Imagine a situation where you are about to make an important Sales Presentation. You realize that you have brought wrong presentation slides and you call up your colleague. She immediately emails file to your 3G terminal and you transfer it to your laptop. Another scenario is having video-conferencing and sending character-based messages simultaneously with your clients. With 3G, possibilities for wireless applications are numerous. For instance, imagine calling up a map in your car, conducting a video conference over wireless phones, checking e-mails, and browsing web - wirelessly.

3G Defined

3G stands for third generation of wireless communication technology and industry direction are to raise speeds from 9.5K to 2M bit/sec. According to 3gnewsroom.com, devices will fall into four categories. The first category includes basic 3G phones will be used mainly for talking and will store all their information on network. The second category will support video-streaming, and will provide user with news and web content. More sophisticated models will be information centres which let users download information from Internet and store data on device.

A recent initiative by four leading handset manufacturers–Ericsson, Motorola, Nokia and Siemens–plus messaging companies CMG, Comverse and Logica was motivated by launch of 3G. The companies hope to create awareness and foster development of multimedia messaging service (MMS) by making audio, video, photographs and other images to accessible to handsets.

3G and Growth of Wireless Mobile Market

The wireless mobile market is set to explode and this will provide fresh graduates with exciting job opportunities. According to Will Daugherty’s The Growth of Wireless Mobile in Business 2.0, there will be 3 waves of mobile data services. The first wave is linked wireless access to existing information and data applications. The current second wave takes advantage of wireless-specific functionality. The third wave will bring rich graphics, video, real-time multiplayer games.

Don Tapscott has been quoted “Mobile commerce is next stage of e-commerce, where we have integration of physical world with digital world…What we ’re talking here is beginning of pervasive and ubiquitous computing where billions and billions of inert objects become Internet appliances - enabling sharing of knowledge and delivery of a vast new array of services.”

Need more convincing and statistics?

According to findings in Wireless Portals: Information Gateway to Wireless User, by end of 2006 there will be close to 1 billion wireless portal users worldwide. The bulk of these users will be wireless voice users, WAP users, 2.5G and 3G subscribers, and other wireless device users such as those using PDAs. Multi-modal users worldwide will stand close to 282 million in 2006.

The Reaction of 3G in America

The importance of 3G technology can also be gauged by stance of National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), an agency of U.S. Department of Commerce, which is Executive Branch's principal voice on domestic and international telecommunications and information technology issues. NTIA recently published a report entitled "WIRELESS" INTERNET: What 3G Challenge Means for U.S. Competitiveness where it insisted that 3G is important for future of America's global competitiveness amongst other things and that Europeans and Asians view 3G development as their golden opportunity to beat United States' in area of telecommunications and ecommerce. The report also went further to state that US will remain two years behind many Asian and European countries on 3G services.

In contrast in another report entitled "Can U.S. Wireless Firms Ride Business Applications to Global Leadership?," Summit Strategies Practice Director Warren Wilson argues U.S. vendors and service providers stand to win strategic high ground, first in their home markets and then internationally. "Japan and Europe are leading way in consumer-focused wireless applications, but business applications will drive U.S. markets,'' Wilson says. "North American vendors and service providers that correctly gauge which business applications to offer, and development and deployment models that serve customers best cannot only catch up to global competitors, but even turn tables and claim leadership roles in wireless data. It won't be easy, but it's far from impossible."

The importance of 3G and Wireless collaboration with US has not been lost with NTT DoCoMo which understands that in order to move towards 3G, it must persuade other carriers to follow suit. DoCoMo’s USD$10bn investment in AT&T Wireless came with agreement that AT&T transferred towards W-CDMA.

I will highlight some promises provided by 3G Technology:

1)3G and Workplace Dynamics

3G Technology is an enabler of development of Wearable Computing Industry. The WearTel (TM) phone, for example, uses EyeTap technology to allow individuals to see each other's point of view. Therefore, miniature laser light source inside WearTel eyeglass-based phone scans across retinas of both parties and swaps image information, so that each person sees what other person is looking at.

This technology will enable HR manager to have a better understanding of how to motivate and reward their employees as personal documentaries of their work-life will be shot from a first-person perspective. HR managers can provide better advice about handling difficult customers or closing sales. However, immediate benefit is that this technology can be used as a training tool. The reason is that privacy laws have to be reviewed and updated in order that customers are adequately informed of this technology

2)3G and Mobile Job Interviewing

And now that Internet is here, focus is not merely on issue of merely supplying information to users but giving them choice to pick only kind of information they are most interested in, when to obtain these information, where to extract these information from and of how these preferred information should take form.

Imagine using your computer in watching your favorite NBA match, your watch your favorite television show or evening newscast and listen to live concerts and Webcasts through Castdial. Imagine just sitting in front of your computer screen while searching for articles on hottest political issues rather than going through those pile of newspapers or magazine archives in your local library.

Streaming media is a technique that allows users to view audio and video contents while they are still receiving it. Or as others perceive it, an audio and video file that plays as instantly on a text based content as when a Web page downloads on your browser. And unlike downloading a video or audio file to be played later, it flows to your computer screen enabling you to view its contents simultaneous to process of downloading.

So, how do you stream something into Internet? Especially video?

Here are basic steps:

First, in order to stream a data in video form, a person must use a 30-frames-per-second analog video that is fed by a VCH or video camera to a video board within computer. This must then be converted from an analog wave form into binary data. This representation is stored in computer hard disk and further reduced in size by video compression software. The video compression software then scans each of frames of video file and distinguishes which are redundant. The redundant ones are erased. Only needed data are retained.