Cell phones, SMS, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, Miracast

Intro

  1. Early Radio-phone Base Stations
  2. Australian Frequencies 3Hz - 30GHz AM Shortwave FM VHF UHF SHF
  3. Telecom companies worldwide
  4. Computer Networks worldwide (via netify)
  5. Latest 5G and 4G Snapshot 4G subscribers highest at about 4.8 billion, 5G 2.8 billion, 3G 460 million, 2G 760 million

Body

AirFone-1

  1. 1G Analog Tokyo 1979, Sweden (NMT) 1981, US (AMPS) 1983, UK (ETACS) 1985, Australia (AMPS) 1987. Unencrypted

    In October 1984 GTE Corporation (Verizon) in the US launch early AirFone, a series of 68 ground centres

    In 1987, Australia Telecom launched Ericsson's AMPS (Advanced Mobile Phone System) network. None of this infrastructure was cheap, first Mitsubishi mobile phone in 1987 cost $4250. Its 018 prefix (0418 after 1994) dialled into the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) at 800 MHz. It replaced 007 numbers issued in 1981 at 500 MHz to heavy, non-cellular NEC car phones weighing many kilograms. Handset prices dropped steadily, at Optus mobile launch June 1992 using an 015 prefix it was $750. AMPS fully shut down in September 2000.


Yes, Motorola set the mobile ball rolling, but Nokia gave it real momentum with this, the first mass-produced GSM phone, Nokia 1011. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_1011
  1. 2G Digital (GSM) 1993 now with an 0418 prefix, Telstra in April, Optus in May, Vodafone in October

    Ericsson and Alcatel were Telstra's launch partners. Low takeup till 1996-1997. The Internet was accessed over landlines, GPRS Internet not arriving till 2001. 2G shut down in Australia in Dec 2016, Jun 2018 with Vodafone

    An alternative digital technology CDMA (that didn't employ Sim cards) was rolled out in the US by Qualcomm in 1995 and by Telstra in Australia in September 1999, having a similar transmission reach to AMPS. Shut down in 2008.
  2. SMS in Australia was offered by Telstra in 1994, similar to a pager service, so customers could read messages, not respond to them. It followed the world's first SMS text message "Merry Christmas" sent on December 3 1992 by British software engineer Neil Papworth.

    In 1995 Telstra, Optus and Vodafone allowed SMS messages to be sent from customers mobile phones, but only between customers of the same carrier. It wasn't until April 2000 that the three carriers launched inter-carrier SMS, which set off huge growth. According to Telstra, between 2002 and 2012 SMS messaging grew from 1.01 billion to 12.05 billion

  3. Wi-Fi 1999 short range wireless networking utilizing LBT-Listen (say 20ms) Before Talk (say 4s) and promoted by the Wi-Fi Alliance in the US. Based on WaveLAN, sold by AT&T and NCR and Lucent Technologies, following its debut in 1990. While the 900 MHz models and the early 2.4 GHz models operated on one fixed frequency, the later 2.4 GHz cards as well as some 2.4 GHz WavePoint access points had the hardware capacity to operate over ten channels, ranging from 2.412 GHz to 2.484 GHz, with channels available determined by the region-specific firmware. In Australia, CSIRO developed its own prototype from 1992
  4. Bluetooth 1999 short range wireless pairing (up to 100 metres) utilizing Frequency-Hopping between sender and receiver. Launched via Ericsson and IBM, plus Intel who came up with the name, and in 2002 Apple, a major player in audio streaming
  5. Blackberry pager & email provided a "Push" email service in the US / UK in 1999 via the Mobitex (Ericsson) network. Phone launched in Australia in May 2002 via Telstra using its GSM / GPRS mobile network. Vodafone followed in May 2004, Optus in August, on a range of models.
    Replaced by the Apple iPhone (today over 1 billion) first issued in 2007, and Android (Google) phones (over 3 billion) first issued in 2008
  6. 3G (W-CDMA) Telstra (initially Syd-Melb only) 2002, Hutchison 2003, Optus 2005, Telstra Australia-wide Oct 2006. 3G shut down in Australia Oct 2024
  7. Skype (VoIP telephony) in 2003 a fore-runner of Zoom. Ran on a centralized login server via Kazaa-like supernodes, and localized "buddy-lists". Grew to 136 million users in 2006, with links to wholesale international telephone carriers UK Cable & Wireless (Vodafone), US iBasis, and Level 3 (Lumen).
    After 2011 a division of Microsoft, replaced by MS Teams in May 2025
  8. 4G (LTE) 2011
  9. Miracast 2012 Wi-Fi Direct, Media Mirroring, also called Casting (Windows), Smart Share (LG), Chromecast (Google), Airplay (Apple). Devices attaching on their one-on-one Wi-Fi connection

    With Windows 10 Creators Update released in March 2017, also known as version 1703, Microsoft implemented Miracast wireless projection of the Windows screen using the existing Wi-Fi network. It enabled, for example, the Smart TV receiving the realtime streaming of the Windows display and audio to be on a wired Ethernet connection, as well as Wi-Fi, with Windows prioritizing the faster connection

  10. 5G 2019
  11. From 5G to 1G (ie NMT, ETACS, AMPS) Ericsson provided technology and infrastructure for Australia

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