ABK Bhuiyan
October 13, 2016
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A Brief History of Mobile Phone
Mobile phones have changed the way we live our lives and to
many, the prospect of a world without voice calling, text messaging and mobile Internet access is an
unsettling one. As we all know, mobile phones didn’t just happen overnight.
They grew up, just like us.
Mobile phones evolved over five different generations, the
latest of which is still being rolled out and adopted by consumers. Don’t worry
– by the time most of us will have switched to 4G there will undoubtedly be yet
another standard to aspire to.
Today we’ll be dialing into the past and briefly examining the
history of mobile phones.
Pre-Standardisation, or “0G”
AT&T were one of the first to commercialize mobile
telecommunication in 1947. The service known simply as “Mobile Telephone
Service” (MTS) spread to more than a hundred towns and highway paths by the end
of the year. The service relied on an operator to connect both incoming and
outgoing calls.
The telephones used were not particularly portable and used a
half-duplex “press to speak” system where the caller would have to release the
button to hear the other person. That very same year two Bell Labs engineers
proposed the foundations for the modern cellular network. At the time the plans
were daring, and it took until the 1960s for the plans to be implemented and
even longer to come to market.
MTS was used in North America until the 1980s, despite
AT&T’s introduction of the aptly-named Improves Mobile Telephone Service
(IMTS) in 1965. The new service introduced user dialing, removed the need for
operator forwarding and used additional radio channels which increased the
number of possible subscribers and calls, as well as area coverage. IMTS was
still mobile telephony in its infancy however, and was limited to 40,000
subscribers nationwide. In New York city, 2,000 customers shared 12 radio
channels which on average took 30 minutes to place a call.
Radio Common Carriers (RCCs) were another solution designed to
compete with AT&T’s MTS and IMTS systems. Not only were the units huge (see
above) but standards varied widely. Some phones were half-duplex “push to
talk”, some were full-duplex much like a wired telephone. Some lucky customers
even carried around briefcase-sized full duplex devices, though RCC units were
mainly limited to cars.
In 1960 the world’s first fully automated mobile telephone was
introduced in Sweden. The system allowed for automated connection from a rotary
handset (that’s the circular dialing knob to me and you) mounted within a car,
but required an operator to forward calls. The system was known as Mobile
Telephone system A (MTA) and was replaced by MTB two years later.
In this interim period there were several other solutions
including the arrival of Motorola on the scene in 1959 and Bulgarian and
Russian (then USSR) solutions sprouted up too. It wasn’t until 1971 when the
ARP network was introduced to Finland that the world’s first successful
commercial network was launched. The system relied on cars, began as
half-duplex but soon evolved and had over 35,000 subscribers by 1986.
Dr Martin Cooper, a Motorola researcher and executive made the
first phone call from a handheld mobile phone on April 3, 1973. This ushered in
a new dawn of communication.
Analog Cellular Networks or “1G”
The first generation of cellular networks paved the way to the
networks we know and use today. Use of multiple cell tower sites, each
connected through a network, allowed users to travel and even switch cell
towers during a call. It was a revolution built on existing, analog technology
with the first being built in Chicago in 1977.
Known as the Analong Mobile Phone System (AMPS), it was built by
AT&T and it took the FCC 11 years to approve AT&T’s initial proposal in
1971 before they were assigned the 824-894MHz range on which to operate AMPS.
Hot on the heels of the western researchers were Japanese
telecommunications company NTT who built their own network in 1979. Five years
later it was the first 1G network to cover an entire country. Then came the
Nordic Mobile Telephone (NMT) network in 1981. Operating in Denmark, Sweden,
Finland and Norway, it was the first to feature international roaming
Digital Cellular Networks
or “2G”
As technological advancement picked up the pace, so did mobile
phones. The 1990s saw the arrival of two new, digital technologies – the
European GSM standard and the North American CDMA standard. Demand grew and
more and more cell tower sites were built. In addition to technological
improvements in batteries and internal components, this allowed for much
smaller mobile devices.
Another advancement made possible by 2G was the introduction of
SMS messaging, with the first computer generated SMS sent in 1992 in the UK. A
year later in Finland, the first person-to-person SMS was delivered using GSM
technology. As popularity grew, pre-paid mobile phones and plans emerged in the
late 1990s which further popularized SMS amongst all ages.
The very first download services were also introduced using 2G
technology and enabled users to download ringtones. Mobile phones also saw use
as another method of payment for services like car parking in Finland and
vending machines.
Mobile Broadband or “3G”
NTT DoCoMo pioneered the first mobile Internet service in Japan
in 1999 on existing 2G technologies, but it was soon replaced with their launch
of the world’s first 3G network in October 2001. Many countries followed suit
in the following years including South Korea, the US and the first European 3G
networks which sprang up in the UK and Italy in 2003.
While 3G was still being developed a number of “2.5G” services
appeared in an attempt to bring older technologies up to speed. Unfortunately
speed was the lacking factor, and while technologies like GPRS and EDGE
provided improvements over standard 2G, they did not match the speed of
existing 3G technologies.
3G transformed the mobile phone industry and enabled widespread
mobile Internet and the transmission services like TV and Radio for the very
first time. Handset manufacturers jumped on the bandwagon and smartphone use
took off. By around 2005 3G had evolved a step further, leading many to coin
the terms “3.5G” “turbo 3G” and “3G+” in reference to HSPDA (High Speed
Downlink Packet Access), HSPA and HSPA+.
Native IP or “4G”
While no official standards exist for 4G, a few technologies
have laid claim to the title. The first was WiMAX, offered by Sprint in the US
but perhaps the most successful has been LTE, which is popular also in North
America but non-existent in some territories such as Australia. 4G marks the
switch to native IP networks, bringing mobile Internet more in-line with wired
home Internet connections.
Speed is of course the big advantage, with potential
advancements of ten times over 3G rates. The fourth generation of mobile communication is
still evolving, and we’re bound to see new standards, speed increases and
coverage benefits in the next few years. For a better understanding of 3G and
4G mobile Internet,
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Briefly tapping such a rich history of mobile phones is
difficult, but I think we’ve covered the major events, devices and happenings
in the world of cellular communication. Many will of course remember these
developments, but for those that don’t, spare a thought for the pioneers of
analog, the original digital voice-only networks and the pitiful Internet
speeds that 2G networks offered the next time you’re Tweeting and Facebooking
on your iPhone.