Glossary of Mobile communication

3G Third-generation wireless
Near-future broad bandwidth, high speed developments in personal and business wireless technology, especially mobile communications.

EMS
A new standard in the SMS environment, this stands for Enhanced Messaging Service. It offers the ability to send a combination of tunes, sounds, modified text, and standard text as a combined message which can be received on EMS compliant handsets.

Gateway
A network point that acts as an entrance to another network.

GPRS (General Packet Radio Service)
A wireless communication service that promises fast data rates and continuous connection to the Internet for mobile phone and computer users. The term 2.5G is sometimes used for GPRS.

GSM (Global System for Mobile communication)
A digital mobile telephone system that is widely used in Europe and other parts of the world.

HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol)
The World Wide Web application protocol that runs on top of the Internet's protocols.

Internet
The Internet, sometimes called simply 'the Net', is a worldwide system of computer networks - a network of networks in which users at any one computer can, if they have permission, get information from any other computer (and sometimes talk directly to users at other computers).

Intranet
An intranet is a private network that is contained within an organization that uses computers.

MMS
Multimedia Message Service, is a standard which is associated with 3G, as the name indicates it will offer users the ability to send and receive a whole variety of services.This will consist of text, sounds, video, and or a combination of the different services.

Network
A network is a series of points or nodes interconnected by communication paths.

Node
In a network, a node is a connection point - either a redistribution point or an end point for data transmissions.

Operating system
An operating system is the program that, after being initially loaded into the computer, manages all the other programs in a computer.The other programs are called applications.

OTA (Over The Air)
The ability to send special types of SMS message containing features that can enhance a mobile phone (such as new ringtones, operator logos and group graphics).

Protocol
A protocol is the special set of rules that end points in a telecommunication connection use when they communicate.

Reverse Billing
Used to send permission-based messages to a user who is charged to receive the message, e.g. lottery results, news, weather and other information services.

SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol)
A way for a program running in one kind of operating system to communicate with a progam in the same or another kind of operating system by using the World Wide Web's Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) and its Extensible Markup Language (XML) as the mechanisms for information exchange.

SMS (Short Message Service)
A service for sending messages of up to 160 characters to mobile phones that use Global System for Mobile (GSM) communication.

UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System)
Another name for 3G.

Web Service
An Internet hosted application controlled through SOAP requests which returns results as SOAP responses.

Wireless
The term wireless refers to telecommunication in which electromagnetic waves (rather than some form of wire) carry the signal over part or all of the communication path.

World Wide Web
All the resources and users on the Internet that are using the HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP).

XML (eXtensible Markup Language)
A flexible way to create common information formats and share both the format and the data on the World Wide Web, intranets, and elsewhere.