Mobile Communication

1 The technical development of cell phones and mobile communication networks

1.1 A brief history of mobile communication

The A-Netz was the first cellular analog network in Germany and it was introduced 1952 by the Deutsche Bundespost under the Name Ð"-ffentlicher beweglicher Landfunk and existed until 1977. The calls had to be forwarded by human operators. In 1968 about 80% of western Germany was covered with the A-Netz. The capacity limit of 11.000 users was reached in 1971.

The B-Netz was an analog commercial mobile radio telephone network that also was oper-ated by the Deutsche Bundespost (at first only in West Germany) from 1972 until 1994. The system was also implemented in the neighboring countries Austria, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. The B refers to the fact that it was the country's second public mobile tele-phone network, following the A-Netz. As opposed to its predecessor, it featured direct-dialing (so that human operators were not required to connect calls).

A major limitation of the system was that, in order to reach a subscriber, one had to know his location since the handset would assume the local area code of the base station serving it. Handoff was not possible and calls were dropped when switched cells. Roaming was poss-ible between the implementing countries.

At its climax in 1986, the network had 158 base stations and about 27,000 subscribers in Germany. The network was vastly oversubscribed and finding an available channel could proof difficult.

The C-Netz was officially introduced in 1985 (with unofficial trials in 1984) to replace the existing B-Netz/B2-Netz system used in Germany at the time. Due to problems with the B-Netz mobile networks, early adoption of C-Netz was very high, especially in rural areas which had lacked prior B-Netz coverage. However, like other first-generation analog systems, it suffered from poor call quality and was susceptible to eavesdropping. The system was built up in West Germany and West Berlin, but following German reunification in 1990, it was rapidly built up in the new German states.

By December of 1988, the service had grown to nearly 100,000 customers, and reached a peak user base of around 800,000 in the early 1990s. The C-Netz service was shut down on December 31, 2000.

The first digital cellular network D-Netz was introduced 1991 by DeTeMobile and was part of the GSM Standard in Europe. The E-Net (by E-Plus) came only 2 years later.

GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) is a cellular network, which means that mobile phones connect to it by searching for cells in the immediate vicinity. GSM networks operate in four different frequency ranges. Most GSM networks operate in the 900 MHz or 1800 MHz bands. After the official start the number of GSM users exploded. In 1993 already over 1 Mio people were connected by GSM. A few years later, GSM was used nearly every-where around the globe. Today GSM is the world leader of mobile systems.

Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) is one of the third-generation (3G) cell phone technologies. Newest improvements to the GSM Standard is that the signal is not only forwarded by terrestrial methods but also per satellite, therefore the voice quality should be the same as with the conventional telephone network system. With the selling of the UMTS- licenses Germany made about 50 Billion Euro. Most important mobile network operators were T-Mobile Deutschland GmbH and Vodafone D2 GmbH.

History of mobile communication in Germany

1.2 Close up: The cell phone producers

1.2.1

Nokia, which was a wood-pulp mill, was founded in 1865 at the Nokianvirta River by Fredrik Idestan and is today with 68,483 employees FinlandÐ'Ò's most important employer. In 1898 Finnish Rubber Works was founded by Arvid WickstrÐ"¶m and 1912 Finnish Cable Works was founded. These three formally created the Nokia Corporation in 1967.

Today Nokia is divided into four segments: Mobile Phones, Multimedia, Enterprise Solutions and Networks and is the worldÐ'Ò's leading manufacturer of mobile devices but it produces as well equipment thatÐ'Ò's needed for telecommunication networks. As the leading manufacturer of mobile devices Nokia has been ranked sixth most valued brand by Interbrand in 2006. Nokia has sales in more than 150 countries, in Europe, Middle East, Africa, China, Asia-Pacific and North- and Southamerica. To keep up these sales, Nokia has 15 production facilities in 9 countries and puts a lot of afford in R&D. Research facilities are present in 11 countries, like in: Helsinki, Tokyo, Beijing, Bochum, Palo Alto and Cambridge, Massachusetts and they work closely together with the Helsinki University of Technology, Finland, Tampere University of Technology, Finland, Stanford University, United States, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, United States and University of Cambridge, United Kingdom.

The basis for todayÐ'Ò's success was first of all the cooperation with the Finnish Defence Force since they were supplied by Nokia with a “Message Device System”. And as well the joint venture of Mobira Oy, a Finnish Radio Telephone Company, in 1979 with Nokia and Salvera, a Finnish television maker helped Nokia to built the mobile phone network NMT(Nordic Mo-bile Telephone) in 1981. Three years later Nokia launched the Mobira Talkman, as their first portable 5 kg phone, which was followed by the Mobira Cityman, the first handheld NMT phone in 1987. Although Nokia had these successes during the 80s they had financial prob-lems during the 80s and early 90s. The change came in 1992 with the new president and CEO Jerma Ollila who put NokiaÐ'Ò's focus on the telecommunication business and got rid of all the other branches they still worked in. After this change Nokia was not able to be stopped in its success. In the same year they had developed the first GSM handset and two years later Nokia launched the well known Nokia tunes and the first satellite call was done using NokiaÐ'Ò's GSM handset. At the end of the 90s Nokia had become world leader in mobile phones and celebrated its position by launching the first WAP handset.

At the beginning of this century Nokia has focused a little bit on the development of their devices. In 2003 the N-Gage allowed the users mobile gaming with multiplayers. And in 2005 the next generation of mobile devices, the Nseries was born. One year later the Finnish company exceeded FinlandÐ'Ò's state budget with their revenues for the first time. The same year Nokia Siemens Networks appeared