Farley- "Mobile telephone History"
Tom Farley begins his article on
“Mobile Telephone History” by dating when mobile telephones were first
introduced which was in the 1940s after World War II. At this time, these
mobility technologies were only 2 way radios used generally for government or military
purposes. However, he explains that this article will be focusing on the
service and carriers of mobile telephones and the wireless system it is
correlated to. Because of the mass destruction after World War II, many cities
were in need for merely landline telephones although mobile research continued
while cities began to be rebuilt. On July 28, 1945 a cellular radio was first
published in print. The United State’s Federal Communications Commission, the
FCC, discussed the 460MHz to the Saturday Evening Post. However, the FCC did
not actually accept this proposal and a year after that on June 17, 1946 in
Saint Louis, Missouri, AT&T and south-western Bell began operating Mobile
Telephone Service, MTS. Motorola built the radios as the Bell System was installing
them. The mobiles attached to the devices were car based radio—telephones which
transmitted to several receivers around the specified area. MTS started with
six channels and resulted with three because of interference between the
signals. In December, 1947, Bell Laboratories’ D.H. Ring, and W.R. Young spoke
of an actual mobile telephone that could have universal characteristics. “Young
said later that all the cellular radio elements were known: a network of small
geographical areas called cells, a base station transmitter in each, cell
traffic controlled by a central switched, frequencies reused by different cells
and so on” (Farley, pp. 23). In 1949 the FCC also gave the Bell System a few
more channels, but they also gave half of the frequency allocations to other
companies called Radio Common Carriers (RCC). The RCCs serviced over 80,000
mobile units by 1978 which was twice as many as AT&T.
In
January of 1969 the Bell System offered commercial cellular radio for the first
time by monitoring it in a small zone area, also known as public payphones.
Passengers used these on the Metroliner train service which ran from New York
City to Washington DC. “Six channels in the 450MHz hand were used again and
again in nine zones along the 225 mile route” (Farley, pp. 25). The system was
managed by a main control center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, therefore the
first mobile telephones were pay-phones. Over the next couple years, many
manufacturers started releasing big bulky portable radiotelephones in the
United States. In 1973 Motorola filed for it’s own cellular radio system. Since
Motorola had previously been doing business with AT&T, their separation
with the goal to produce their own cell phones created a major rivalry between
AT&T and Motorola.
This
article made me remember when I was about 3 or 4 years old and riding in the
car with my mom. This was around 1993, although cell phones were still being
produced big and bulky and most were only available in cars. Hers was connected
to the console of her car and could not be disconnected. This article also
makes me appreciate the communication accessibility we have today. Not only do
we have portable, detachable, sleek and small cellular telephones, but most now
offer the same capabilities that computers have. We are very fortunate in the
technology that is available to us. Seeing as how my mom’s large bulky
car-cellular phone was produced less than two decades ago, its amazing to
imagine the technological advances in cell phones in the next two decades.