GPRS

General Packet Radio Service (GPRS), also called 2.5G, is a mobile data standard that is part of the 2G cellular communication network Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM). Networks and mobile devices with GPRS started to roll out around the year 2001; it offered, for the first time on GSM networks, seamless data transmission using packet-switched data for an "always-on" connection, eliminating the need to dial up, providing improved Internet access for web, email, Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) services, Short Message Service (SMS), Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) and others. Up until the rollout of GPRS, only circuit-switched data was used in cellular networks, meaning that one or more radio channels were occupied for the entire duration of a data connection. On the other hand, on GPRS networks, data is broken into small packets and transmitted through available channels. This increased efficiency also gives it theoretical data rates of 56–114 kbit/s, significantly faster than the preceding Circuit Switched Data (CSD) technology. GPRS was succeeded by EDGE ("2.75G") which provided improved performance and speeds on the 2G GSM system.