Cell Phones: Past and Present
Most people under the age of 30 probably cannot remember a time when there were no cellular phones, or cell phones as they are called today. The fact is, the concept of personal communication has been imagined in science fiction writings like the Flash Gordon comics back in 1934. Dick Tracy, a popular comic book detective which appeared in newspapers in the 1930's also had a 2-way wrist radio. The dream of personal 2-way communication has been in the minds of humans for some time. The world, as we know it today, was a much different place before the advent of cell phones.
The Concept and Technology Behind Modern Day Cell Phones
The actual technology used to conceive and make cell phones work was developed in the early 1940's and based upon existing radio technology. Some early types of cell phones were used in early taxi cabs, police cars, fire trucks, and other service vehicles where parties communicated with one another or with a central base unit. Those early cell phones were even capable of patching a live phone line call into a special radio via a live operator. It was a rather complicated process in those early days. In Sweden, the police used an early form of cell phone technology which connected to the existing local telephone network through a radio patch. This early cell phone system was not very practical. It only took six calls to completely drain the battery of a police car.
Cell Phone Technology Started at Bell Labs in 1947
In the early 1940's, cell phones were basically just a form of two-way radios. Then in 1947, Bell Labs initiated the modern day cell phone technology we use today by creating hexagonal cells to be used for mobile phones. Still later, another engineer would design and create the first cell towers that were capable of transmitting and receiving signals in three different directions. This was a vast improvement over the bi-directional antennas used in previous years. Both of these concepts were years ahead of their time and it would take many more years for the electronic technologies and cell phone equipment to be developed. For example, the very first modern cell phones were be based on technology that was developed in the early 1960's.
The First Generation of Cell Phones Are Realized
By 1967, the technology for the first cell phones was finally available and the first modern day cell phones were created. There was just one problem. The cell phone users had to stay in just a one cell area which was serviced by a single base station. In those days, a cell phone could not be handed off to the next available cell tower. The phone simply stopped working once it was out of range. The technology to handoff calls from cell tower to cell tower was finally developed by another engineer at Bell Labs.
In 1971, AT&T submitted a request to the FCC to operate cellular service in the U.S. The approval didn't come from the FCC until 1982, more than ten years later. That year, the FCC allocated certain frequencies on the MHZ band to AMPS (Advanced Mobile Phone Service). AMPS was an analog service from 1982 until 1990, and then was replaced with Digital AMPS.
Motorola brought the first cell phone to the world in 1983, the DynaTAC 8000X. This was actually a remarkably lightweight dell phone for it's time, just 28 ounces. The DynaTAC was known as the brick due to it's similar shape and size. In the years between 1983 and 1990, cell phones grew quickly in popularity, but were still mostly limited to installation in a car. There were cell phone models that would hook into a car's DC outlet for power and even a brief case cell phone that was mostly made up of batteries.
Second Generation Cell Phones Available to Everyone
It was in the early 1990's that cellular phone sales really took off. They were getting cheaper and more consumers could afford one. Analog network frequencies were the norm back then. In the United States and Europe, digital mobile phone networks were just starting to take hold. The newer second generation, or 2G cell phones utilized newer digital circuit switched transmission technology which allowed for quicker network signaling. This newer 2G technology also increased overall call quality and decreased the amount of dropped calls. Eventually 2G networks replaced the old, obsolete analog network frequencies.
Another huge innovation was the actual size of the new cell phones. Compared to the brick-like DynaTAC, these newer cell phone were much smaller and more compact. The issues of battery power and the need for large batteries were no longer a problem and this alone allowed these new smaller cell phones to be truly portable, hand-held devices. Advances in battery, power, and computer chip technologies all helped to make the second generation cell phones a whole lot smaller, and better than the previous larger models. These revolutionary technological changes caused cell phone usage and sales to skyrocket.
Today's Third Generation Cell Phone Technology
Third generation cell phones, or 3G cell phones, made possible all sorts of new and brilliant technological advancements like live streaming television and radio feeds, video on demand, tele-medicine, individual location-based services, wide-area wireless voice telephone, mobile Internet access, and video calls. 3G was first launched commercially in 2001 in Japan by NTT DoCoMo. In the U.S., Verizon Wireless was the first 3G network to go live in October of 2003. More companies would soon follow and 3G would be the new standard for cell phones everywhere.
As good as 2G was, 3G was even better and consumers loved the new 3G technology. 3G networks offered a greater level of security than 2G although there are still some bugs to be worked out. By June 2007, 200 million consumers were subscribed and connected to a 3G network. There were approximately 190 3G networks operating in 40 countries. Technology moves fast these days and on December 14, 2009, Telia Sonera announced they would be the first cell phone operator in the world to offer 4G technology to their customers. The dream of personal, 2-way communication has finally been realized, and continues to be improved as technology advances into the future.