The Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) is a 3G mobile cellular system for networks based on the GSM standard. UMTS uses wideband code-division multiple access (W-CDMA) radio access technology to offer greater spectral efficiency and bandwidth to mobile network operators compared to previous 2G systems like GPRS and CSD. The original version of UMTS provides a peak theoretical data rate of 384 kbit/s.
Developed and maintained by the 3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project), UMTS is a component of the International Telecommunication Union IMT-2000 standard set and compares with the CDMA2000 standard set for networks based on the competing cdmaOne technology. The technology described in UMTS is sometimes also referred to as Freedom of Mobile Multimedia Access (FOMA) or 3GSM.