Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS)

The European standard for third generation (3G) mobile telephony, to replace GSM. This new technology gives greater capacity and data transfer rates, enabling the transmission of text, digitalised voice, video and multimedia as well constant connection to the Internet.

Data transmission speeds are up to 2 Mbps, although it may be possible that the actual speed of data transfer would be lower due to network capacity limitations.

The eventual successor to GSM, the first UMTS network was deployed in 2001.