The origins of mobile

In 1947 AT&T in the USA proposed that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) allocate a large number of radio-spectrum frequencies to allow mobile telephone services to become a reality. Bell had introduced the idea of cellular communications in 1947 with their police car technology and had been racing to beat Motorola. >Testing mobile phone services (1977) : .Mobile telephones had been around for almost 60 years before we got our first cellphones in the 1980s. To start with there were radiotelephones for ships, aircraft and military vehicles. Then radiophones for cars and finally personal mobiles. The theories for cellular mobile telephony were shaped by the 1940s - but getting there would take a further 40 years.

Early car phones (1940s) : 'car one calling control...'
Today it's impossible to imagine how taxi firms or the police, fire and ambulance services could operate without mobile radio.
This story goes back over 50 years. Although VHF radio bands had been allocated for police use in 1939, the coming of the Second World War delayed a radio network for police cars until 1946. The system, provided for the Metropolitan Police and covering the entire Greater London area, drew on Army experience, using tens of thousands of VHF radio sets built for use in the war.
The first business application of mobile radio came a year later, in 1947, for a taxi company in Cambridge. From these humble beginnings developed a major industry serving well over 50,000 commercial and public authority users employing more than half a million mobile radio sets.
Fifty years ago, a simple radio and its power generator equipment filled the entire boot of a car. Nowadays, a set with the same power is the size of a hardback book!

Cellular phones are proposed (1947) : the FCC's bad call
The basic concept of cellular phones started in the late 1940s in Britain and America. Researchers looked at existing police mobile (radio) car phones and realised that by restricting the range or 'service area' of transmitters, they could re-use the same radio frequencies again and again. In theory, this would allow many users to share the network. However, the computer technology to achieve this just didn't exist at that time.
In 1947 AT&T in the USA proposed that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) allocate a large number of radio-spectrum frequencies to allow mobile telephone services to become a reality.
But the FCC decided to limit the amount of frequencies available to the point that only 23 simultaneous phone conversations would be possible in the same service area. This effectively killed the potential market and because no companies were prepared to invest in the technology, mobile phone research was set back 20 years.
It took America's FCC more than two decades to realise it had made a mistake in restrictng the frequency allocation for mobile phones. In 1968 it reconsidered its position stating 'if the technology to build a better mobile service works, we will increase the frequency allocation, freeing the airwaves for more mobile phones.'
AT&T and Bell Labs quickly proposed a cellular system of many small, low-powered, broadcast towers, each covering a 'cell' a few miles in radius. Each tower would use only a few of the total frequencies allocated to the system. As the phone user travelled across the area, his call would be automatically handed on from tower to tower.

First mobile phone call (1973) : 'Hi Joel - guess where I'm calling from?'
Dr Martin Cooper, a former general manager for the systems division at Motorola, is considered the inventor of the first modern portable handset. Cooper made the first call on a portable cell phone to his rival, Joel Engel, head of research at Bell Laboratories.
Bell had introduced the idea of cellular communications in 1947 with their police car technology and had been racing to beat Motorola. But in the end Motorola was first to incorporate the technology into a portable device designed for use outside a vehicle.

Testing mobile phone services (1977) : ... but would it work?
By 1977 AT&T and Bell Labs had constructed a prototype cellular system. A year later, public trials of the new system started in Chicago with over 2,000 test customers. In 1981 Motorola and American Radio telephone started a second U.S. test in the Washington/Baltimore area. By 1982 the slow-moving FCC finally authorised commercial cellular services in the USA.

Radiopagers (1973) : pagers - half way there
In the mid 1970s, it was the radiopager that marked out the busy professional on the move.
Radiopagers were a stepping stone to mobile communications - call alerts and short messages could reach you if you were in range of a radio transmitter - but you still needed to find a telephone to return the call.
Surveys carried out by the Post Office in 1968 showed that Britain was ready for wide area radio paging. The first system was introduced in 1973, covering the Thames Valley. It was extended to London in 1976. By the end of the 1970s, most of Britain was covered by several networks.
The reign of the pager as the primary form of mobile communications lasted into the early 1990s. By then, mobile phones had made the pager almost obsolete.

A radiopager user : Malcolm Wright
Malcolm Wright, Malcolm Wright, born in 1953 grew up in the outskirts of London before moving to Cornwall aged 14. He settled in Weymouth where he became a Coastguard & Teacher.
When he joined the coastguard the telephone equipment was very old and he tells how the service upgraded to state of the art technology and how this brought about a change in methods of communication for the lifeboat men and a newfound freedom.


Rabbit and Callpoint (c. 1992) : getting to the telepoint
The telepoint was a short-lived form of mobile communication - a sort of cross between a mobile phone and a telephone box - or between a cellphone and a domestic cordless
A telepoint phone was a cordless handset that allowed both incoming and outgoing calls around the house - and which you took with you when you went out. In the street, it would let you make outgoing calls within 150 metres of a street transmitter.
Telepoint was supposed to extend mobile to everyone - but the falling cost of cellular phones in the UK and their increasing range made it obsolete almost from the start.
BT's Phonepoint was one of four telepoint contenders, along with Mercury Callpoint, Zonephone and Rabbit. The first telepoint service was launched early in 1989, and lasted for only a couple of years. All four had opened - and closed - by 1994.
But in the Pacific Rim countries, telepoint has been quite successful, suiting the prevalent 'street culture' admirably - and proved much cheaper to install than a fully fledged cellular mobile network.

Phonepoint hardware (late 1980s) : the walkabout phone going nowhere
In the 1980s mobile phones were a new technology beyond the reach of most people. However the technology existed for a smaller, cheaper, alternative idea - the 'telepoint'
'Phonepoint' was one of four 'telepoint' systems, and let people with cordless telephones at home take them into town to use there. As long as you stood within near sight of the 'Phonepoint' base station, you could make a call through your home telephone account, paying a premium rate. The system didn't allow calls to be received when out and about though.
This picture shows one of the signs which were to be seen outside banks, post offices and train stations. It showed users where they could make calls. Also shown is a later model handset.

Similar devices were used by the other companies: Rabbit, Mercury Callpoint & 'Zonephone'.
The technology was good but the idea wasn't. A better system had actually already been invented 100 years earlier - it was called a telephone box. Alongside such established competition, and pressure from the new cellular telephones, the 'telepoint' companies soon melted away.