In this paper, a new printed triple-band planar antenna combing two different modified monopoles and an arc-shaped defected ground plane is proposed and studied. The used two simple monopoles consist of a rectangular ring and a rectangular patch attached a straight metal strip. And a compact arc-shaped defected ground structure is proposed and used to excite higher resonance frequency and improve the impedance matching of the antenna at lower and middle resonance frequencies. The main radiation element of the proposed antenna composed of only two simple monopoles can support three omnidirectional radiation modes at three desired bands. To indicate the working mechanism of the antenna, the design process is illustrated and the parametric studies are carried out. The experimental results of the fabricated prototype confirm that the triple-band antenna has better radiation efficiencies, appropriate gains, and stable omnidirectional radiation patterns. And the tested results also show that the antenna can provide enough bandwidths of 2.35–2.52, 3.2–4.16, and 5.13–5.87 GHz to cover all the desired 2.4/5.2/5.8 GHz WLAN and 3.5/5.5 GHz WiMAX operations. Moreover, the presented antenna has a very simple structure. Thus, the designed antenna has high practicality and broad prospects for WLAN and WiMAX applications.