4/17/13

Cellular Telephone Basics: II. Cellular History Archives

Home

News

Content

Contact
Sear ch the site | by Google: Search

About Private Line Private Line covers what has occurred, is occurring, and will ocurr in telecommunications. Since communication technology constantly changes , you can expect new content posted regularly. C onsider this site an authoritative resource . Its moderators have successful careers in the telecommunications industry. Utilize the content and send comments. As a site about communicating, conversation is encouraged. Writers Thomas Farely Tom has produced privateline.com since 1995. He is now a freelance technology writer who contributes regularly to the site. His knowledge of telecommunications has served, most notably, the American Heritage Invention and Technology Magazine and The History C hannel. His interview on Alexander Graham Bell will air on the History C hannel the end of 2006. Ken Schmidt Ken is a licensed attorney who has worked in the tower industry for seven years. He has managed the development of broadcast towers nationwide and developed and built cell towers. He has been quoted in newspapers and magazines on issues regarding cell towers and has spoke at industry and non-industry conferences on cell tower related issues. He is recognized as an expert on cell tower leases and due diligence processes for tower acquisitions.

Cellular Telephone Basics

JANUARY 01, 2006

Cellular History
United States cellular planning began in the mid 1940s-after World War II, but trial service did not begin until 1978, and full deployment in America not until 1984. This delay must seem odd compared to today's furious pace of wireless development, but there were many reasons for it. Early technology, Bell System ambivalence, and government regulation limited radio-telephone progress. As the vacuum tube and the transistor made possible the early telephone network, the wireless revolution began only after low cost microprocessors, miniature circuit boards, and digital switching became available. And while AT&T personnel built the finest landline telephone system in the world, Bell System management never truly committed to mobile telephony. The U.S. Federal Communications Commission also contributed to the delay, stalling for decades on granting more frequency space. This limited the number of mobile customers, and thus prevented any new service from developing fully since serving those few subscribers would not make economic sense. For different reasons cellular was delayed overseas as well. Scandinavia, Britain, and Japan had state run telephone companies which operated without competition. But these telcos could not do everything they wanted, whenever they wanted. They, too, suffered under their own state and regional regulatory and bureaucratic interference. What, then, most limited cellular development? I think it's very simple. No one knew how popular cellular radio would become nor how cheap the service would eventually be. If anyone suspected such a great demand then funding would certainly have flowed. No one knew; cellular instead was thought of as an evolution of early radio telephones, a better way to provide a few people with a telephone for their cars. It was not thought that cellular would revolutionize communications. But indeed it did. For far more on mobile telephone history go to my wireless history series here Although theorized for years before, Bell Laboratories' D.H. Ring articulated the cellular concept in 1947 in an unpublished company paper. W.R.Young, writing in The Bell System Technical Journal, said Ring' s paper stated all of cellular's elements: a network of small geographical areas called cells, a low powered transmitter in each, traffic controlled by a central switch, frequencies reused by different cells and so on. Young states that from 1947 Bell teams "had faith that the means for administering and connecting to many small cells would evolve by the time they were needed." [Young] While cellular waited to evolve, a more simple system was used for mobile telephony, a technology that, as it finally matured, originated some practices that cellular radio later employed. On June 17, 1946 in Saint Louis, Missouri, AT&T and Southwestern Bell introduced the first American commercial mobile radio-telephone service. It was called simply Mobile Telephone Service or MTS. Car drivers used newly issued vehicle radio-telephone licenses granted to Southwestern Bell by the FCC. These radios operated on six channels in the 150 MHz band with a 60 kHz channel spacing, twice the size of today's analog cellular. [Peterson] Bad cross channel interference, something like cross talk in a landline phone, soon forced Bell to use only three channels. In a rare exception to Bell System practice, subscribers could buy their own radio sets and not AT&T's equipment. Installed high above Southwestern Bell's headquarters at 1010 Pine Street, a centrally located antenna transmitting 250 watts paged mobiles when a call was for them. Automobiles responded not by transmitting to the headquarters building but to a scattering of receiving sites placed around the city, usually atop neighborhood central switching offices. That's because automobiles used lower

Subscr ibe to Pr ivate Line's feed [What is this?]

