UMTS stands for Universal Mobile Telecommunications System – and although the German translation would have the same abbreviation it is usually just the term UMTS that is used. In English it is often referred to as “3G”.
UMTS is a new form of transmitting and receiving data over the mobile phone network. Unlike GPRS it does not use the same frequencies as GSM, so that in Germany the licenses for UMTS were issued separately from the normal mobile phone ones.
UMTS allows data speeds of up to 7.2MBit/s, as long as the necessary hardware and network are available. For UMTS-access, most laptops use a special USB-stick, although some of the latest models now have the modules built-in.
To hear a simple explanation and a short discussion in German, listen to the podcast:
[audio:http://www.germanwordsexplained.com/mp3/2009-09-09_umts.mp3]
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