General Packet Radio Service

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General Packet Radio Service (GPRS), also called 2.5G,^[a] is a mobile data standard on the 2G cellular communication network's global system for mobile communications (GSM).^[1] Networks and mobile devices with GPRS started to roll out around the year 2001.^[2] At the time of introduction it offered for the first time^[b] seamless mobile data transmission using packet data for an "always-on" connection (eliminating the need to "dial-up"),^[3] providing improved Internet access for web, email, WAP services, and Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS).^[4]

GPRS provides theoretical data rates of 56–114 kbit/s -^[5] faster than the older CSD - and uses unused time-division multiple access (TDMA) channels in the GSM system for efficiency. 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. Unlike older circuit switching data, GPRS was sold according to the total volume of data transferred instead of time spent online,^[6] which is now standard. GPRS was succeeded by EDGE (2.75G) which provided improved performance.

GPRS was established by European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) in response to the earlier CDPD and i-mode packet-switched cellular technologies and is integrated into GSM Release 97 and newer releases. It is now maintained by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP).^[7][8]

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