ARTICLE INDEX
I. Intr oduction II. Cellular Histor y III. Cell Sector Ter minology IV . Basic Theor y and Oper ation IX. Code Division Multiple Access: IS-95 A. Befor e We Begin: A Cellular Radio Review B. Back to the CDMA Discussion C. Summar y of CDMA D. A differ ent way to shar e a channel E. Synchr onization F. What Ever y Radio System Must Consider G. CDMA Benefits H. Call Pr ocessing: A Few Details V . Cellular fr equency and channel discussion V I. Channel Names and Functions V II. AMPS Call Pr ocessing A. Registr ation B. Pages: Getting a call C. The SAT, Dial Tone, and Blank and Bur st D. Or igination: Making a call E. Pr ecall V alidation V III. AMPS and Digital Systems compar ed X. Appendix A. AMPS Call Pr ocessing Diagr am B. Land Mobile or IMTS C. Ear ly Bell System Over view of Amps D. Link to Pr ofessor R.C. Levine's ar ticle XI. Additional Assistance A. Q&A: Cell Tower Capacity

RECENT POSTS
Cellular Histor y

Power ed by Movable Type 3.2

www.privateline.com/mt_cellbasics/ii_cellular_history/

1/4

4/17/13

Cellular Telephone Basics: II. Cellular History Archives

powered transmitters and could not always get a signal back to the middle of town. These central offices relayed the voice traffic back to the manually operated switchboard at the HQ where calls were switched. So, although the receiver sites were passive, merely collectng calls and passing them on, they did presage the cellular network of distributed, interactive cell sites.

A much larger and clearer image of the above can be had by clicking here. Warning! -- 346K One party talked at a time with MTS. You pushed a handset button to talk, then released the button to listen. This eliminated echo problems which took years to solve before natural, full duplex communications were possible. This is not simplex operation as many people say it was. Simplex, used in business radio, shares a single frequency for both people talking. In MTS and IMTS transmitting and receiving frequencies were different, and offset from each other to prevent interference. Base to mobile might be on 152 MHz and mobile to base might be on 158. This is what we call half duplex, whereby different frequencies for transmit and receive are employed, but only one party talks at a time. Operators placed all calls so a complex signaling routine wasn't required. The Bell System was not interested in automatic dial up and call handling until decades later, instead, independent wireless companies or Radio Common Carriers, pioneered these techniques. On March 1, 1948 the first fully automatic radiotelephone service began operating in Richmond, Indiana, eliminating the operator to place most calls. [McDonald] The Richmond Radiotelephone Company bested the Bell System by 16 years. AT&T didn't provide automated dialing for most mobiles until 1964, lagging behind automatic switching for wireless as they had done with landline telephony. Most systems, though, RCCs included, still operated manually until the 1960s. In 1964 the Bell System began introducing Improved Mobile Telephone Service or IMTS, a replacement to the badly aging Mobile Telephone System. But some operating companies like Pacific Bell didn't implement it until 1982, at the dawn of cellular. IMTS worked in full-duplex so people didn't have to press a button to talk. Talk went back and forth just like a regular telephone. Echo problems had been solved. IMTS also permitted direct dialing, automatic channel selection and reduced bandwidth to 25-30 kHz. [Douglas]. Operating details foreshadowed analog cellular routines, the complexity of which we will see soon enough. Here's how AT&T described automatic dialing: Control equipment at the central office continually chooses an idle channel (if there is one) among the locally equipped complement of channels and marks it with an "idle" tone. All idle mobiles scan these channels and lock onto the one marked with the idle tone. All incoming and outgoing calls are then routed over this channel. Signaling in both directions uses low-speed audio tone pulses for user identification and for dialing. [See the Bell System description for more details] [Or check out my pages on IMTS and come back here later]

