What is GPRS?

General packet radio service (GPRS) is a packet oriented mobile data service on the 2G and 3G cellular communication system's global system for mobile communications (GSM). GPRS was originally standardized by European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) in response to the earlier CDPD and i-mode packet-switched cellular technologies. It is now maintained by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP).

GPRS is a best-effort service, implying variable throughput and latency that depend on the number of other users sharing the service concurrently, as opposed to circuit switching, where a certain quality of service (QoS) is guaranteed during the connection. In 2G systems, GPRS provides data rates of 56–114 kbit/second. 2G cellular technology combined with GPRS is sometimes described as 2.5G, that is, a technology between the second (2G) and third (3G) generations of mobile telephony.  It provides moderate-speed data transfer, by using unused time division multiple access (TDMA) channels in, for example, the GSM system. GPRS is integrated into GSM Release 97 and newer releases.

Services offered.

GPRS extends the GSM Packet circuit switched data capabilities and makes the following services possible:

• SMS messaging and broadcasting
• "Always on" internet access
• Multimedia messaging service (MMS)
• Push to talk over cellular (PoC)
• Instant messaging and presence—wireless village
• Internet applications for smart devices through wireless application protocol (WAP)
• Point-to-point (P2P) service: inter-networking with the Internet (IP)
• Point-to-Multipoint (P2M) service: point-to-multipoint multicast and point-to-multipoint group calls.

If SMS over GPRS is used, an SMS transmission speed of about 30 SMS messages per minute may be achieved. This is much faster than using the ordinary SMS over GSM, whose SMS transmission speed is about 6 to 10 SMS messages per minute.

Protocols supported

 

GPRS supports the following protocols:

• Internet protocol IP. In practice, built-in mobile browsers use IPv4 since IPv6 was not yet popular.
• Point-to-point protocol (PPP). In this mode PPP is often not supported by the mobile phone operator but if the mobile is used as a modem to the connected computer, PPP is used to tunnel IP to the phone. This allows an IP address to be assigned dynamically (IPCP not DHCP) to the mobile equipment.
• X.25 connections. This is typically used for applications like wireless payment terminals, although it has been removed from the standard. X.25 can still be supported over PPP, or even over IP, but doing this requires either a network based router to perform encapsulation or intelligence built in to the end-device/terminal; e.g., user equipment (UE).

Benefits of GPRS

• It helps you in office, home, cars and other social places.
• It supports data rates of more than 9.6 kbps and also has capacity to support 115 kbps.
•  It allows the transmission of long messages.

Application of GPRS

• In Mobile internet browsing GPRS provides better browsing. Now, a day's most of the mobile service provider is providing GPRS facility to all. It is very common in metropolitan cities. They provide services in low price that is really affordable.
• Whenever a new e-mail is received by e-mail user, they are notified about it on their mobile phones through GPRS. It has an alert mechanism for this purpose.
• Now all send their data through mobile as it is the fastest as well as time saving method. High speed mobile data services such as GPRS have high bandwidth which ensures transfer of files of large size across the mobile network. 
• For fun purpose GPRS technology is used to send and receive images in electronic form over mobile phones. These can include photographs, pictures, postcards, greeting cards etc.
• Looking into the demand, GPRS also give wide range of information regarding jokes, horoscopes, stock prices, sport news, weather and flight information, Exam results etc. . .
• The information is not limited to text, it also has visual information supports like map or graphs that are delivered according too its need.
• GPRS allows mobile phone users to chat. The use of GPRS is beneficial since it does not limit the number of participants.