History of mobile phones
Encyclopedia
The history of mobile phones charts the development of devices which connect wirelessly to the public switched telephone network
. The transmission of speech by radio has a long and varied history going back to Reginald Fessenden
's invention and shore-to-ship demonstration of radio telephony, through the Second World War with military use of radio telephony links. Hand-held radio transceivers
have been available since the 1940s. Mobile telephones for automobiles became available from some telephone companies in the 1940's. Early devices were bulky and consumed high power and the network supported only a few simultaneous conversations. Modern cellular network
s allow automatic and pervasive use of mobile phone
s for voice and data communications.
Mobile phone history is often divided into generations (first
, second
, third
and so on) to mark significant step changes in capabilities as the technology improved.
and a shore station, it is still possible to arrange a call from the public telephone network to a ship, still using manual call set-up and the services of a human marine radio operator.
However it was the 1940s onwards that saw the seeds of technological development which would eventually produce the mobile phone that we know today. Motorola developed a backpacked two-way radio, the Walkie-Talkie
and a large hand-held two-way radio for the US military. This battery powered "Handie-Talkie
" (HT) was about the size of a man's forearm.
was introduced. Only three radio channels were available, and call set-up required manual operation by a mobile operator. Although very popular and commercially successful, the service was limited by having only a few voice channels per district.
In 1964 Improved Mobile Telephone Service
was introduced with additional channels and more automatic handling of calls to the public switched telephone network. Even the addition of radio channels in three bands was insufficient to meet demand for vehicle-mounted mobile radio systems.
(IMTS) in the US until the rollout of cellular AMPS systems, a competing mobile telephone technology was called Radio Common Carrier or RCC. The service was provided from the 1960s until the 1980s when cellular AMPS systems made RCC equipment obsolete. These systems operated in a regulated environment in competition with the Bell System's MTS and IMTS. RCCs handled telephone calls and were operated by private companies and individuals. Some systems were designed to allow customers of adjacent RCCs to use their facilities but the universe of RCCs did not comply with any single interoperable technical standard (a capability called roaming in modern systems). For example, the phone of an Omaha, Nebraska–based RCC service would not be likely to work in Phoenix, Arizona. At the end of RCC's existence, industry associations were working on a technical standard that would potentially have allowed roaming, and some mobile users had multiple decoders to enable operation with more than one of the common signaling formats (600/1500, 2805, and Reach). Manual operation was often a fallback for RCC roamers.
Roaming was not encouraged, in part, because there was no centralized industry billing database for RCCs. Signaling formats were not standardized. For example, some systems used two-tone sequential paging
to alert a mobile or hand-held that a wired phone was trying to call them. Other systems used DTMF. Some used a system called Secode 2805 which transmitted an interrupted 2805 Hz tone (in a manner similar to IMTS signaling) to alert mobiles of an offered call. Some radio equipment used with RCC systems was half-duplex, push-to-talk equipment such as Motorola hand-helds or RCA 700-series conventional two-way radios. Other vehicular equipment had telephone handsets, rotary or pushbutton dials, and operated full duplex like a conventional wired telephone. A few users had full-duplex briefcase telephones (radically advanced for their day).
RCCs used paired UHF 454/459 MHz and VHF 152/158 MHz frequencies near those used by IMTS.
authorized Rural Radiotelephone Service for fixed stations. Because RF channels were shared with IMTS, the service was licensed only in areas that were remote from large Bureau of the Census Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs).
Systems used UHF 454 MHz or 152 MHz radio channels to provide telephone service to extremely rural places where it would be too costly to extend cable plant. One such system was on a 454/459 MHz channel pair between the Death Valley
telephone exchange
and Stovepipe Wells, California
. This specific system carried manual calls to the Traffic Service Position System (TSPS) center in Los Angeles. Stovepipe Wells callers went off-hook and were queried, "Number please," by a TSPS operator, who dialed the call. Dial service was introduced to Stovepipe Wells in the mid-1980s. The radio link has since been replaced by cable. The analog service has since been replaced by Basic Exchange Telephone Radio Service
, a digital system using the same frequencies.
Alongside the early developments outlined above, a different technology was also growing in popularity. Two-way mobile radios (known as mobile rigs) were used in vehicles such as taxicabs, police cruisers, and ambulances, but were not mobile phones, because they were not connected to the telephone network.
(PTT or manual), Mobile Telephone System (MTS), Improved Mobile Telephone Service
(IMTS), and Advanced Mobile Telephone System
(AMTS) systems.
These early mobile telephone systems can be distinguished from earlier closed radiotelephone
systems in that they were available as a commercial service that was part of the public switched telephone network
, with their own telephone numbers, rather than part of a closed network such as a police radio or taxi dispatch system.
These mobile telephones were usually mounted in cars or trucks, though briefcase models were also made. Typically, the transceiver (transmitter-receiver) was mounted in the vehicle trunk and attached to the "head" (dial, display, and handset) mounted near the driver seat.
They were sold through WCCs (Wireline Common Carriers, AKA telephone companies), RCCs (Radio Common Carriers), and two-way radio dealers.
Early examples for this technology:
In December 1947, Douglas H. Ring
and W. Rae Young
, Bell Labs
engineers, proposed hexagonal cells
for mobile phones in vehicles. Philip T. Porter, also of Bell Labs, proposed that the cell towers be at the corners of the hexagons rather than the centers and have directional antennas that would transmit/receive in three directions (see picture at right) into three adjacent hexagon cells on three different frequencies. At this stage, the technology to implement these ideas did not exist, nor had the frequencies been allocated. Several years would pass before Richard H. Frenkiel
and Joel S. Engel
of Bell Labs developed the electronics to achieve this in the 1960s.
In all these early examples, a mobile phone had to stay within the coverage area serviced by one base station throughout the phone call, i.e. there was no continuity of service as the phones moved through several cell areas. The concepts of frequency reuse and handoff, as well as a number of other concepts that formed the basis of modern cell phone technology, were described in the 1970s. In 1970 Amos E. Joel, Jr.
, a Bell Labs engineer, invented an automatic "call handoff" system to allow mobile phones to move through several cell areas during a single conversation without interruption.
In 1969 Amtrak
equipped commuter trains along the 225-mile New York
-Washington
route with special pay phones that allowed passengers to place telephone calls while the train was moving. The system re-used six frequencies in the 450 MHZ band in nine sites, a precursor of the concept later applied in cellular telephones.
In December 1971, AT&T submitted a proposal for cellular service to the Federal Communications Commission
(FCC). After years of hearings, the FCC approved the proposal in 1982 for Advanced Mobile Phone System
(AMPS) and allocated frequencies in the 824–894 MHz band. Analog AMPS was eventually superseded by Digital AMPS
in 1990.
A cellular telephone switching plan was described by Fluhr and Nussbaum in 1973, and a cellular telephone data signaling system was described in 1977 by Hachenburg et al.
(Mobile Telephone system A), it allowed calls to be made and received in the car using a rotary dial
. The car phone could also be paged. Calls from the car were direct dial, whereas incoming calls required an operator to determine which base station the phone was currently at. It was developed by Sture Laurén and other engineers at Televerket
network operator. Ericsson
provided the switchboard while Svenska Radioaktiebolaget (SRA) and Marconi
provided the telephones and base station equipment. MTA phones consisted of vacuum tube
s and relay
s, and weighed 40 kg. In 1962, an upgraded version called Mobile System B (MTB) was introduced. This was a push-button telephone
, and used transistors and DTMF signaling to improve its operational reliability. In 1971 the MTD
version was launched, opening for several different brands of equipment and gaining commercial success. The network remained open until 1983 and still had 600 customers when it closed.
In 1958 development began on a similar system for motorists in the USSR. The "Altay" national civil mobile phone service was based on Soviet MRT-1327 standard. The main developers of the Altay system were the Voronezh Science Research Institute of Communications (VNIIS) and the State Specialized Project Institute (GSPI). In 1963 the service started in Moscow, and by 1970 was deployed in 30 cities across the USSR. Versions of the Altay system are still in use today as a trunking system
in some parts of Russia.
In 1959 a private telephone company located in Brewster, Kansas, USA, the S&T Telephone Company, (still in business today) with the use of Motorola Radio Telephone equipment and a private tower facility, offered to the public mobile telephone services in that local area of NW Kansas. This system was a direct dial up service through their local switchboard, and was installed in many private vehicles including grain combines, trucks, and automobiles.
For some as yet unknown reason, the system, after being placed online and operated for a very brief time period, was shut down. The management of the company was immediately changed, and the fully operable system and related equipment was immediately dismantled in early 1960, not to be seen again.
In 1966, Bulgaria presented the pocket mobile automatic phone RAT-0,5 combined with a base station RATZ-10 (RATC-10) on Interorgtechnika-66 international exhibition. One base station, connected to one telephone wire line, could serve up to six customers.
One of the first successful public commercial mobile phone networks was the ARP
network in Finland
, launched in 1971. Posthumously, ARP is sometimes viewed as a zero generation (0G
) cellular network, being slightly above previous proprietary and limited coverage networks.
