What is a 3G network anyway?

What's the distinction between 3G and HSPA on the Bell/Telus network?

• In some areas (mostly Quebec) my phone says it's connected to 3G but in Toronto it indicates HSPA. Is there a difference and if so, what is it?

• Answer:

  Basically you can think of HSPA as around the equivalent of 3.5G, the main difference you will notice is faster data download and upload speeds on HSPA.  For practical purposes, if you are on HSPA you are going to find things like surfing facebook/quora, and watching streaming video pretty easy, on 3G you might find your connection is noticeably slow. 3G on the TELUS network is also known as UMTS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Mobile_Telecommunications_System and is based on W-CMDA. I like to think of HSPA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Speed_Packet_Access as an upgrade or "expansion pack" to UMTS,   as they are both based off W-CDMA and use the same frequency bands. There are lots of technical differences between them in protocols and features which allow for fast data transfer rates on HSPA. Once you get into 4G (LTE) everything changes, it uses OFDM instead of W-CDMA and it is on different frequency bands.