3G

3G stands for 3rd Generation, but its proper name is International Mobile Telecommunications-2000 (IMT-2000)

The History
NTT DoCoMo a Japan Branded FOMA , where the first pre-commerical 3G network provider, this was on 1st October 2001, even thpught it was the first it was somewhat limited in the scope that it had.

The First European pre-commercail was at the Isle Of Man, by Manx Telecom. The first commerical network in europe was opened for business by Telenor in December 2001.

The Applications
Some of the applications that were not previously available due to the lack of bandwidth:
Mobile TV - the provider redirects a TV channel directly to the phone of the subscriber, where it then can be watched
Video On Demand - the subscriber's phone is sent a movie from the provider.
Video Conferencing - Subscribers can talk to each other aswell as see each other.
Tele-medicine - a isolated subscriber can have advice from the providers

I have learnt that, GPRS is always on when you have your phone on with you, also GPRS can enhance the power of the 2G network, so it acts more like a 3G network would.