General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) is a Mobile Data Service
available to users of Global System for Mobile Communications
(GSM) and IS-136 mobile
phones. GPRS data transfer is typically charged per kilobyte of transferred
data, while data communication via traditional circuit switching is billed per
minute of connection time, independent of whether the user has actually
transferred data or has been in an idle state. GPRS can be used for
services such as Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) access, Short Message Service
(SMS), Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS), and for Internet communication
services such as email and World Wide Web access.
2G cellular systems combined with GPRS is often described as "2.5G",
that is, a technology between the second (2G) and third (3G) generations of
mobile telephony. It provides moderate speed data transfer, by using unused Time
division multiple access (TDMA) channels in, for example, the GSM system.
Originally there was some thought to extend GPRS to cover other
standards, but
instead those networks are being converted to use the GSM standard, so that GSM
is the only kind of network where GPRS is in use. GPRS is integrated into GSM
Release 97 and newer releases. It was originally standardized by European
Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), but now by the 3rd Generation
Partnership Project (3GPP