HISTORY OF MOBILE PHONES
A handheld mobile radio telephone service was envisioned in the early stages of radio
engineering. In 1917, Finnish inventor Eric Tigerstedt filed a patent for a "pocket-size
folding telephone with a very thin carbon microphone". Early predecessors of cellular
phones included analog radio communications from ships and trains. The race to create
truly portable telephone devices began after World War II, with developments taking
place in many countries. The advances in mobile telephony have been traced in
successive "generations", starting with the early zeroth-generation (0G) services, such
as Bell System's Mobile Telephone Service and its successor, the Improved Mobile
Telephone Service. These 0G systems were not cellular, supported a few simultaneous
calls, and were very expensive.
The Motorola DynaTAC 8000X. In 1983, it became the first commercially available handheld
cellular mobile phone.
The first handheld cellular mobile phone was demonstrated by John F. Mitchell[11]
[12]
and Martin Cooper of Motorola in 1973, using a handset weighing 2 kilograms
(4.4 lb).[2] The first commercial automated cellular network (1G) analog was launched in
Japan by Nippon Telegraph and Telephone in 1979. This was followed in 1981 by the
simultaneous launch of the Nordic Mobile Telephone (NMT) system in Denmark,
Finland, Norway, and Sweden.[13] Several other countries then followed in the early to
mid-1980s. These first-generation (1G) systems could support far more simultaneous
calls but still used analog cellular technology. In 1983, the DynaTAC 8000x was the first
commercially available handheld mobile phone.
In 1991, the second-generation (2G) digital cellular technology was launched in Finland
by Radiolinja on the GSM standard. This sparked competition in the sector as the new
operators challenged the incumbent 1G network operators. The GSM standard is a
European initiative expressed at the CEPT ("Conférence Européenne des Postes et
Telecommunications", European Postal and Telecommunications conference). The
Franco-German R&D cooperation demonstrated the technical feasibility, and in 1987, a
Memorandum of Understanding was signed between 13 European countries that
agreed to launch a commercial service by 1991. The first version of the GSM standard
had 6,000 pages. The IEEE and RSE awarded Thomas Haug and Philippe Dupuis the
2018 James Clerk Maxwell medal for their contributions to the first digital mobile
telephone standard.[14] In 2018, the GSM was used by over 5 billion people in over 220
countries. The GSM (2G) has evolved into 3G, 4G and 5G. The standardization body for
GSM started at the CEPT Working Group GSM (Group Special Mobile) in 1982 under
the umbrella of CEPT. In 1988, ETSI was established, and all CEPT standardization
activities were transferred to ETSI. Working Group GSM became Technical Committee
GSM. In 1991, it became Technical Committee SMG (Special Mobile Group) when ETSI
tasked the committee with UMTS (3G). In addition to transmitting voice over digital
signals, the 2G network introduced data services for mobile, starting with SMS text
messages, then expanding to Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS), and mobile
internet with a theoretical maximum transfer speed of 384 kbit/s (48 kB/s).
Dupuis and Haug during a GSM meeting in Belgium, April 1992Personal Handy-phone
System mobiles and modems, 1997–2003
In 2001, the third-generation (3G) was launched in Japan by NTT DoCoMo on
the WCDMA standard.[15] This was followed by 3.5G or 3G+ enhancements based on
the high-speed packet access (HSPA) family, allowing UMTS networks to have higher
data transfer speeds and capacity. 3G is able to provide mobile broadband access of
several Mbit/s to smartphones and mobile modems in laptop computers. This ensures it
can be applied to mobile Internet access, VoIP, video calls, and sending large e-mail
messages, as well as watching videos, typically in standard-definition quality.
By 2009, it had become clear that, at some point, 3G networks would be overwhelmed
by the growth of bandwidth-intensive applications, such as streaming media.
[16]
Consequently, the industry began looking to data-optimized fourth-generation (4G)
technologies, with the promise of speed improvements up to tenfold over existing 3G
technologies. The first publicly available LTE service was launched in Scandinavia
by TeliaSonera in 2009. In the 2010s, 4G technology has found diverse applications
across various sectors, showcasing its versatility in delivering high-speed wireless
communication, such as mobile broadband, the internet of things (IoT), fixed wireless
access, and multimedia streaming (including music, video, radio, and television).
Deployment of fifth-generation (5G) cellular networks commenced worldwide in 2019.
The term "5G" was originally used in research papers and projects to denote the next
major phase in mobile telecommunication standards beyond the 4G/IMT-
Advanced standards. The 3GPP defines 5G as any system that adheres to the 5G
NR (5G New Radio) standard. 5G can be implemented in low-band, mid-band or high-
band millimeter-wave, with download speeds that can achieve gigabit-per-
second (Gbit/s) range, aiming for a network latency of 1 ms. This near-real-time
responsiveness and improved overall data performance are crucial for applications
like online gaming, augmented and virtual reality, autonomous vehicles, IoT, and critical
communication services.
