The Rise of GSM
Europeans saw things differently. No new telephone system could accommodate their existing services on so many frequencies. They decided instead to start a new technology in a new radio band. Cellular structured but fully digital, the new service would incorporate the best thinking of the time. They patterned their new wireless standard after landline requirements for ISDN, hoping to make a wireless counterpart to it. The new service was called GSM.
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| 1987: Curt, a converted police radio design turned into an NMT 900 phone and later a ETACS mobile. The first Ericsson handheld. Known officially as the HotLine Pocket. | 1989: Olivia. Introduced originally for NMT 900 networks, followed by versions for ETACS, AMPS, and eventually GSM. The first Ericsson GSM phone and consequently its first all digital mobile. | 1991: Sandra, first version in NMT 900, then ETACS, D-AMPS/AMPS, and finally GSM in 1993. | 1996: Jane, D-AMPS, GSM, DCS, PCS1900/GSM. A 'slim' version appeared in a D-AMPS 1900 model as well as a PDC version. |
Special thanks to James Borup, Senior Press Officer, Corporate Communications for Ericsson, who provided the book The Ugly Duckling: Mobile phones from Ericsson -- putting people on speaking terms, from which the photographs and information above were taken. I did not put in the 'Sandra' or the 'Hotline Combi' phone. The code names above were mostly "girls names because they were so small and shapely." No, I am not making that up. And Jane is after Jane Seymour but that is another story . . .
And for a diagramatic look at NTT models, click here
GSM first stood for Groupe Speciale Mobile, after the study group that created the standard. It's now known as Global System for Mobile Communications, although the "C" isn't included in the abbreviation. In 1982 twenty-six European national phone companies began developing GSM. This Conference of European Postal and Telecommunications Administrations or CEPT, planned a uniform, European wide cellular system around 900 MHz. A rare triumph of European unity, GSM achievements became "one of the most convincing demonstrations of what co-operation throughout European industry can achieve on the global market." Planning began in earnest and continued for several years.
In the mid-1980s commercial mobile telephony took to the air. The North American terrestrial system or NATS was introduced by Airfone in 1984, the company soon bought out by GTE. The aeronautical public correspondence or APC service breaks down into two divisions. The first is the ground or terrestial based system (TAPC). That's where aircraft placed telephone calls go directly to a ground station. The satellite-based division, which came much later, places calls to a satellite which then relays the transmission to a ground station. AT&T soon established their own TAPC network after GTE.
In December 1988 Japan's Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications ended NTT's monopoly on mobile phone service. Although technically adept, NTT was also monolithic and bureaucratic, it developed a good cellular system but priced it beyond reach, and required customers to lease phones, not to buy them. With this atmosphere and without competition cellular growth in Japan had flatlined. With rivals cellular customers did increase but it was not until April,1994, when the market was completely deregulated, allowing price breaks and letting customers own their own phones, did Japanese cellular really take off.
In 1989 The European Telecommunication Standards Institute or ETSI (external link) took responsibility for further developing GSM. In 1990 the first recommendations were published. Pre-dating American PCS, the United Kingdom asked for and got a GSM plan for higher frequencies. The Digital Cellular System or DCS1800 works at 1.8 GHz, uses lower powered base stations and has greater capacity because more frequencies are available than on the continent. Aside from these "air interface" considerations, the system is pure GSM. The specs were published in 1991.
The late 1980s saw North American cellular becoming standardized as network growth and complexity accelerated. In 1988 the analog networking cellular standard called TIA-IS-41 was published. [Crowe] This Interim Standard is still evolving. IS-41 seeks to unify how network elements operate; the way various databases and mobile switches communicate with each other and with the regular landline telephone network. Despite ownership or location, all cellular systems across America need to act as one larger system. In this way roamers can travel from system to system without having a call dropped, calls can be validated to check against fraud, subscriber features can be supported in any location, and so on. All of these things rely on network elementscooperating in a uniform, timely manner.
In 1990 in-flight radio-telephone moved to digital. The FCC invited applications for and subsequently awarded new licences to operate digital terrestial aeronautical public correspondence or TAPC services in the US. GTE Airfone, AT&T Wireless Services (previously Claircom Communications), and InFlight Phone Inc. were awarded licenses. "[T]hese U.S. service providers now have TAPC networks covering the major part of North America. The FCC has not specified a common standard for TAPC services in the US, other than a basic protocol for allocating radio channel resources, and all three systems are mutually incompatible. Currently over 3000 aircraft are fitted with one of these three North American Telephone Systems (NATS). It is estimated that the potential market for TAPC services in North America is in excess of 4000 aircraft." [Capway (external link)]
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Johann Storck recently checked in to make some comments:
"I've just read page 9 of "Mobile Telephone History" and found a picture I knew well ... the good old Ericsson GH 388 [code name Jane, ed.], one of the first really handy and still (from the size factor) small mobile phones. Just don't measure the weight! Well, you put a picture of the model 388 from 1996 on your page and I want to inform you that there was an earlier model, dating back to 1994 which had already the same size factor and nearly the same features (except SMS sending). I've included a picture of my own device manufactured in calendar week 44 in 1994. The phone measures 12.8cm (about 5 inches) in height, 4.8cm (about 1.9 inches) in width and the depth with the normal capacity battery is about 2.6cm (about 1 inch)."
"As for Ericsson getting out of the handset business, I think they were once the leading developer of mobile phones, back in the times when they made models like the 337. But they didn't learn from their design faults. Think of the small display the 337-owner had to deal with, they kept that size for several other models (377, 388 and even the latest phones like T-28 and the T-20). Or think of the fact that the menu structure was far too complicated and still is. From that point of view Ericsson could be better off giving away the mobile phone business to Flextronics because that could bring some innovations to their (technically very good) products."
"If you compare Ericsson to Nokia you see what can be done by listening to the consumer wishes. Nokia designed an easy-to-use graphical menu structure and (in some phones) eliminated the antenna to make the devices smaller and more robust. All these facts made the Nokia phones more mass-market compliant and, as a matter of fact, more people bought Nokia phones even when they weren't seen as having the same technical quality level (quality of speech transmission, battery life time, and so on, like the ones made by other companies."
Editor's note. I always liked Ericsson mobiles. They were rugged and worked. Their design philosophy seemed liked Porsche, you always knew an Ericsson phone when you saw one. There was a nice article on Ericsson design in the first issue of their publication On, once at this address: http://on.magazine.se/