According to ETSI: The radio technology used between mobile terminals and the base stations of 3GPPTM systems is generically known as 'Universal Terrestrial Radio Access' (UTRA) and the access network as 'Universal Terrestrial Radio Access Network' (UTRAN).
The terms encompass the system architecture (3GPP TS 25.301 - see also ETSI standards search) and its physical layer (3GPP TS 25.201 - see also ETSI standards search) together with all the other aspects of the radio technology definition (25.-series - see also ETSI standards search).
The basic modulation technique is Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (W-CDMA) but interworking with other technologies such as wireless local are networks, wireless metropolitan networks, and of course, GSM/EDGE radio access technologies (GERAN) is also envisaged.