In this article is briefly reviewed the history of wireless cellularmobile communications, examined the progress in current secondgeneration (2G) cellular standards and discussed their migration to thethird generation (3G). The European 2G cellular standard GSM and itsevolution phases GPRS and EDGE are described somewhat in detail. Thethird generation standard UMTS taking up on GSM/GPRS core network andequipped with a new advanced access network on the basis of codedivision multiple access (CDMA) is investigated too. A sketch of theperspective of mobile communication beyond 3G concludes this article.