www.privateline.com/mt_cellbasics/ii_cellular_history/

2/4

4/17/13

Cellular Telephone Basics: II. Cellular History Archives

In January,1969 the Bell System employed frequency reuse in a commercial service for the first time. On a train. From payphones. As we've mentioned before, frequency re-use is the defining principle or concept of cellular. "[D]elighted passengers" on Metroliner trains running between New York City and Washington, D.C. "found they could conveniently make telephone calls while racing along at better than 100 miles an hour."[Paul] Six channels in the 450 MHz band were used again and again in nine zones along the 225 mile route. A computerized control center in Philadelphia managed the system. The main elements of cellular were finally coming into being, and would result in a fully functional system in 1978. For a detailed look at mobile wireless history, go here: http://www.TelecomWriting.com/PCS/history.htm Let's not dismiss early radio systems too quickly, especially since we need to contrast them with cellular radio, to see what makes cellular different. IMTS or the Improved Mobile Telephone System equipment (and its variants) may still be around in certain countries, not the United States, serving isolated and rural areas not well covered by cellular. All American telephone companies, though, have abandoned it, Pacific Bell dropping IMTS in 1995. Cellular service may be in 90% of urban areas, but it only reaches 30% to 40% of the geographical area of America. [See IMTS] Most IMTS equipment operated in the UHF band. Again, it used a centrally located transmitter and receiver serving a wide area with a relatively few frequencies and users. Only in larger areas would you have additional receiving sites like in Saint Louis. A single customer could drive 25 miles or more from the transmitter, however, only one person at a time could use that channel. Go to the end of this article for a Bell System overview of IMTS and Cellular This limited availability of frequencies and their inefficient use were two main reasons for cellular's development. The key to the system, to be offensively repetitive, is the concept of frequency reuse. It is the chief difference between IMTS and cellular. In older mobile telephone services a single frequency serves an entire area. In cellular that frequency is used again and again. More exactly, a channel is used again and again, a radio channel being a pair of frequencies, one to transmit on and one to receive. More explanation of frequency reuse Now, since we are defining cellular so much, let's look at the terminology and structure of cells. Oh, if you could take a moment, read the notes below before going on. If they seem too advanced, then go on to the next page. -------------------------Notes Systems built on time division multiplexing will gradually be replaced with other access technologies. CDMA is the future of digital cellular radio. Time division systems are now being regarded as legacy technologies, older methods that must be accommodated in the short term future, but ones which are not the future itself. (Time division duplexing, as used in cordless telephone schemes: DECT and Personal Handy Phone systems might have a place but this still isn't clear.) Right now all digital cellular radio systems are second generation, prioritizing on voice traffic, circuit switching, and slow data transfer speeds. 3G, while still delivering voice, will emphasize data, packet switching, and high speed access.) Over the years, in stages hard to follow, often with 2G and 3G techniques co-existing, TDMA based GSM (internal link) and AT&T's IS-136 cellular service will be replaced with a wideband CDMA system, the much hoped for Universal Mobile Telephone System (external link). Strangely, IS-136 will first be replaced by GSM before going to UMTS. Technologies like EDGE and GPRS(Nokia white paper) will extend the life of these present TDMA systems but eventually new infrastructure and new spectrum will allow CDMA/UMTS development. The present CDMA system, IS-95, which Qualcomm supports and the Sprint PCS network uses, is narrowband CDMA. In the Ericsson/Qualcomm view of the future, IS-95 will also

www.privateline.com/mt_cellbasics/ii_cellular_history/

3/4

4/17/13

Cellular Telephone Basics: II. Cellular History Archives

go to wideband CDMA.) AMPS, or Advanced Mobile Phone Service, analog cellular, is scheduled to end in America in 2007. The Federal Communications Commission in early August decided that cellular carriers would no longer be required to keep open a few analog channels for the now small number of non-digital phones. You can download the official F.C.C. document by clicking here. AMPS audio sounded great, many will miss it, but it took up too much bandwidth. Now we have digital wireless, bandwidth friendly, feature laden, but often with poor audio because of over compression. That's because the cellular carrier wants as many calls over the air as possible, all scrunched together, with voice quality now a small concern. AMPS, we will miss you.) [IMTS] Fike, John L. and George E. Friend. Understanding Telephone Electronics SAMS, Carmel 1990 268 Permalink | Comments (0)

www.privateline.com/mt_cellbasics/ii_cellular_history/

4/4