptable, especially when compared to terrestrial technologies. Today, that given is being challenged with a number of new technologies that can provide acceptable Internet and even multimedia performance without a landline. In the following sections, we’ll look at some of the cellular WAN technologies and see how far we’ve really come in this regard.

Cellular WAN

Cellular technologies have evolved since their introduction in the late 1970s. Terms like 1G (first generation) 2G, 3G, and 4G are often used to describe significant advances in the technology. First I’ll give you a quick overview of the major developments, and then we’ll look more closely at a couple of the newer technologies, specifically what these technologies bring to the table and what they may promise for the future.

First-generation cellular (1G...