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Mobile telephony is the provision of telephone services to mobile phones rather than fixed-location phones (landline phones).
Telephony is supposed to specifically point to a voice-only service or connection, though sometimes the line may blur.
Modern mobile phones connect to a terrestrial cellular network of base stations (cell sites), whereas satellite phones connect to
orbiting satellites. Both networks are interconnected to the public switched telephone network (PSTN) to allow any phone in the
world to be dialed.
In 2010 there were estimated to be five billion mobile cellular subscriptions in the world.[needs update]
History[edit]
Main articles: History of mobile phones and History of the prepaid mobile phone
According to internal memos, American Telephone & Telegraph discussed developing a wireless phone in 1915, but were afraid
that deployment of the technology could undermine its monopoly on wired service in the U.S.[1]
Booth presenting the first Dutch vehicle or watercraft telephone

("Mobilofoon"), a collaboration of the Royal Dutch Automobile Club (KNAC), and the Netherlands
Postal, Telegraph and Telephone (PTT) at the 1948 Amsterdam International Motor
Show (AutoRAI).
Public mobile phone systems were first introduced in the years after the Second World War and made use of technology devel-
oped before and during the conflict. The first system opened in St. Louis, Missouri, United States in 1946 whilst other countries
followed in the succeeding decades. The UK introduced its 'System 1' manual radiotelephone service as the South Lancashire
Radiophone Service in 1958.[2] Calls were made via an operator using handsets identical to ordinary phone handsets.[3] The
phone itself was a large box located in the boot (trunk) of the vehicle containing valves and other early electronic components.
Although an uprated manual service ('System 3') was extended to cover most of the UK, automation did not arrive until 1981
with 'System 4'. Although this non-cellular service, based on German B-Netz technology, was expanded rapidly throughout the
UK between 1982 and 1985 and continued in operation for several years before finally closing in Scotland, it was overtaken by
the introduction in January 1985 of two cellular systems - the British Telecom/Securicor 'Cellnet' service and the Racal/Milli-
com/Barclays 'Vodafone' (from voice + data + phone) service. These cellular systems were based on US Advanced Mobile
Phone Service (AMPS) technology, the modified technology being named Total Access Communication System (TACS).
Use of an early mobile phone in Austria, 1964
In 1947, Bell Labs was the first to propose a cellular radio telephone network. The primary innovation was the development of a
network of small overlapping cell sites supported by a call switching infrastructure that tracks users as they move through a net-
work and passes their calls from one site to another without dropping the connection. In 1956, the MTA system was launched in
Sweden. The early efforts to develop mobile telephony faced two significant challenges: allowing a great number of callers to
use the comparatively few available frequencies simultaneously and allowing users to seamlessly move from one area to an-
other without having their calls dropped. Both problems were solved by Bell Labs employee Amos Joel who, in 1970 applied for
a patent for a mobile communications system.[4] However, a business consulting firm calculated the entire U.S. market for mobile
telephones at 100,000 units and the entire worldwide market at no more than 200,000 units based on the ready availability of
pay telephones and the high cost of constructing cell towers. As a consequence, Bell Labs concluded that the invention was "of
little or no consequence," leading it not to attempt to commercialize the invention. The invention earned Joel induction into the
National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2008.[5]
The development of metal–oxide–semiconductor (MOS) large-scale integration (LSI) technology, information theory and cellular
networking led to the development of affordable mobile communications.[6] The first call on a handheld mobile phone was made
on April 3, 1973, by Martin Cooper, then of Motorola[7] to his opposite number in Bell Labs who were also racing to be first. Bell
Labs went on to install the first trial cellular network in Chicago in 1978. This trial system was licensed by the FCC to ATT for
commercial use in 1982 and, as part of the divestiture arrangements for the breakup of ATT, the AMPS technology was distrib-
uted to local telcos. The first commercial system opened in Chicago in October 1983.[8][9] A system designed by Motorola also op-
erated in the Washington D.C./Baltimore area from summer 1982 and became a full public service later the following year.
[10]
Japan's first commercial radiotelephony service was launched by NTT in 1979.
The first fully automatic first generation cellular system was the Nordic Mobile Telephone (NMT) system, simultaneously
launched in 1981 in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden.[11] NMT was the first mobile phone network featuring interna-
tional roaming. The Swedish electrical engineer Östen Mäkitalo started to work on this vision in 1966, and is considered as the
father of the NMT system and some also consider him the father of the cellular phone.[12][13]
There was a rapid growth of wireless telecommunications towards the end of the 20th century, primarily due to the introduction
of digital signal processing in wireless communications, driven by the development of low-cost, very large-scale integra-
tion (VLSI) RF CMOS (radio-frequency complementary MOS) technology.[6] The advent of cellular technology encouraged Euro-
pean countries to co-operate in the development of a pan-European cellular technology to rival those of the US and Japan. This
resulted in the GSM system, the initials originally from the Groupe Spécial Mobile that was charged with the specification and
development tasks but latterly as the 'Global System for Mobile Communications'. The GSM standard eventually spread outside
Europe and is now the most widely used cellular technology in the

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Mobile telephony is the provision of telephone services to mobile phones rather than fixed-location phones (landline phones).

Booth presenting the first Dutch vehicle or watercraft telephone

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