Mobile phone history

Digital wireless and cellular roots go back to the1940s when commercial mobile telephony began. Compared to todays furious pace of development, it may seem odd that wireless didnt come along sooner. There are many reasons for that. Technology, disinterest, and to some extent regulation limited early United States radio telephone development. As the vacuum tube and the transistor made possible the early telephone network, the wireless revolution began only after low cost microprocessors and digital switching became available.

And while the Bell System built the finest landline telephone system in the world, they never seemed truly committed to mobile telephony. Their wireless engineers were brilliant and keen but the System itself held them back. Federal regulations also hindered many projects but in Europe, where state run telephone companies controlled their own telecom development, although, admittedly, without competition, wireless came no sooner, and in most cases, later. Starting in the United States mobile radios began operating at MHz, just above the present A.M. radio broadcast band. Young These were chiefly experimental police department radios, with practical systems not implemented. FCC Police and emergency services drove mobile radio pioneering, with little thought given to private telephone use.

The United States Congress created the Federal Communications Commission. In addition to regulating landline interstate telephone business, they also began managing the radio spectrum. It decided who would get what frequencies. It gave priority to emergency services, government agencies, utility companies, and services it thought helped the most people. Radio users like a taxi service or a tow truck dispatch company required little spectrum to conduct their business. Radio telephone used large frequency allocations to serve a few people. The FCC designated no radio-telephone channels until after World War II.