Mobile Phones have been categorized in 3 Generations
- 1st Generation(1G)
- 2nd Generation(2G)
- 3rd Generation(3G)
1st GENERATION(1G): 1G (First Generation) is the name given to the first generation of Mobile telephone networks. The first commercial launch of cellular telecoms was launched by NET in Tokyo Japan in 1979. In 1981 the NMT system was launched in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. The first handheld mobile Phone in the US market was the Motorola_Dyna 8000X referred to as First Generation or 1G, were introduced to the public market in 1983 by the Motorola Company, which received approval in 1983. Mobile phones began to proliferate through the 1980s with the introduction of "cellular" phones based on cellular networks with multiple base stations located relatively close to each other, and protocols for the automated "handover" between two cells when a phone moved from one cell to the other. Mobile phones were somewhat larger than current ones, and at first, all were designed for permanent installation in vehicles (hence the term car phone). The size of the mobile was very inconvenient. The main purpose of this First Generation technology was for voice traffic, but consumers felt insecure about people listening in on their conversations. These new mobile phones were also rather expensive, many of them costing hundreds of dollars.
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2nd GENERATION(2G): During the 1990s, great improvements were made in the mobile phone technology, 'second generation' (2G) mobile phone systems such as GSM, IS-136 ("TDMA"), iDEN and IS-95 ("CDMA") began to be introduced. 2G phone systems were characterized by digital circuit switched transmission and the introduction of advanced and fast phone to network signaling..The second generation introduced a new variant to communication, as SMS text messaging became possible, initially on GSM networks and eventually on all digital networks. The first machine-generated SMS message was sent in the UK in 1991. Soon SMS became the communication method of preference for the youth. 2G also introduced the ability to consume media content on mobile phones, Finland was also the first country where advertising appeared on the mobile phone when a free daily news headline service on SMS text messaging was launched in 2000. Companies also strived to make the prices more affordable than the mobile phones of the 1980s. You could buy a decent cell phone with 2G technology for approximately $200 along with an airtime service. The cell phone industry was beginning to take off.
3rd GENERATION: The Third Generation technology, or 3G, is what many people currently use in their digital cellular phones today. Quite differently from 2G systems, however, the meaning of 3G has been standardized in the IMT-2000 standardization processing. This process did not standardize on a technology, but rather on a set of requirements (2 Mbit/s maximum data rate indoors, 384 kbit/s outdoors. This new technology is not only capable of transferring voice data (such as a phone call), but it is also able to transfer other types of data, including emails, information and instant messages. In fact, 3G systems are designed to process data, and since voice signals are converted to digital data. The first pre-commercial trial network with 3G was launched by NTT DoCoMo in Japan in the Tokyo region in May 2001. NTT DoCoMo launched the first commercial 3G network on October 1, 2001, using the WCDMA technology
In 2002 the first 3G networks on the rival CDMA2000 1xEV-DO technology were launched by SK Telecom and KTF in South Korea, and Monet in the USA. Monet has since gone bankrupt. By the end of 2002, the second WCDMA network was launched in Japan by Vodafone KK (now Softbank). In March the first European launches of 3G were in Italy and the UK by the Three/Hutchison group, on WCDMA. 2003 saw a further 8 commercial launches of 3G, six more on WCDMA and two more on the EV-DO standard.
