Book excerpt: Giving a sound technical introduction to 3GPP LTE and SAE, this book explains the decisions taken during standardization while also examining the likely competition for LTE such as HSPA+ and WiMAX. As well as looking at next generation network technologies, Beyond 3G - Bringing Networks, Terminals and the Web Together describes the latest mobile device developments, voice and multimedia services and the mobile web 2.0. It considers not only how the systems, devices and software work but also the reasons behind why they are designed in this particular way. How these elements strongly influence each other is discussed as well as how network capabilities, available bandwidth, mobile device capabilities and new application concepts will shape the way we communicate in the future. This book gives an end to end introduction to wireless, from mobile software architecture to core networks, making it a valuable resource for anyone working in the industry. Examines current and next-generation network technologies such as UMTS, HSPA+, WiMAX, LTE and Wifi Analyses and explains performance and capacity in practice as well as future capacity requirements and how they can be fulfilled Introduces the reader to the current cellular telephony architecture and to voice over IP architectures such as SIP, IMS and TISPAN Looks at mobile device hardware and mobile operating system evolution Encompasses all major global wireless standards for application development and the latest state of the mobile web 2.0