A Note On GPRS

General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) is a packet-based wireless data communication service designed to replace the current circuit-switched services available on the second-generation Global System for Mobile communications (GSM) and Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) IS-136 networks.

GSM and TDMA networks were designed for voice communication, dividing the available bandwidth into multiple channels, each of which is constantly allocated to an individual call (circuit-switched). These channels can be used for the purpose of data transmission, but they only provide a maximum transmission speed of around 9.6Kbps.