The latest buzz in the mobile communication world is the 3G technology. This great piece of telephony allows mobile users to surf internet, share media files, check emails, and do video conferencing besides many other activities.

The term '3G' means '3rd Generation' in mobile phone technology. The 3G technology enables data transfers at high speed between wireless phones.

Now, this next generation mobile technology has its own media file format - '3GP'. 3gp video file format, allows multi-media streaming on the 3G enabled cell phones that enables users to records, watch and share videos.

3GP is a multimedia that has made it possible to store many different files together within the one file. In a 3gp video media file, audio, and bitrate, all information are stored together.

This latest media format is the simplistic version of the popular MPEG-4 or MP4 technology. It was designed to suppress the amount of bandwidth and the overall file size, so more data could be incorporated in a cell phone.

This media format is defined by the '3rd Generation Partnership Project' (3GPP). This involves cooperation of many countries in the form of an agreement for standardization of cell phone formats. The aim behind this technology is to allow fast delivery of multi-media formats on the new 3G mobile networks globally.

For, the 3gp media file format, there are two standards internationally.

1. 3GPP - It uses the .3gp as its file extension and complies with GSM based phones.

2. 3GPP2 - It complies with CDMA mobiles and the file extension is .3g2.

The mobile users can easily transfer the 3gp media files to their computer through a USB or Bluetooth technology. The 3gp files are suitable for all network platforms like Mac, Linux and Windows. These files can be played on all media applications like Real Player, Quick Time and Media Player, but after the file conversion.

And for the file conversion, there are many converters available online that allow 3gp file conversion in any other media forma like avi, wmv, flv or any other. You can convert the files with or without downloading software and most of the services are free.

Today, most of the 3G mobile phones can record and create 3gp files, though you may find limits for memory, resolution and file size depending on the model and brand of a mobile phone.