Prior to 1973, cellular mobile phone technology was limited to phones installed in cars and other vehicles.
On April 3, 1973, Martin Cooper, a Motorola
researcher and executive, made the first analog mobile phone call using a heavy prototype model. He called Dr. Joel S. Engel
of Bell Labs
.
There was a long race between Motorola and Bell Labs
to produce the first portable mobile phone. Cooper is the first inventor named on "Radio telephone system" filed on October 17, 1973 with the US Patent Office
and later issued as US Patent 3,906,166. John F. Mitchell, Motorola's chief of portable communication products (and Cooper's boss) was also named on the patent. He successfully pushed Motorola to develop wireless communication products that would be small enough to use anywhere and participated in the design of the cellular phone.
generation) was launched in Japan by NTT
in 1979. The initial launch network covered the full metropolitan area of Tokyo's over 20 million inhabitants with a cellular network of 23 base stations. Within five years, the NTT network had been expanded to cover the whole population of Japan and became the first nation-wide 1G network.
The next 1G network to launch was the Nordic Mobile Telephone
(NMT) system in Denmark
, Finland
, Norway
and Sweden
in 1981. NMT was the first mobile phone network to feature international roaming
. The Swedish
electrical engineer Östen Mäkitalo
started work on this vision in 1966, and is considered to be the father of the NMT system, and by some the father of the cellular phone itself, since he and two colleagues hold a patent from 1971 on a cellular system with handover
and roaming
. The NMT installations were based on the Ericsson
AXE
digital exchange nodes.
Several other countries also launched 1G networks in the early 1980s including the UK, Mexico
and Canada
. A two year trial started in 1981 in Baltimore and Washington DC with 150 users and 300 Motorola DynaTAC pre-production phones. This took place on a seven tower cellular network that covered the area. The DC area trial turned into a commercial services in about 1983 with fixed cellular car phones also built by Motorola. They later added the 8000X to their Cellular offerings. A similar trial and commercial launch also took place in Chicago by Ameritech in 1983 using the famous first hand-held mobile phone Motorola DynaTAC
.
AT&T's 1971 proposal for Advanced Mobile Phone System
(AMPS) was approved by the FCC in 1982 and frequencies were allocated in the 824–894 MHz band. Analog AMPS was superseded by Digital AMPS
in 1990.
In 1984, Bell Labs
developed modern commercial cellular technology (based, to a large extent, on the Gladden, Parelman Patent), which employed multiple, centrally controlled base stations (cell sites), each providing service to a small cell area. The sites were set up so that cells partially overlapped and different base stations operated using the same frequencies with little or no interference.
Vodafone
made the UK's first mobile call at a few minutes past midnight on January 1 1985.
The technology in these early networks was pushed to the limit to accommodate increasing usage. The base stations and the mobile phones utilized variable transmission power, which allowed range and cell size to vary. As the system expanded and neared capacity, the ability to reduce transmission power allowed new cells to be added, resulting in more, smaller cells and thus more capacity. The evidence of this growth can still be seen in the many older, tall cell site towers with no antennae on the upper parts of their towers. These sites originally created large cells, and so had their antennae mounted atop high towers; the towers were designed so that as the system expanded—and cell sizes shrank—the antennae could be lowered on their original masts to reduce range.
In the 1990s
, the 'second generation' (2G
) mobile phone systems emerged, primarily using the GSM
standard. These differed from the previous generation by using digital instead of analog transmission, and also fast out-of-band
phone-to-network signaling. The rise in mobile phone usage as a result of 2G was explosive and this era also saw the advent
of prepaid mobile phones
In 1991 the first GSM network (Radiolinja
) launched in Finland
. In general the frequencies used by 2G systems in Europe were higher than those in America, though with some overlap. For example, the 900 MHz frequency range was used for both 1G and 2G systems in Europe, so the 1G systems were rapidly closed down to make space for the 2G systems. In America the IS-54 standard was deployed in the same band as AMPS
and displaced some of the existing analog channels.
Coinciding with the introduction of 2G systems was a trend away from the larger "brick" phones toward tiny 100–200g hand-held devices. This change was possible not only through technological improvements such as more advanced batteries and more energy-efficient electronics, but also because of the higher density of cell sites to accommodate increasing usage. The latter meant that the average distance transmission from phone to the base station shortened, leading to increased battery life whilst on the move.
The second generation introduced a new variant of communication called SMS
or text messaging. It was initially available only on GSM networks but spread eventually on all digital networks. The first machine-generated SMS message was sent in the UK on 3 December 1992 followed in 1993 by the first person-to-person SMS sent in Finland. The advent of prepaid services in the late 1990s soon made SMS the communication method of choice amongst the young, a trend which spread across all ages.
2G also introduced the ability to access media content on mobile phones. In 1998 the first downloadable content sold to mobile phones was the ring tone, launched by Finland's Radiolinja (now Elisa). Advertising on the mobile phone first appeared in Finland when a free daily SMS news headline service was launched in 2000, sponsored by advertising.
Mobile payments were trialled in 1998 in Finland and Sweden where a mobile phone was used to pay for a Coca Cola vending machine and car parking. Commercial launches followed in 1999 in Norway. The first commercial payment system to mimic banks and credit cards was launched in the Philippines in 1999 simultaneously by mobile operators Globe and Smart.
The first full internet service on mobile phones was introduced by NTT DoCoMo in Japan in 1999.
rather than circuit switching
for data transmission. In addition, the standardization process focused on requirements more than technology (2 Mbit/s maximum data rate indoors, 384 kbit/s outdoors, for example).
Inevitably this led to many competing standards with different contenders pushing their own technologies, and the vision of a single unified worldwide standard looked far from reality. The standard 2G CDMA networks became 3G compliant with the adoption of Revision A to EV-DO, which made several additions to the protocol whilst retaining backwards compatibility:
All these were put in place to allow for low latency, low bit rate communications such as VoIP.
The first pre-commercial trial network with 3G was launched by NTT DoCoMo in Japan in the Tokyo region in May 2001. NTT DoCoMo launched the first commercial 3G network on October 1, 2001, using the WCDMA technology. In 2002 the first 3G networks on the rival CDMA2000 1xEV-DO technology were launched by SK Telecom and KTF in South Korea, and Monet in the USA. Monet has since gone bankrupt. By the end of 2002, the second WCDMA network was launched in Japan by Vodafone KK (now Softbank). European launches of 3G were in Italy and the UK by the Three/Hutchison group, on WCDMA. 2003 saw a further 8 commercial launches of 3G, six more on WCDMA and two more on the EV-DO standard.
During the development of 3G
systems, 2.5G systems such as CDMA2000 1x and GPRS
were developed as extensions to existing 2G networks. These provide some of the features of 3G without fulfilling the promised high data rates or full range of multimedia services. CDMA2000-1X delivers theoretical maximum data speeds of up to 307 kbit/s. Just beyond these is the EDGE
system which in theory covers the requirements for 3G
system, but is so narrowly above these that any practical system would be sure to fall short.
The high connection speeds of 3G technology enabled a transformation in the industry: for the first time, media streaming of radio (and even television) content to 3G handsets became possible http://web.archive.org/web/20060428163109/http://star-techcentral.com/tech/story.asp?file=/2005/9/20/corpit/12066894&sec=corpit, with companies such as RealNetworks
http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=171000005 and Disney
http://www.mediaweek.co.uk/news/index.cfm?fuseaction=details&nNewsID=517507 among the early pioneers in this type of offering.
In the mid 2000s an evolution of 3G technology begun to be implemented, namely High-Speed Downlink Packet Access
(HSDPA). It is an enhanced 3G
(third generation) mobile telephony
communications protocol
in the High-Speed Packet Access (HSPA) family, also coined 3.5G, 3G+ or turbo 3G, which allows networks based on Universal Mobile Telecommunications System
(UMTS) to have higher data transfer speeds and capacity. Current HSDPA deployments support down-link speeds of 1.8, 3.6, 7.2 and 14.0 Mbit
/s. Further speed increases are available with HSPA+, which provides speeds of up to 42 Mbit/s downlink and 84 Mbit/s with Release 9 of the 3GPP standards.
By the end of 2007 there were 295 million subscribers on 3G networks worldwide, which reflected 9% of the total worldwide subscriber base. About two thirds of these were on the WCDMA standard and one third on the EV-DO standard. The 3G telecoms services generated over 120 Billion dollars of revenues during 2007 and at many markets the majority of new phones activated were 3G phones. In Japan and South Korea the market no longer supplies phones of the second generation.
Although mobile phones had long had the ability to access data networks such as the Internet
, it was not until the widespread availability of good quality 3G
coverage in the mid 2000s that specialized devices appeared to access the mobile internet. The first such devices, known as "dongle
s", plugged directly into a computer through the USB port. Another new class of device appeared subsequently, the so-called "compact wireless router" such as the Novatel
MiFi
, which makes 3G internet connectivity available to multiple computers simultaneously over Wi-Fi
, rather than just to a single computer via a USB plug-in.
