The Internet
GPRS and EDGE
Beginning of the mobile internet
In the 1990s, two technologies developed in parallel: the digital mobile network and the Internet. Around 2000 those technologies merged in a new mobile standard. This was happening before the new 3G standard became available.
To understand this “merge” it is important to understand what the Internet is and how it emerged for public use. (see The Internet).
The Internet is based on packet switched data. Therefore, it was not efficient to use the GSM network as it had been installed since 1992 for Internet connections. It was more suitable to avoid „fixed lines“ and use a packet switched based transmission. This was packet based transmission was realized with GPRS. GPRS was then optimized towards EDGE and formed the first mobile phone Internet solution.
GPRS and EDGE
It was not straight forward to find application for a mobile phone to be used with the internet. It was slow in Germany and Europe were the so called WAP service was installed. On the other side it was much more successful in Japan where the i-mode Service was introduced.
Beginning of the mobile internet