A French Telecom company released its first of a series of third-generation or 3G phones that promise to change mobile communications forever. Orange Telecom joins Germany's T-Mobile, Italy's TIM and Spain's Telefonica Moviles among others releasing 3G phones into the European marketplace. Japan has had 3G Technology deployed since 2001.

3G devices provide for significantly higher data transmission speeds, including 2 Mbps in fixed environments, 384Kbps in urban environments and 144 Kbps in wide area mobile environments. Such speeds will enable such applications as true real time video communications between cell phone users for the first time. The applications are even more stunning for mobile PC users. 3G will bring broadband speeds to laptop users on the go making working from a park, the beach or wherever possible even for bandwidth intensive operations.

So when will this technology make it to the US? In some forms, it is already here. In the cell phone market, a recent Cingular Press Release says Cingular 'will be building 3G UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System) with HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access) networks in a number of major urban and suburban markets beginning in 2005.' Verizon has been rolling out their 3G network since early this year and has the wireless broadband available in some areas. The race is on for US providers to release a fully 3G capable cell phone in the US.