Such devices became especially popular for use with laptop
computers due to the added portability they bestow. Consequently, some computer manufacturers started to embed the mobile data function directly into the laptop so a dongle or MiFi wasn't needed. Instead, the SIM card could be inserted directly into the device itself to access the mobile data services. Such 3G-capable laptops became commonly known as "netbooks". Other types of data-aware devices followed in the netbook's footsteps. By the beginning of 2010, E-readers, such as the Amazon
Kindle
and the Nook
from Barnes & Noble
, had already become available with embedded wireless internet, and Apple Computer had announced plans for embedded wireless internet on its iPad
tablet devices beginning that Fall.
standard (offered in the U.S. by Sprint
) and the LTE
standard, first offered in Scandinavia by TeliaSonera
.
One of the main ways in which 4G differed technologically from 3G was in its elimination of circuit switching
, instead employing an all-IP network. Thus, 4G ushered in a treatment of voice calls just like any other type of streaming audio media, utilizing packet switching over internet
, LAN
or WAN
networks via VoIP.
satellite telephone system, originally developed in 1979 for safety of life at sea, is now also useful for areas out of reach of landline, conventional cellular, or marine VHF radio stations. In 1998 the Iridium satellite system was set up, and although the initial operating company went bankrupt due to high initial expenses, the service is available today.
of Euclid, Ohio, filed May 2, 1966, issued June 10, 1969: Cellular Mobile Communication System — Amos Edward Joel (Bell Labs), filed December 21, 1970, issued May 16, 1972
Public switched telephone network
The public switched telephone network is the network of the world's public circuit-switched telephone networks. It consists of telephone lines, fiber optic cables, microwave transmission links, cellular networks, communications satellites, and undersea telephone cables, all inter-connected by...
. The transmission of speech by radio has a long and varied history going back to Reginald Fessenden
Reginald Fessenden
Reginald Aubrey Fessenden , a naturalized American citizen born in Canada, was an inventor who performed pioneering experiments in radio, including early—and possibly the first—radio transmissions of voice and music...
's invention and shore-to-ship demonstration of radio telephony, through the Second World War with military use of radio telephony links. Hand-held radio transceivers
Walkie-talkie
A walkie-talkie is a hand-held, portable, two-way radio transceiver. Its development during the Second World War has been variously credited to Donald L. Hings, radio engineer Alfred J. Gross, and engineering teams at Motorola...
have been available since the 1940s. Mobile telephones for automobiles became available from some telephone companies in the 1940's. Early devices were bulky and consumed high power and the network supported only a few simultaneous conversations. Modern cellular network
Cellular network
A cellular network is a radio network distributed over land areas called cells, each served by at least one fixed-location transceiver known as a cell site or base station. When joined together these cells provide radio coverage over a wide geographic area...
s allow automatic and pervasive use of mobile phone
Mobile phone
A mobile phone is a device which can make and receive telephone calls over a radio link whilst moving around a wide geographic area. It does so by connecting to a cellular network provided by a mobile network operator...
s for voice and data communications.
Mobile phone history is often divided into generations (first
1G
1G refers to the first-generation of wireless telephone technology, mobile telecommunications. These are the analog telecommunications standards that were introduced in the 1980s and continued until being replaced by 2G digital telecommunications...
, second
2G
2G is short for second-generation wireless telephone technology. Second generation 2G cellular telecom networks were commercially launched on the GSM standard in Finland by Radiolinja in 1991...
, third
3G
3G or 3rd generation mobile telecommunications is a generation of standards for mobile phones and mobile telecommunication services fulfilling the International Mobile Telecommunications-2000 specifications by the International Telecommunication Union...
and so on) to mark significant step changes in capabilities as the technology improved.
Pioneers of radio telephony
By 1930, telephone customers in the United States could place a call to a passenger on a liner in the Atlantic Ocean. Air time charges were quite high, at $7(1930)/minute (about $92.50/minute in 2011 dollars). In areas with Marine VHF radioMarine VHF radio
Marine VHF radio is installed on all large ships and most seagoing small craft. It is used for a wide variety of purposes, including summoning rescue services and communicating with harbours, locks, bridges and marinas, and operates in the VHF frequency range, between 156 to 174 MHz...
and a shore station, it is still possible to arrange a call from the public telephone network to a ship, still using manual call set-up and the services of a human marine radio operator.
However it was the 1940s onwards that saw the seeds of technological development which would eventually produce the mobile phone that we know today. Motorola developed a backpacked two-way radio, the Walkie-Talkie
Walkie-talkie
A walkie-talkie is a hand-held, portable, two-way radio transceiver. Its development during the Second World War has been variously credited to Donald L. Hings, radio engineer Alfred J. Gross, and engineering teams at Motorola...
and a large hand-held two-way radio for the US military. This battery powered "Handie-Talkie
SCR-536
The SCR-536 was a hand-held radio transceiver used by US Signal Corps in World War II. It is popularly referred to as a walkie talkie although it was originally designated a "handie talkie".- History :...
" (HT) was about the size of a man's forearm.
MTS and IMTS
In 1946 in St. Louis, the Mobile Telephone ServiceMobile Telephone Service
The Mobile Telephone Service is a pre-cellular VHF radio system that links to the Public Switched Telephone Network . MTS was the radiotelephone equivalent of land dial phone service. , only rural and wilderness areas were still using the system....
was introduced. Only three radio channels were available, and call set-up required manual operation by a mobile operator. Although very popular and commercially successful, the service was limited by having only a few voice channels per district.
In 1964 Improved Mobile Telephone Service
Improved Mobile Telephone Service
The Improved Mobile Telephone Service is a "0G" pre-cellular VHF/UHF radio system that links to the PSTN. IMTS was the radiotelephone equivalent of land dial phone service...
was introduced with additional channels and more automatic handling of calls to the public switched telephone network. Even the addition of radio channels in three bands was insufficient to meet demand for vehicle-mounted mobile radio systems.
Radio Common Carrier
Parallel to Improved Mobile Telephone ServiceImproved Mobile Telephone Service
The Improved Mobile Telephone Service is a "0G" pre-cellular VHF/UHF radio system that links to the PSTN. IMTS was the radiotelephone equivalent of land dial phone service...
(IMTS) in the US until the rollout of cellular AMPS systems, a competing mobile telephone technology was called Radio Common Carrier or RCC. The service was provided from the 1960s until the 1980s when cellular AMPS systems made RCC equipment obsolete. These systems operated in a regulated environment in competition with the Bell System's MTS and IMTS. RCCs handled telephone calls and were operated by private companies and individuals. Some systems were designed to allow customers of adjacent RCCs to use their facilities but the universe of RCCs did not comply with any single interoperable technical standard (a capability called roaming in modern systems). For example, the phone of an Omaha, Nebraska–based RCC service would not be likely to work in Phoenix, Arizona. At the end of RCC's existence, industry associations were working on a technical standard that would potentially have allowed roaming, and some mobile users had multiple decoders to enable operation with more than one of the common signaling formats (600/1500, 2805, and Reach). Manual operation was often a fallback for RCC roamers.
Roaming was not encouraged, in part, because there was no centralized industry billing database for RCCs. Signaling formats were not standardized. For example, some systems used two-tone sequential paging
Selective calling
In a conventional, analog two-way radio system, a standard radio has noise squelch or carrier squelch which allows a radio to receive all transmissions. Selective calling is used to address a subset of all two-way radios on a single radio frequency channel...
to alert a mobile or hand-held that a wired phone was trying to call them. Other systems used DTMF. Some used a system called Secode 2805 which transmitted an interrupted 2805 Hz tone (in a manner similar to IMTS signaling) to alert mobiles of an offered call. Some radio equipment used with RCC systems was half-duplex, push-to-talk equipment such as Motorola hand-helds or RCA 700-series conventional two-way radios. Other vehicular equipment had telephone handsets, rotary or pushbutton dials, and operated full duplex like a conventional wired telephone. A few users had full-duplex briefcase telephones (radically advanced for their day).
RCCs used paired UHF 454/459 MHz and VHF 152/158 MHz frequencies near those used by IMTS.
Rural Radiotelephone Service
Using the same channel frequencies as IMTS, the US Federal Communications CommissionFederal Communications Commission
The Federal Communications Commission is an independent agency of the United States government, created, Congressional statute , and with the majority of its commissioners appointed by the current President. The FCC works towards six goals in the areas of broadband, competition, the spectrum, the...
authorized Rural Radiotelephone Service for fixed stations. Because RF channels were shared with IMTS, the service was licensed only in areas that were remote from large Bureau of the Census Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs).
