Engineering Library @ McGraw-Hill (www.digitalengineeringlibrary.com) Copyright © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies. All rights reserved. Any use is subject to the Terms of Use as given at the website. GPRS Introduction GPRS Introduction Market Timeline for GPRS The deployment timeline for GPRS is dependent on several factors, includ- ing the infrastructure availability and terminal availability. An overall deployment timeline shows the starting point in the first half of 2000 for the GPRS infrastructure. Initial availability of infrastructure and terminal devices includes use for trials and limited-scale deployment (controlled roll- out). General availability refers to availability on a widespread commercial deployment to the masses. In addition to the GPRS timeline, it will be necessary to investigate the 3G deployments because they are closely related. Because the GPRS oper- ators are planning to deploy 3G (or at least are looking at it), GPRS is the migration step toward 3G. Several proof-of-concept-type trials have been underway for some time. These trials have led to more technical and application-oriented trials in the latter part of 2001 and into 2002. As with GPRS, terminal and infrastructure availability are the driving factors. Moreover, completion of licensing processes is necessary for commercial deployment. Motivation for GPRS GPRS was developed to enable GSM operators to meet the growing demands for wireless packet data service that is a result of the explosive growth of the Internet and corporate intranets. Applications using these networks require relatively high throughput and are characterized by bursty traffic patterns and asymmetrical throughput needs. Applications such as Web browsing typically result in bursts of network traffic while information is being transmitted or received, followed by long idle periods while the data is being viewed. In addition, much more information is usu- ally flowing to the client device than is being sent from the client device to the server. GPRS systems are bett