A hand-held mobile radiotelephone is an old dream of radio engineering.

A particularly vivid
and in many ways accurate prediction was presented by Arthur C. Clarke in a 1959 essay,
where he envisioned a personal transceiver, so small and compact that every man carries
one. !e wrote" the time will come when we will be able to call a person anywhere on #arth
merely by dialing a number. $uch a device would also, in Clarke%s vision, include means for
global positioning so that no one need ever again be lost. &ater, in Profiles of the Future, he
predicted the advent of such a device taking place in the mid-19'(s.
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#arly predecessors of cellular phones included analog radio communications from ships and
trains. +he race to create truly portable telephone devices began after ,orld ,ar --, with
developments taking place in many countries. +he advances in mobile telephony have been
traced in successive generations from the early (. /0eroth generation1 services like
the 2ell $ystem%s 3obile +elephone $ervice and its successor, -mproved 3obile +elephone
$ervice. +hese (. systems were not cellular, supported few simultaneous calls, and were
very e4pensive.
+he first handheld mobile cell phone was demonstrated by 3otorola in 1956. +he first
commercial automated cellular network was launched in 7apan by 8++ in 1959. -n 19'1, this
was followed by the simultaneous launch of the8ordic 3obile +elephone /83+1 system in
9enmark, :inland, 8orway and $weden.
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$everal other countries then followed in the early
to mid-19'(s. +hese first generatiion /1.1 systems could support far more simultaneous
calls, but still used analog technology.
-n 1991, the second generation /;.1 digital cellular technology was launched in :inland
by <adiolin=a on the .$3 standard, which sparked competition in the sector, as the new
operators challenged the incumbent 1. network operators.
+en years later, in ;((1, the third generation /6.1 was launched in 7apan by 8++
9oCo3o on the ,C93A standard.
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+his was followed by 6.5., 6.> or turbo 6.
enhancements based on the high-speed packet access/!$?A1 family, allowing @3+$
networks to have higher data transfer speeds and capacity.
2y ;((9, it had become clear that, at some point, 6. networks would be overwhelmed by
the growth of bandwidth-intensive applications like streaming media.
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ConseAuently, the
industry began looking to data-optimi0ed Bth-generation technologies, with the promise of
speed improvements up to 1(-fold over e4isting 6. technologies. +he first two commercially
available technologies billed as B. were the ,i3AC standard /offered in the @.$. by$print1
and the &+# standard, first offered in $candinavia by +elia$onera.