Systems used UHF 454 MHz or 152 MHz radio channels to provide telephone service to extremely rural places where it would be too costly to extend cable plant. One such system was on a 454/459 MHz channel pair between the Death Valley
Death Valley
Death Valley is a desert valley located in Eastern California. Situated within the Mojave Desert, it features the lowest, driest, and hottest locations in North America. Badwater, a basin located in Death Valley, is the specific location of the lowest elevation in North America at 282 feet below...
telephone exchange
Telephone exchange
In the field of telecommunications, a telephone exchange or telephone switch is a system of electronic components that connects telephone calls...
and Stovepipe Wells, California
Stovepipe Wells, California
Stovepipe Wells is a small way-station in the northern part of Death Valley, in unincorporated Inyo County, California.-Geography and names:Stovepipe Wells is located at and is US Geological Survey feature ID 235564. It is entirely inside Death Valley National Park and along State Route 190 at...
. This specific system carried manual calls to the Traffic Service Position System (TSPS) center in Los Angeles. Stovepipe Wells callers went off-hook and were queried, "Number please," by a TSPS operator, who dialed the call. Dial service was introduced to Stovepipe Wells in the mid-1980s. The radio link has since been replaced by cable. The analog service has since been replaced by Basic Exchange Telephone Radio Service
Basic Exchange Telephone Radio Service
The Basic Exchange Telephone Radio Service or BETRS is a fixed radio service where a multiplexed, digital radio link is used as the last segment of the local loop to provide wireless telephone service to subscribers in remote areas...
, a digital system using the same frequencies.
Alongside the early developments outlined above, a different technology was also growing in popularity. Two-way mobile radios (known as mobile rigs) were used in vehicles such as taxicabs, police cruisers, and ambulances, but were not mobile phones, because they were not connected to the telephone network.
Before cellular networks
These mobile radio telephone services preceded modern cellular mobile telephony technology. Since they were the predecessors of the first generation of cellular telephones, these systems are sometimes retroactively referred to as pre cellular (or sometimes zero generation) systems. Technologies used in pre cellular systems included the Push to TalkPush to talk
Push-to-talk , also known as Press-to-Transmit, is a method of conversing on half-duplex communication lines, including two-way radio, using a momentary button to switch from voice reception mode to transmit mode....
(PTT or manual), Mobile Telephone System (MTS), Improved Mobile Telephone Service
Improved Mobile Telephone Service
The Improved Mobile Telephone Service is a "0G" pre-cellular VHF/UHF radio system that links to the PSTN. IMTS was the radiotelephone equivalent of land dial phone service...
(IMTS), and Advanced Mobile Telephone System
Advanced Mobile Telephone System
The Advanced Mobile Telephone System was a 0G method of radio communication, mainly used in Japanese portable radio systems. It, like its successor HCMTS, operated on the 900 MHz band....
(AMTS) systems.
These early mobile telephone systems can be distinguished from earlier closed radiotelephone
Radiotelephone
A radiotelephone is a communications system for transmission of speech over radio. Radiotelephone systems are not necessarily interconnected with the public "land line" telephone network. "Radiotelephone" is often used to describe the usage of radio spectrum where it is important to distinguish the...
systems in that they were available as a commercial service that was part of the public switched telephone network
Public switched telephone network
The public switched telephone network is the network of the world's public circuit-switched telephone networks. It consists of telephone lines, fiber optic cables, microwave transmission links, cellular networks, communications satellites, and undersea telephone cables, all inter-connected by...
, with their own telephone numbers, rather than part of a closed network such as a police radio or taxi dispatch system.
These mobile telephones were usually mounted in cars or trucks, though briefcase models were also made. Typically, the transceiver (transmitter-receiver) was mounted in the vehicle trunk and attached to the "head" (dial, display, and handset) mounted near the driver seat.
They were sold through WCCs (Wireline Common Carriers, AKA telephone companies), RCCs (Radio Common Carriers), and two-way radio dealers.
Early examples for this technology:
- MotorolaMotorolaMotorola, Inc. was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois, which was eventually divided into two independent public companies, Motorola Mobility and Motorola Solutions on January 4, 2011, after losing $4.3 billion from 2007 to 2009...
in conjunction with the Bell SystemBell SystemThe Bell System was the American Bell Telephone Company and then, subsequently, AT&T led system which provided telephone services to much of the United States and Canada from 1877 to 1984, at various times as a monopoly. In 1984, the company was broken up into separate companies, by a U.S...
operated the first commercial mobile telephone service Mobile Telephone System (MTS) in the US in 1946, as a service of the wireline telephone company. - The A-Netz launched 1952 in West GermanyWest GermanyWest Germany is the common English, but not official, name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation in May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990....
as the country's first public commercial mobile phone network. - First automatic system was the Bell System's IMTS which became available in 1962, offering automatic dialing to and from the mobile.
- The Televerket opened its first manual mobile telephone system in NorwayNorwayNorway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...
in 1966. Norway was later the first country in EuropeEuropeEurope is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
to get an automatic mobile telephone system. - The AutoradiopuhelinAutoradiopuhelinARP was the first commercially operated public mobile phone network in Finland. The technology is zero-generation , since although it had cells, moving between them was not seamless. The network was proposed in 1968 and building began in 1969. It was launched in 1971, and reached 100% geographic...
(ARP) launched in 1971 in FinlandFinlandFinland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...
as the country's first public commercial mobile phone network. - The B-NetzB-NetzB-Netz was an analog, commercial mobile radio telephone network that operated by the Deutsche Bundespost in Germany from 1972 until 1994. The system was also implemented in neighboring countries Austria, The Netherlands and Luxembourg...
launched 1972 in West GermanyWest GermanyWest Germany is the common English, but not official, name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation in May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990....
as the country's second public commercial mobile phone network (but the first one that did not require human operators to connect calls).
Cellular concepts
Douglas H. Ring
Douglas H. Ring was one of the Bell Labs engineers that invented the cell phone. The history of cellular phone technology began on December 11, 1947 with an internal memo written by Douglas H...
and W. Rae Young
W. Rae Young
William Rae Young, Jr. was one of the Bell Labs engineers that invented the cell phone.The history of cellular phone technology began in December 1947 with a Bell Labs internal report in which Rae Young suggested the hexagonal cell concept for a cellular mobile telephone system.-Career:Young...
, Bell Labs
Bell Labs
Bell Laboratories is the research and development subsidiary of the French-owned Alcatel-Lucent and previously of the American Telephone & Telegraph Company , half-owned through its Western Electric manufacturing subsidiary.Bell Laboratories operates its...
engineers, proposed hexagonal cells
Cellular network
A cellular network is a radio network distributed over land areas called cells, each served by at least one fixed-location transceiver known as a cell site or base station. When joined together these cells provide radio coverage over a wide geographic area...
for mobile phones in vehicles. Philip T. Porter, also of Bell Labs, proposed that the cell towers be at the corners of the hexagons rather than the centers and have directional antennas that would transmit/receive in three directions (see picture at right) into three adjacent hexagon cells on three different frequencies. At this stage, the technology to implement these ideas did not exist, nor had the frequencies been allocated. Several years would pass before Richard H. Frenkiel
Richard H. Frenkiel
Richard H. Frenkiel is an American engineer, known for development of cellular telephone networks.Born in Brooklyn, New York, Frenkiel earned a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering at Tufts University and earned a master's degree at Rutgers University in 1965. Beginning in 1963, he worked...
and Joel S. Engel
Joel S. Engel
Joel S. Engel is an American engineer, known for fundamental contributions to the development of cellular networks.Born in New York City, he obtained a B.Sc. in engineering at City College of New York...
of Bell Labs developed the electronics to achieve this in the 1960s.
In all these early examples, a mobile phone had to stay within the coverage area serviced by one base station throughout the phone call, i.e. there was no continuity of service as the phones moved through several cell areas. The concepts of frequency reuse and handoff, as well as a number of other concepts that formed the basis of modern cell phone technology, were described in the 1970s. In 1970 Amos E. Joel, Jr.
Amos E. Joel, Jr.
Amos Edward Joel, Jr. was an American electrical engineer, known for several contributions and over seventy patents related to telecommunications switching systems....
, a Bell Labs engineer, invented an automatic "call handoff" system to allow mobile phones to move through several cell areas during a single conversation without interruption.
In 1969 Amtrak
Amtrak
The National Railroad Passenger Corporation, doing business as Amtrak , is a government-owned corporation that was organized on May 1, 1971, to provide intercity passenger train service in the United States. "Amtrak" is a portmanteau of the words "America" and "track". It is headquartered at Union...
equipped commuter trains along the 225-mile New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
-Washington
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
route with special pay phones that allowed passengers to place telephone calls while the train was moving. The system re-used six frequencies in the 450 MHZ band in nine sites, a precursor of the concept later applied in cellular telephones.
In December 1971, AT&T submitted a proposal for cellular service to the Federal Communications Commission
Federal Communications Commission
The Federal Communications Commission is an independent agency of the United States government, created, Congressional statute , and with the majority of its commissioners appointed by the current President. The FCC works towards six goals in the areas of broadband, competition, the spectrum, the...
(FCC). After years of hearings, the FCC approved the proposal in 1982 for Advanced Mobile Phone System
Advanced Mobile Phone System
Advanced Mobile Phone System was an analog mobile phone system standard developed by Bell Labs, and officially introduced in the Americas in 1983, Israel in 1986, and Australia in 1987. It was the primary analog mobile phone system in North America through the 1980s and into the 2000s...
