Nigel Linge, Andy Sutton THE ROAD TO 4G When Dr Martin Cooper of Motorola walked along Sixth Avenue in New York on 3 April, 1973, he entered the history books by becoming the fi rst person to make a mobile phone call. But this is just part of the story. Nigel Linge and Andy Sutton examine the past, present and future of mobile technology. 10 | Volume 8 Part 1 • 2014 THE JOURNAL OF THE INSTITUTE OF TELECOMMUNICATIONS PROFESSIONALS he fi rst ever mobile telephone service was introduced phone call, made on into the UK by the Post Offi ce for that historic April day customers in South Lancashire on in 1973, used the Dyna- 28 October 1959. That service was TAC (Dynamic Adaptive controlled by the Peterloo exchange TTotal Area Coverage) mobile that Dr in Manchester with two radio base Martin Cooper and his team at Mo- stations, one at Winter Hill and the torola developed. This had its roots other in Liverpool. This service was in technology that dated back to the subsequently extended to London in mid 1940s. 1965 with the opening of the Post During WW2, Motorola pioneered Offi ce Tower and was inaugurated In 1973 Dr Martin Cooper made the fi rst the development of the walkie-talkie when the Postmaster General made handheld mobile phone call outside the epitomised by the American mili- a telephone call to the TV presenter, Hilton on Sixth Avenue, New York. tary's SCR536. This two-way radio Richard Dimbleby, who was travel- country is divided up into a series of transceiver, with its push-to-talk fea- ling in his chauffeur-driven Rolls small geographic areas called cells, ture that allowed one radio to trans- Royce. each of which is controlled by a mit and all of the others in range to However, these networks could single radio base station. By keep- listen, may have been a long way not handle large call volumes and ing the transmitted power low, a key from a mobile phone but the experi- there were only a few radio channels feature of this architecture was that ence gained in developing it would available which severely limited the frequencies could be re-used provid- prove to be extremely useful later. number of simultaneous calls that ing that no two adjacent cells used On 17 June 1946 a team of engi- could be handled. A more elegant the same set of frequencies. Unfor- neers from Bell Labs demonstrated network design was proposed in De- tunately for Bell Labs, the technolo- the world's fi rst telephone call using cember 1947 by Douglas H. Ring, gy in 1947 was simply not capable of a car radio phone and by 1948 that an engineer working at Bell Labs. realising this vision and hence this is service had been made available in His technical memoranda entitled, why the more primitive radio phone 100 cities across America attracting Mobile Telephony – Wide Area Cov- service was deployed. 5,000 customers who were making erage, set out the basic principles One year after Dr Cooper's fa- 30,000 calls per week. A public radio of a cellular network in which the mous telephone call, the Federal Volume 8 Part 1 • 2014 | 11 Communications Commission in the population owned a mobile phone. USA released part of the radio fre- The need for a The mobile phone also started to quency spectrum to permit a larger become accepted as part of society scale experiment. But it was not un- single European but these fi rst generation analogue til 1977 that Illinois Bell, the AT&T models had a major limitation; ser- operating company for Chicago, in- standard for mobiles vice stopped at the English Channel! stalled a trial cellular network com- was identifi ed Whilst mobile networks existed in prising 10 cells. The success of this all European countries, these were network then led to the develop- as early as 1982. not based on common standards or ment of the American Advanced Mo- frequencies. bile Phone System (AMPS) used by Illinois Bell in their fi rst commercial mobile and 935 - 950MHz for trans- EUROPEAN AGREEMENT AND cellular system which opened in Oc- mission from the cell's base station THE MOVE TO DIGITAL tober 1983. This used the frequen- giving it a capacity of 600 x 25kHz The need for a single European cies 824 - 849MHz for transmission channels. Vodafone was the fi rst UK standard for mobiles was identifi ed from the mobile and 869 - 894MHz network to offi cially launch when as early as 1982 when a working for transmission from the cell's base comedian Ernie Wise made a mobile group was set up by the European station. Within these frequency telephone call from St Katherine's Conference of Post and Telecommu- bands, each voice call was allocated Dock in London to Vodafone's of- nications (CEPT) administrations to a 30kHz analogue radio channel us- fi ces in Newbury on the 1 January harmonise the public mobile com- ing frequency division multiple ac- 1985. Cellnet launched shortly af- munications systems in the 900MHz cess. terwards on 7 January, 1985; its net- band. It was called Groupe Speciale In Europe, mobile phone develop- work was centred on a single base Mobile (GSM) and fi rst met in Stock- ment was led by the Scandinavian station at BT Tower that provided holm in December 1982. The culmi- countries, collectively creating the coverage for the whole of Greater nation of this group's work was the Nordic Mobile Telephony (NMT) London. publication on 7 September, 1987 network which was launched in Motorola were especially infl uen- of a Memorandum of Understand- Sweden and Norway in 1981 and tial in these early days which saw ing on the Implementation of a Pan- Denmark and Finland in 1982. The their iconic DynaTAC 8000 series European 900MHz Digital Cellular fi rst NMT network was based on of mobiles being replaced by the Mobile Telecommunications Service 450MHz and hence became known world's fi rst fl ip phone, the Motoro- by 1991. Signed in Copenhagen by as NMT-450 and this was followed in la MicroTAC and then the fi rst clam- telecommunication operators from 1986 by a second network that used shell phone, the StarTAC which was 13 countries, this document would the 890 - 960MHz frequency band not only the world's smallest at the later be described by Chris Gent, the and became known as NMT-900. time but also weighed in at an ex- Managing Director of Vodafone, as The UK Government announced tremely light 105g. These early days ‘the most important document in the in 1982 that two licences would be also saw Finnish company, Nokia, history of the mobile phone’. offered for the provision of mobile establish themselves as the world's The onward development of GSM phone network services. One of second largest mobile phone manu- was transferred from CEPT to the these licences was to be awarded to facturer with the launch of their European Telecommunications Stan- British Telecom working in partner- Cityman range of mobiles which dards Institute (ETSI) and the fi nal ship with Securicor which resulted was followed by the Nokia 101 can- specifi cation for his second genera- in the creation of Cellnet, while the dy bar design. tion network was to see a move from second was opened up for competi- Owning a mobile phone at this analogue to digital transmission. tive bids. The successful bidder for time was expensive which meant The world's fi rst GSM telephone this second licence was Vodafone that companies marketed the mobile call was made by the Finnish Prime (VOice and DAta over the teleFONE), to the business community showing Minister Harri Holkeri on the Ra- a joint venture between Racal Elec- the benefi ts of always being in con- diolinja mobile network in Finland tronics and Millicom. Both of these tact with the offi ce or your custom- which he inaugurated on 1 July 1991. networks adopted a version of the ers. The Motorola DynaTAC 8000X Within the UK a study suggested AMPS system which became known for example cost £2,500 to purchase. that demand existed to accommo- as the Total Access Communication On top of this you had a monthly date more mobile phone operators System (TACS). contract fee with your mobile phone but there was insuffi cient spectrum Initially the UK Government an- network provider and had to pay call to accommodate them. Therefore, nounced that they had reserved two charges too, calculated on a per min- an additional frequency band at 25MHz frequency bands for TACS ute basis. 1800MHz (1710 - 1785MHz from the namely, 890 - 915MHz and 935 - By the end of 1986 there were mobile and 1805 - 1880MHz from 960MHz. However, only 15MHz 100,000 mobile phone subscribers the base station) was made available of these channels was actually re- within the UK which doubled to for GSM. leased. Therefore, TACS used 890 200,000 by the summer of 1987 and Termed Personal Communica- - 905MHz for transmission from the by the end of 1995, 7% of the UK tion Networks (PCN) these new 12 | Volume 8 Part 1 • 2014 THE JOURNAL OF THE INSTITUTE OF TELECOMMUNICATIONS PROFESSIONALS networks were announced by Lord Young, Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, on 22 June, 1989, in the document, Phones on the Move. Three PCN licenses were issued, although a merger between two of the license holders resulted in just two new network operators, these being Mercury Communications who created the One2One network and Hutchison Telecom who named their network, Orange.