(AMPS) and allocated frequencies in the 824–894 MHz band. Analog AMPS was eventually superseded by Digital AMPS
Digital AMPS
IS-54 and IS-136 are second-generation mobile phone systems, known as Digital AMPS . It was once prevalent throughout the Americas, particularly in the United States and Canada. D-AMPS is considered end-of-life, and existing networks have mostly been replaced by GSM/GPRS or CDMA2000...
in 1990.
A cellular telephone switching plan was described by Fluhr and Nussbaum in 1973, and a cellular telephone data signaling system was described in 1977 by Hachenburg et al.
Emergence of automated mobile phone services
The first fully automated mobile phone system for vehicles was launched in Sweden in 1960. Named MTAMTD (mobile network)
MTD was a manual mobile phone system for the 450 MHz frequency band. It was introduced in 1971 in Sweden, and lasted until 1987, when it was made obsolete by the NMT automatic service...
(Mobile Telephone system A), it allowed calls to be made and received in the car using a rotary dial
Rotary dial
The rotary dial is a device mounted on or in a telephone or switchboard that is designed to send electrical pulses, known as pulse dialing, corresponding to the number dialed. The early form of the rotary dial used lugs on a finger plate instead of holes. Almon Brown Strowger filed the first patent...
. The car phone could also be paged. Calls from the car were direct dial, whereas incoming calls required an operator to determine which base station the phone was currently at. It was developed by Sture Laurén and other engineers at Televerket
Televerket (Sweden)
Televerket was the public utility company responsible for telecommunications in Sweden between 1953-1993; however, it originated 100 years earlier....
network operator. Ericsson
Ericsson
Ericsson , one of Sweden's largest companies, is a provider of telecommunication and data communication systems, and related services, covering a range of technologies, including especially mobile networks...
provided the switchboard while Svenska Radioaktiebolaget (SRA) and Marconi
Marconi Company
The Marconi Company Ltd. was founded by Guglielmo Marconi in 1897 as The Wireless Telegraph & Signal Company...
provided the telephones and base station equipment. MTA phones consisted of vacuum tube
Vacuum tube
In electronics, a vacuum tube, electron tube , or thermionic valve , reduced to simply "tube" or "valve" in everyday parlance, is a device that relies on the flow of electric current through a vacuum...
s and relay
Relay
A relay is an electrically operated switch. Many relays use an electromagnet to operate a switching mechanism mechanically, but other operating principles are also used. Relays are used where it is necessary to control a circuit by a low-power signal , or where several circuits must be controlled...
s, and weighed 40 kg. In 1962, an upgraded version called Mobile System B (MTB) was introduced. This was a push-button telephone
Push-button telephone
The push-button telephone was first invented in 1941, and is a telephone with push-buttons or keys, and which eventually replaced rotary dial telephones that were first used in 1891. The first push-button telephone was invented in the labs of Bell Telephone; however, these models were only...
, and used transistors and DTMF signaling to improve its operational reliability. In 1971 the MTD
MTD (mobile network)
MTD was a manual mobile phone system for the 450 MHz frequency band. It was introduced in 1971 in Sweden, and lasted until 1987, when it was made obsolete by the NMT automatic service...
version was launched, opening for several different brands of equipment and gaining commercial success. The network remained open until 1983 and still had 600 customers when it closed.
In 1958 development began on a similar system for motorists in the USSR. The "Altay" national civil mobile phone service was based on Soviet MRT-1327 standard. The main developers of the Altay system were the Voronezh Science Research Institute of Communications (VNIIS) and the State Specialized Project Institute (GSPI). In 1963 the service started in Moscow, and by 1970 was deployed in 30 cities across the USSR. Versions of the Altay system are still in use today as a trunking system
Trunked radio system
A trunked radio system is a complex type of computer-controlled radio system. Trunked systems use a few channels , and can have virtually unlimited talkgroups. The control channel computer sends packets of data to enable one talkgroup to talk together, regardless of frequency...
in some parts of Russia.
In 1959 a private telephone company located in Brewster, Kansas, USA, the S&T Telephone Company, (still in business today) with the use of Motorola Radio Telephone equipment and a private tower facility, offered to the public mobile telephone services in that local area of NW Kansas. This system was a direct dial up service through their local switchboard, and was installed in many private vehicles including grain combines, trucks, and automobiles.
For some as yet unknown reason, the system, after being placed online and operated for a very brief time period, was shut down. The management of the company was immediately changed, and the fully operable system and related equipment was immediately dismantled in early 1960, not to be seen again.
In 1966, Bulgaria presented the pocket mobile automatic phone RAT-0,5 combined with a base station RATZ-10 (RATC-10) on Interorgtechnika-66 international exhibition. One base station, connected to one telephone wire line, could serve up to six customers.
One of the first successful public commercial mobile phone networks was the ARP
Autoradiopuhelin
ARP was the first commercially operated public mobile phone network in Finland. The technology is zero-generation , since although it had cells, moving between them was not seamless. The network was proposed in 1968 and building began in 1969. It was launched in 1971, and reached 100% geographic...
network in Finland
Finland
Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...
, launched in 1971. Posthumously, ARP is sometimes viewed as a zero generation (0G
0G
0G or 0-G may refer to:*0G, the mobile telephony standard for Mobile radio telephone*0-G, or Zero-gravity, also called Weightlessness*Zero G, absence of g-force**Zero-g roll, one of the common Roller coaster elements*Zero Gravity Corporation...
) cellular network, being slightly above previous proprietary and limited coverage networks.
Handheld cell phone
On April 3, 1973, Martin Cooper, a Motorola
Motorola
Motorola, Inc. was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois, which was eventually divided into two independent public companies, Motorola Mobility and Motorola Solutions on January 4, 2011, after losing $4.3 billion from 2007 to 2009...
researcher and executive, made the first analog mobile phone call using a heavy prototype model. He called Dr. Joel S. Engel
Joel S. Engel
Joel S. Engel is an American engineer, known for fundamental contributions to the development of cellular networks.Born in New York City, he obtained a B.Sc. in engineering at City College of New York...
of Bell Labs
Bell Labs
Bell Laboratories is the research and development subsidiary of the French-owned Alcatel-Lucent and previously of the American Telephone & Telegraph Company , half-owned through its Western Electric manufacturing subsidiary.Bell Laboratories operates its...
.
There was a long race between Motorola and Bell Labs
Bell Labs
Bell Laboratories is the research and development subsidiary of the French-owned Alcatel-Lucent and previously of the American Telephone & Telegraph Company , half-owned through its Western Electric manufacturing subsidiary.Bell Laboratories operates its...
to produce the first portable mobile phone. Cooper is the first inventor named on "Radio telephone system" filed on October 17, 1973 with the US Patent Office
United States Patent and Trademark Office
The United States Patent and Trademark Office is an agency in the United States Department of Commerce that issues patents to inventors and businesses for their inventions, and trademark registration for product and intellectual property identification.The USPTO is based in Alexandria, Virginia,...
and later issued as US Patent 3,906,166. John F. Mitchell, Motorola's chief of portable communication products (and Cooper's boss) was also named on the patent. He successfully pushed Motorola to develop wireless communication products that would be small enough to use anywhere and participated in the design of the cellular phone.
First generation: Cellular networks
The technological development that distinguished the First Generation of mobile phones from the previous generation was the use of multiple cell sites, and the ability to transfer calls from one site to the next as the user travelled between cells during a conversation. The first commercially automated cellular network (the 1G1G
1G refers to the first-generation of wireless telephone technology, mobile telecommunications. These are the analog telecommunications standards that were introduced in the 1980s and continued until being replaced by 2G digital telecommunications...
generation) was launched in Japan by NTT
Nippon Telegraph and Telephone
, commonly known as NTT, is a Japanese telecommunications company headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. Ranked the 31st in Fortune Global 500, NTT is the largest telecommunications company in Asia, and the second-largest in the world in terms of revenue....
in 1979. The initial launch network covered the full metropolitan area of Tokyo's over 20 million inhabitants with a cellular network of 23 base stations. Within five years, the NTT network had been expanded to cover the whole population of Japan and became the first nation-wide 1G network.
Nordic Mobile Telephone
NMT is the first fully automatic cellular phone system...
(NMT) system in Denmark
Denmark
Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...
, Finland
Finland
Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...
, Norway
Norway
Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...
and Sweden
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
in 1981. NMT was the first mobile phone network to feature international roaming
Roaming
In wireless telecommunications, roaming is a general term referring to the extension of connectivity service in a location that is different from the home location where the service was registered. Roaming ensures that the wireless device is kept connected to the network, without losing the...
. The Swedish
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
electrical engineer Östen Mäkitalo
Östen Mäkitalo
Östen Mäkitalo was a Swedish electrical engineer. He is considered to be the father of the Nordic Mobile Telephone system and many times the father of cellular phone.-Education and occupation:...
started work on this vision in 1966, and is considered to be the father of the NMT system, and by some the father of the cellular phone itself, since he and two colleagues hold a patent from 1971 on a cellular system with handover
Handover
In cellular telecommunications, the term handover or handoff refers to the process of transferring an ongoing call or data session from one channel connected to the core network to another...
and roaming
Roaming
In wireless telecommunications, roaming is a general term referring to the extension of connectivity service in a location that is different from the home location where the service was registered. Roaming ensures that the wireless device is kept connected to the network, without losing the...
. The NMT installations were based on the Ericsson
Ericsson
Ericsson , one of Sweden's largest companies, is a provider of telecommunication and data communication systems, and related services, covering a range of technologies, including especially mobile networks...
AXE
AXE telephone exchange
The AXE telephone exchange is a product line of circuit switched digital telephone exchanges manufactured by Ericsson, a Swedish telecom company. It was developed in 1974 by Ellemtel, a research and development subsidiary of Ericsson and Televerket.. The first system was deployed in 1976...
digital exchange nodes.
Several other countries also launched 1G networks in the early 1980s including the UK, Mexico
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
and Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
. A two year trial started in 1981 in Baltimore and Washington DC with 150 users and 300 Motorola DynaTAC pre-production phones. This took place on a seven tower cellular network that covered the area. The DC area trial turned into a commercial services in about 1983 with fixed cellular car phones also built by Motorola. They later added the 8000X to their Cellular offerings. A similar trial and commercial launch also took place in Chicago by Ameritech in 1983 using the famous first hand-held mobile phone Motorola DynaTAC
Motorola DynaTAC
DynaTAC is a series of cellular telephones manufactured by Motorola, Inc. from 1983 to 1994. With several different models, plus newer models under the Classic and Ultra Classic names, it was the first line of cell phones commercially produced by Motorola, with the first member of the DynaTAC...
.
AT&T's 1971 proposal for Advanced Mobile Phone System
Advanced Mobile Phone System
Advanced Mobile Phone System was an analog mobile phone system standard developed by Bell Labs, and officially introduced in the Americas in 1983, Israel in 1986, and Australia in 1987. It was the primary analog mobile phone system in North America through the 1980s and into the 2000s...
(AMPS) was approved by the FCC in 1982 and frequencies were allocated in the 824–894 MHz band. Analog AMPS was superseded by Digital AMPS
Digital AMPS
IS-54 and IS-136 are second-generation mobile phone systems, known as Digital AMPS . It was once prevalent throughout the Americas, particularly in the United States and Canada. D-AMPS is considered end-of-life, and existing networks have mostly been replaced by GSM/GPRS or CDMA2000...
in 1990.
In 1984, Bell Labs
Bell Labs
Bell Laboratories is the research and development subsidiary of the French-owned Alcatel-Lucent and previously of the American Telephone & Telegraph Company , half-owned through its Western Electric manufacturing subsidiary.Bell Laboratories operates its...
developed modern commercial cellular technology (based, to a large extent, on the Gladden, Parelman Patent), which employed multiple, centrally controlled base stations (cell sites), each providing service to a small cell area. The sites were set up so that cells partially overlapped and different base stations operated using the same frequencies with little or no interference.
Vodafone
Vodafone
Vodafone Group Plc is a global telecommunications company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the world's largest mobile telecommunications company measured by revenues and the world's second-largest measured by subscribers , with around 341 million proportionate subscribers as of...
made the UK's first mobile call at a few minutes past midnight on January 1 1985.
The technology in these early networks was pushed to the limit to accommodate increasing usage. The base stations and the mobile phones utilized variable transmission power, which allowed range and cell size to vary. As the system expanded and neared capacity, the ability to reduce transmission power allowed new cells to be added, resulting in more, smaller cells and thus more capacity. The evidence of this growth can still be seen in the many older, tall cell site towers with no antennae on the upper parts of their towers. These sites originally created large cells, and so had their antennae mounted atop high towers; the towers were designed so that as the system expanded—and cell sizes shrank—the antennae could be lowered on their original masts to reduce range.
Second generation: Digital networks
1990s
File:1990s decade montage.png|From left, clockwise: The Hubble Space Telescope floats in space after it was taken up in 1990; American F-16s and F-15s fly over burning oil fields and the USA Lexie in Operation Desert Storm, also known as the 1991 Gulf War; The signing of the Oslo Accords on...
, the 'second generation' (2G
2G
2G is short for second-generation wireless telephone technology. Second generation 2G cellular telecom networks were commercially launched on the GSM standard in Finland by Radiolinja in 1991...
) mobile phone systems emerged, primarily using the GSM
Global System for Mobile Communications
GSM , is a standard set developed by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute to describe technologies for second generation digital cellular networks...
standard. These differed from the previous generation by using digital instead of analog transmission, and also fast out-of-band
Out-of-band
The term out-of-band has different uses in communications and telecommunication. In case of out-of-band control signaling, signaling bits are sent in special order in a dedicated signaling frame...
phone-to-network signaling. The rise in mobile phone usage as a result of 2G was explosive and this era also saw the advent
History of the prepaid mobile phone
The history of the prepaid mobile phone begins in the 1990s when larger markets were being sought after by the mobile phone operators. Before this date, all mobile phone services were offered on a post paid basis, which excluded people with a poor credit rating as well as children since you have...
of prepaid mobile phones
In 1991 the first GSM network (Radiolinja
Radiolinja
Radiolinja was a Finnish GSM operator founded on September 19, 1988. On March 27, 1991, the world's first GSM phone call was made on Radiolinja's network...
) launched in Finland
Finland
Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...
. In general the frequencies used by 2G systems in Europe were higher than those in America, though with some overlap. For example, the 900 MHz frequency range was used for both 1G and 2G systems in Europe, so the 1G systems were rapidly closed down to make space for the 2G systems. In America the IS-54 standard was deployed in the same band as AMPS
Advanced Mobile Phone System
Advanced Mobile Phone System was an analog mobile phone system standard developed by Bell Labs, and officially introduced in the Americas in 1983, Israel in 1986, and Australia in 1987. It was the primary analog mobile phone system in North America through the 1980s and into the 2000s...
and displaced some of the existing analog channels.
Coinciding with the introduction of 2G systems was a trend away from the larger "brick" phones toward tiny 100–200g hand-held devices. This change was possible not only through technological improvements such as more advanced batteries and more energy-efficient electronics, but also because of the higher density of cell sites to accommodate increasing usage. The latter meant that the average distance transmission from phone to the base station shortened, leading to increased battery life whilst on the move.
SMS
SMS is a form of text messaging communication on phones and mobile phones. The terms SMS or sms may also refer to:- Computer hardware :...
or text messaging. It was initially available only on GSM networks but spread eventually on all digital networks. The first machine-generated SMS message was sent in the UK on 3 December 1992 followed in 1993 by the first person-to-person SMS sent in Finland. The advent of prepaid services in the late 1990s soon made SMS the communication method of choice amongst the young, a trend which spread across all ages.
2G also introduced the ability to access media content on mobile phones. In 1998 the first downloadable content sold to mobile phones was the ring tone, launched by Finland's Radiolinja (now Elisa). Advertising on the mobile phone first appeared in Finland when a free daily SMS news headline service was launched in 2000, sponsored by advertising.
Mobile payments were trialled in 1998 in Finland and Sweden where a mobile phone was used to pay for a Coca Cola vending machine and car parking. Commercial launches followed in 1999 in Norway. The first commercial payment system to mimic banks and credit cards was launched in the Philippines in 1999 simultaneously by mobile operators Globe and Smart.
The first full internet service on mobile phones was introduced by NTT DoCoMo in Japan in 1999.
Third generation: High speed IP data networks and mobile broadband
As the use of 2G phones became more widespread and people began to utilize mobile phones in their daily lives, it became clear that demand for data services (such as access to the internet) was growing. Furthermore, experience from fixed broadband services showed there would also be an ever increasing demand for greater data speeds. The 2G technology was nowhere near up to the job, so the industry began to work on the next generation of technology known as 3G. The main technological difference that distinguishes 3G technology from 2G technology is the use of packet switchingPacket switching
Packet switching is a digital networking communications method that groups all transmitted data – regardless of content, type, or structure – into suitably sized blocks, called packets. Packet switching features delivery of variable-bit-rate data streams over a shared network...
rather than circuit switching
Circuit switching
Circuit switching is a methodology of implementing a telecommunications network in which two network nodes establish a dedicated communications channel through the network before the nodes may communicate. The circuit guarantees the full bandwidth of the channel and remains connected for the...
for data transmission. In addition, the standardization process focused on requirements more than technology (2 Mbit/s maximum data rate indoors, 384 kbit/s outdoors, for example).
Inevitably this led to many competing standards with different contenders pushing their own technologies, and the vision of a single unified worldwide standard looked far from reality. The standard 2G CDMA networks became 3G compliant with the adoption of Revision A to EV-DO, which made several additions to the protocol whilst retaining backwards compatibility:
- the introduction of several new forward link data rates that increase the maximum burst rate from 2.45 Mbit/s to 3.1 Mbit/s.
- protocols that would decrease connection establishment time.
- the ability for more than one mobile to share the same time slot.
- the introduction of QoSQuality of serviceThe quality of service refers to several related aspects of telephony and computer networks that allow the transport of traffic with special requirements...
flags.
All these were put in place to allow for low latency, low bit rate communications such as VoIP.
The first pre-commercial trial network with 3G was launched by NTT DoCoMo in Japan in the Tokyo region in May 2001. NTT DoCoMo launched the first commercial 3G network on October 1, 2001, using the WCDMA technology. In 2002 the first 3G networks on the rival CDMA2000 1xEV-DO technology were launched by SK Telecom and KTF in South Korea, and Monet in the USA. Monet has since gone bankrupt. By the end of 2002, the second WCDMA network was launched in Japan by Vodafone KK (now Softbank). European launches of 3G were in Italy and the UK by the Three/Hutchison group, on WCDMA. 2003 saw a further 8 commercial launches of 3G, six more on WCDMA and two more on the EV-DO standard.
During the development of 3G
3G
3G or 3rd generation mobile telecommunications is a generation of standards for mobile phones and mobile telecommunication services fulfilling the International Mobile Telecommunications-2000 specifications by the International Telecommunication Union...
systems, 2.5G systems such as CDMA2000 1x and GPRS
General Packet Radio Service
General packet radio service is a packet oriented mobile data service on the 2G and 3G cellular communication system's global system for mobile communications . GPRS was originally standardized by European Telecommunications Standards Institute in response to the earlier CDPD and i-mode...
were developed as extensions to existing 2G networks. These provide some of the features of 3G without fulfilling the promised high data rates or full range of multimedia services. CDMA2000-1X delivers theoretical maximum data speeds of up to 307 kbit/s. Just beyond these is the EDGE
Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution
Enhanced Data rates for GSM Evolution is a digital mobile phone technology that allows improved data transmission rates as a backward-compatible extension of GSM...
system which in theory covers the requirements for 3G
3G
3G or 3rd generation mobile telecommunications is a generation of standards for mobile phones and mobile telecommunication services fulfilling the International Mobile Telecommunications-2000 specifications by the International Telecommunication Union...
system, but is so narrowly above these that any practical system would be sure to fall short.
The high connection speeds of 3G technology enabled a transformation in the industry: for the first time, media streaming of radio (and even television) content to 3G handsets became possible http://web.archive.org/web/20060428163109/http://star-techcentral.com/tech/story.asp?file=/2005/9/20/corpit/12066894&sec=corpit, with companies such as RealNetworks
RealNetworks
RealNetworks, Inc. is a provider of Internet media delivery software and services based in Downtown Seattle, Washington, United States. The company is the creator of RealAudio, a compressed audio format; RealVideo, a compressed video format; RealPlayer, a media player; RealDownloader, a download...
http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=171000005 and Disney
The Walt Disney Company
The Walt Disney Company is the largest media conglomerate in the world in terms of revenue. Founded on October 16, 1923, by Walt and Roy Disney as the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, Walt Disney Productions established itself as a leader in the American animation industry before diversifying into...
http://www.mediaweek.co.uk/news/index.cfm?fuseaction=details&nNewsID=517507 among the early pioneers in this type of offering.
In the mid 2000s an evolution of 3G technology begun to be implemented, namely High-Speed Downlink Packet Access
High-Speed Downlink Packet Access
High-Speed Downlink Packet Access is an enhanced 3G mobile telephony communications protocol in the High-Speed Packet Access family, also dubbed 3.5G, 3G+ or turbo 3G, which allows networks based on Universal Mobile Telecommunications System to have higher data transfer speeds and capacity...
(HSDPA). It is an enhanced 3G
3G
3G or 3rd generation mobile telecommunications is a generation of standards for mobile phones and mobile telecommunication services fulfilling the International Mobile Telecommunications-2000 specifications by the International Telecommunication Union...
(third generation) mobile telephony
Mobile telephony
Mobile telephony is the provision of telephone services to phones which may move around freely rather than stay fixed in one location. Mobile phones connect to a terrestrial cellular network of base stations , whereas satellite phones connect to orbiting satellites...
communications protocol
Communications protocol
A communications protocol is a system of digital message formats and rules for exchanging those messages in or between computing systems and in telecommunications...
in the High-Speed Packet Access (HSPA) family, also coined 3.5G, 3G+ or turbo 3G, which allows networks based on Universal Mobile Telecommunications System
Universal Mobile Telecommunications System
Universal Mobile Telecommunications System is a third generation mobile cellular technology for networks based on the GSM standard. Developed by the 3GPP , UMTS is a component of the International Telecommunications Union IMT-2000 standard set and compares with the CDMA2000 standard set for...
(UMTS) to have higher data transfer speeds and capacity. Current HSDPA deployments support down-link speeds of 1.8, 3.6, 7.2 and 14.0 Mbit
Megabit
The megabit is a multiple of the unit bit for digital information or computer storage. The prefix mega is defined in the International System of Units as a multiplier of 106 , and therefore...
/s. Further speed increases are available with HSPA+, which provides speeds of up to 42 Mbit/s downlink and 84 Mbit/s with Release 9 of the 3GPP standards.
By the end of 2007 there were 295 million subscribers on 3G networks worldwide, which reflected 9% of the total worldwide subscriber base. About two thirds of these were on the WCDMA standard and one third on the EV-DO standard. The 3G telecoms services generated over 120 Billion dollars of revenues during 2007 and at many markets the majority of new phones activated were 3G phones. In Japan and South Korea the market no longer supplies phones of the second generation.
Although mobile phones had long had the ability to access data networks such as the Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
, it was not until the widespread availability of good quality 3G
3G
3G or 3rd generation mobile telecommunications is a generation of standards for mobile phones and mobile telecommunication services fulfilling the International Mobile Telecommunications-2000 specifications by the International Telecommunication Union...
coverage in the mid 2000s that specialized devices appeared to access the mobile internet. The first such devices, known as "dongle
Dongle
A software protection dongle is a small piece of hardware that plugs into an electrical connector on a computer and serves as an electronic "key" for a piece of software; the program will only run when the dongle is plugged in...
s", plugged directly into a computer through the USB port. Another new class of device appeared subsequently, the so-called "compact wireless router" such as the Novatel
Novatel Wireless
Novatel Wireless, Inc. is a company providing wireless broadband access solutions for use in portable personal computers, handheld computing and mobile devices. The company is perhaps best known for its MiFi line of compact wireless routers....
MiFi
MiFi
MiFi is a line of compact wireless routers produced by Novatel Wireless that act as mobile Wi-Fi hotspots. MiFi stands for 'My Wi-Fi'. The MiFi can be connected to a mobile phone carrier and provide internet access for up to 5 devices...
, which makes 3G internet connectivity available to multiple computers simultaneously over Wi-Fi
Wi-Fi
Wi-Fi or Wifi, is a mechanism for wirelessly connecting electronic devices. A device enabled with Wi-Fi, such as a personal computer, video game console, smartphone, or digital audio player, can connect to the Internet via a wireless network access point. An access point has a range of about 20...
, rather than just to a single computer via a USB plug-in.
Such devices became especially popular for use with laptop
Laptop
A laptop, also called a notebook, is a personal computer for mobile use. A laptop integrates most of the typical components of a desktop computer, including a display, a keyboard, a pointing device and speakers into a single unit...
computers due to the added portability they bestow. Consequently, some computer manufacturers started to embed the mobile data function directly into the laptop so a dongle or MiFi wasn't needed. Instead, the SIM card could be inserted directly into the device itself to access the mobile data services. Such 3G-capable laptops became commonly known as "netbooks". Other types of data-aware devices followed in the netbook's footsteps. By the beginning of 2010, E-readers, such as the Amazon
Amazon.com
Amazon.com, Inc. is a multinational electronic commerce company headquartered in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is the world's largest online retailer. Amazon has separate websites for the following countries: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, and...
Kindle
Amazon Kindle
The Amazon Kindle is an e-book reader developed by Amazon.com subsidiary Lab126 which uses wireless connectivity to enable users to shop for, download, browse, and read e-books, newspapers, magazines, blogs, and other digital media...
and the Nook
Barnes & Noble Nook
The Barnes & Noble Nook is a brand of electronic-book reader developed by American book retailer Barnes & Noble, based on the Android platform. The original device was announced in the United States in October 2009, and was released the next month...
from Barnes & Noble
Barnes & Noble
Barnes & Noble, Inc. is the largest book retailer in the United States, operating mainly through its Barnes & Noble Booksellers chain of bookstores headquartered at 122 Fifth Avenue in the Flatiron District in Manhattan in New York City. Barnes & Noble also operated the chain of small B. Dalton...
, had already become available with embedded wireless internet, and Apple Computer had announced plans for embedded wireless internet on its iPad
IPad
The iPad is a line of tablet computers designed, developed and marketed by Apple Inc., primarily as a platform for audio-visual media including books, periodicals, movies, music, games, and web content. The iPad was introduced on January 27, 2010 by Apple's then-CEO Steve Jobs. Its size and...
tablet devices beginning that Fall.
Fourth generation: All-IP networks
By 2009, it had become clear that, at some point, 3G networks would be overwhelmed by the growth of bandwidth-intensive applications like streaming media. Consequently, the industry began looking to data-optimized 4th-generation technologies, with the promise of speed improvements up to 10-fold over existing 3G technologies. The first two commercially available technologies billed as 4G were the WiMAXWiMAX
WiMAX is a communication technology for wirelessly delivering high-speed Internet service to large geographical areas. The 2005 WiMAX revision provided bit rates up to 40 Mbit/s with the 2011 update up to 1 Gbit/s for fixed stations...
standard (offered in the U.S. by Sprint
Sprint Nextel
Sprint Nextel Corporation is an American telecommunications company based in Overland Park, Kansas. The company owns and operates Sprint, the third largest wireless telecommunications network in the United States, with 53.4 million customers, behind Verizon Wireless and AT&T Mobility...
) and the LTE
3GPP Long Term Evolution
3GPP Long Term Evolution, usually referred to as LTE, is a standard for wireless communication of high-speed data for mobile phones and data terminals. It is based on the GSM/EDGE and UMTS/HSPA network technologies, increasing the capacity and speed using new modulation techniques...
standard, first offered in Scandinavia by TeliaSonera
TeliaSonera
TeliaSonera AB is the dominant telephone company and mobile network operator in Sweden and Finland. The company has operations in other countries in Northern, Eastern Europe, Central Asia and Spain, with a total of 150 million mobile customers...
.
One of the main ways in which 4G differed technologically from 3G was in its elimination of circuit switching
Circuit switching
Circuit switching is a methodology of implementing a telecommunications network in which two network nodes establish a dedicated communications channel through the network before the nodes may communicate. The circuit guarantees the full bandwidth of the channel and remains connected for the...
, instead employing an all-IP network. Thus, 4G ushered in a treatment of voice calls just like any other type of streaming audio media, utilizing packet switching over internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
, LAN
Län
Län and lääni refer to the administrative divisions used in Sweden and previously in Finland. The provinces of Finland were abolished on January 1, 2010....
or WAN
WAN
WAN may refer to:* Wide area network * World Association of Newspapers* Wanborough railway station in England, which has the station code WAN...
networks via VoIP.
Satellite mobile
Earth-orbiting satellites can cover remote areas out of reach of wired networks or where construction of a cellular network is uneconomic. The InmarsatInmarsat
Inmarsat plc is a British satellite telecommunications company, offering global, mobile services. It provides telephony and data services to users worldwide, via portable or mobile terminals which communicate to ground stations through eleven geostationary telecommunications satellites...
satellite telephone system, originally developed in 1979 for safety of life at sea, is now also useful for areas out of reach of landline, conventional cellular, or marine VHF radio stations. In 1998 the Iridium satellite system was set up, and although the initial operating company went bankrupt due to high initial expenses, the service is available today.
Patents
:Duplex Radio Communication and Signaling Apparatus for Portable Telephone — George SweigertGeorge Sweigert
George H. Sweigert is widely credited as the first inventor to hold a patent for the invention of the cordless telephone. Google Patents link...
of Euclid, Ohio, filed May 2, 1966, issued June 10, 1969: Cellular Mobile Communication System — Amos Edward Joel (Bell Labs), filed December 21, 1970, issued May 16, 1972
- Swedish Patent N:o 357481, Mobil radioanläggning (Mobile radio system), R Berglund, T von Brömssen, Östen MäkitaloÖsten MäkitaloÖsten Mäkitalo was a Swedish electrical engineer. He is considered to be the father of the Nordic Mobile Telephone system and many times the father of cellular phone.-Education and occupation:...
(TeleverketTeleverket (Sweden)Televerket was the public utility company responsible for telecommunications in Sweden between 1953-1993; however, it originated 100 years earlier....
), filed 4 June 1971, issued 5 May 1973.: Radio Telephone System (Dyna-Tac) — Martin Cooper et al. (Motorola), filed October 17, 1973, issued September 16, 1975: Cellular Radiotelephone System for Different Cell Sizes — Richard H. Frenkiel (Bell Labs), filed September 22, 1976, issued March 13, 1979: Rapidly deployable emergency communication system — Charles A. Gladden and Martin H. Parelman, of Las VegasLas Vegas, NevadaLas Vegas is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Nevada and is also the county seat of Clark County, Nevada. Las Vegas is an internationally renowned major resort city for gambling, shopping, and fine dining. The city bills itself as The Entertainment Capital of the World, and is famous...
, filed February 23, 1978, issued May 1, 1979: Cellular Mobile Radiotelephone System — Verne MacDonald, Philip Porter, Rae Young, (Bell Labs) filed April 28, 1980, issued August 16, 1983: Radio telephone using received signal strength in controlling transmission power — Andrew McGirr, Barry Cassidy (Novatel), filed September 24, 1990, issued July 7, 1992: Construction of a stand alone portable telephone unit — Jouko Tattari (Nokia), filed May 11, 1992, issued November 23, 1993: Security cellular telecommunications system — Douglas Fougnies et al. (Freedom Wireless), filed December 1994, issued February 24, 1998: Cellular phone system wherein the air time use is predetermined — Andrew Wise et al. (Banana Communications), filed November 1994, issued October 20, 1998: Hands-free telephone set — Yoshiyuki Ide (NEC), filed May 21, 1997, issued November 24, 1998: Mobile communication apparatus and method including base station and mobile station having multi-antenna: Per-User Unitary Rate Control (PU2RC)PU2RCPer-User Unitary Rate Control is the advanced multi-user MIMO technique which utilizes the concept of both pre-coding matrices and scheduling to enhance the system performance of multiple antenna wireless networks....
— James S. Kim, Kwangbok Lee, Kiho Kim and Changsoon Park, filed July 10, 2003, issued January 29, 2008
See also
- AutopatchAutopatchAn autopatch, sometimes called a phone patch, is a feature of an amateur radio repeater to access an outgoing telephone connection...
- Joel S. EngelJoel S. EngelJoel S. Engel is an American engineer, known for fundamental contributions to the development of cellular networks.Born in New York City, he obtained a B.Sc. in engineering at City College of New York...
- Richard H. FrenkielRichard H. FrenkielRichard H. Frenkiel is an American engineer, known for development of cellular telephone networks.Born in Brooklyn, New York, Frenkiel earned a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering at Tufts University and earned a master's degree at Rutgers University in 1965. Beginning in 1963, he worked...
- B-NetzB-NetzB-Netz was an analog, commercial mobile radio telephone network that operated by the Deutsche Bundespost in Germany from 1972 until 1994. The system was also implemented in neighboring countries Austria, The Netherlands and Luxembourg...
- C-NetzC-NetzThe Radio Telephone Network C , was a first generation analog cellular phone system deployed and operated in Germany by DeTeMobil...
- Mobile phoneMobile phoneA mobile phone is a device which can make and receive telephone calls over a radio link whilst moving around a wide geographic area. It does so by connecting to a cellular network provided by a mobile network operator...
- MTD (mobile network)MTD (mobile network)MTD was a manual mobile phone system for the 450 MHz frequency band. It was introduced in 1971 in Sweden, and lasted until 1987, when it was made obsolete by the NMT automatic service...
- OLT (mobile network)OLT (mobile network)OLT , was the first land mobile telephone network in Norway. It was established December 1, 1966, and continued until it was obsoleted by NMT in 1990...
- History of the prepaid mobile phoneHistory of the prepaid mobile phoneThe history of the prepaid mobile phone begins in the 1990s when larger markets were being sought after by the mobile phone operators. Before this date, all mobile phone services were offered on a post paid basis, which excluded people with a poor credit rating as well as children since you have...
- Cellular networkCellular networkA cellular network is a radio network distributed over land areas called cells, each served by at least one fixed-location transceiver known as a cell site or base station. When joined together these cells provide radio coverage over a wide geographic area...
- Personal Communications ServicePersonal Communications ServiceAt the most basic level Personal Communications Service or PCS describes a set of wireless communications capabilities that allows some combination of terminal mobility, personal mobility, and service profile management...
PCS
External links
- 1947 memo by Douglas H. Ring proposing hexagonal cells
- The history of cellular telephones in the US
- Mobile Phone Museum from Europe
- Mobile Forum
- Mobile Phone Forum
- Cell Phone Basics
- Cellular Convergence: Evolution, Revolution and Speculation
- Point Mobile Phone
- Thoughts about next generation phones: end-user applications matter, open systems, phones based on GNU/Linux, phones serving as desktop computers. Original draft designs of phones
- The history of mobile telephones in the USSR - in Russian
- Mobile Phone Technology Old Patents
- Mobile Phone Museum from Ireland