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Mobile radio telephone systems were mobile telephony systems that preceded modern cellular network technology. Since they were the predecessors of the first generation of cellular telephones, these systems are sometimes retroactively referred to as pre-cellular (or sometimes zero generation, that is, 0G) systems. Technologies used in pre-cellular systems included the Push-to-talk (PTT or manual), Mobile Telephone Service (MTS), Improved Mobile Telephone Service (IMTS), and Advanced Mobile Telephone System (AMTS) systems. These early mobile telephone systems can be distinguished from earlier closed radiotelephone systems in that they were available as a commercial service that was part of the public switched telephone network, with their own telephone numbers, rather than part of a closed network such as a police radio or taxi dispatching system.
These mobile telephones were usually mounted in cars or trucks (thus called car phones ), although portable briefcase models were also made. Typically, the transceiver (transmitter-receiver) was mounted in the vehicle trunk and attached to the "head" (dial, display, and handset) mounted near the driver seat. They were sold through WCCs (Wireline Common Carriers, a.k.a. telephone companies), RCCs (Radio Common Carriers), and two-way radio dealers.
Early examples of this technology include:
Parallel to Improved Mobile Telephone Service (IMTS) in the US until the rollout of cellular AMPS systems, a competing mobile telephone technology was called Radio Common Carrier (RCC). The service was provided from the 1960s until the 1980s when cellular AMPS systems made RCC equipment obsolete. These systems operated in a regulated environment in competition with the Bell System's MTS and IMTS. RCCs handled telephone calls and were operated by private companies and individuals. Some systems were designed to allow customers of adjacent RCCs to use their facilities, but the universe of RCCs did not comply with any single interoperable technical standard (a capability known in modern systems as roaming ). For example, the phone of an Omaha, Nebraska-based RCC service would not be likely to work in Phoenix, Arizona. At the end of RCC's existence, industry associations were working on a technical standard that would potentially have allowed roaming, and some mobile users had multiple decoders to enable operation with more than one of the common signaling formats (600/1500, 2805, and Reach). Manual operation was often a fallback for RCC roamers.
Roaming was not encouraged, in part because there was no centralized industry billing database for RCCs. Signaling formats were not standardized. For example, some systems used two-tone sequential paging to alert a mobile or handheld that a wired phone was trying to call them. Other systems used DTMF. Some used a system called Secode 2805 which transmitted an interrupted 2805 Hz tone (in a manner similar to IMTS signaling) to alert mobiles of an offered call. Some radio equipment used with RCC systems was half-duplex, push-to-talk equipment such as Motorola hand-helds or RCA 700-series conventional two-way radios. Other vehicular equipment had telephone handsets, rotary or push-button dialing, and operated full duplex like a conventional wired telephone. A few users had full-duplex briefcase telephones (which were radically advanced for their day).
RCCs used paired UHF 454/459 MHz and VHF 152/158 MHz frequencies near those used by IMTS.
Advanced Mobile Phone System (AMPS) was an analog mobile phone system standard originally developed by Bell Labs and later modified in a cooperative effort between Bell Labs and Motorola. It was officially introduced in the Americas on October 13, 1983, and was deployed in many other countries too, including Israel in 1986, Australia in 1987, Singapore in 1988, and Pakistan in 1990. It was the primary analog mobile phone system in North America through the 1980s and into the 2000s. As of February 18, 2008, carriers in the United States were no longer required to support AMPS and companies such as AT&T and Verizon Communications have discontinued this service permanently. AMPS was discontinued in Australia in September 2000, in India by October 2004, in Israel by January 2010, and Brazil by 2010.
Telecommunications in France are highly developed. France is served by an extensive system of automatic telephone exchanges connected by modern networks of fiber-optic cable, coaxial cable, microwave radio relay, and a domestic satellite system; cellular telephone service is widely available, expanding rapidly, and includes roaming service to foreign countries.
The Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) is a 3G mobile cellular system for networks based on the GSM standard. Developed and maintained by the 3GPP, UMTS is a component of the International Telecommunication Union IMT-2000 standard set and compares with the CDMA2000 standard set for networks based on the competing cdmaOne technology. UMTS uses wideband code-division multiple access (W-CDMA) radio access technology to offer greater spectral efficiency and bandwidth to mobile network operators.
A radiotelephone, abbreviated RT, is a radio communication system for conducting a conversation; radiotelephony means telephony by radio. It is in contrast to radiotelegraphy, which is radio transmission of telegrams (messages), or television, transmission of moving pictures and sound. The term is related to radio broadcasting, which transmit audio one way to listeners. Radiotelephony refers specifically to two-way radio systems for bidirectional person-to-person voice communication between separated users, such as CB radio or marine radio. In spite of the name, radiotelephony systems are not necessarily connected to or have anything to do with the telephone network, and in some radio services, including GMRS, interconnection is prohibited.
A cellular network or mobile network is a telecommunications network where the link to and from end nodes is wireless and the network is distributed over land areas called cells, each served by at least one fixed-location transceiver. These base stations provide the cell with the network coverage which can be used for transmission of voice, data, and other types of content. A cell typically uses a different set of frequencies from neighboring cells, to avoid interference and provide guaranteed service quality within each cell.
A cordless telephone or portable telephone has a portable telephone handset that connects by radio to a base station connected to the public telephone network. The operational range is limited, usually to the same building or within some short distance from the base station.
A car phone is a mobile radio telephone specifically designed for and fitted into an automobile. This service originated with the Bell System and was first used in St. Louis, Missouri, United States, on June 17, 1946.
The Improved Mobile Telephone Service (IMTS) was a pre-cellular VHF/UHF radio system which linked to the public telephone network. IMTS was the radiotelephone equivalent of land dial phone service. Introduced in 1964, it replaced Mobile Telephone Service (MTS) and improved on most MTS systems by offering direct-dial rather than connections through a live operator, and full-duplex operation so both parties could talk at the same time.
Mobile telephony is the provision of telephone services to mobile phones rather than fixed-location phones. Telephony is supposed to specifically point to a voice-only service or connection, though sometimes the line may blur.
1G refers to the first generation of cellular network (wireless) technology. These are mobile telecommunications standards that were introduced in the 1980s and were superseded by 2G. The main difference between these two mobile cellular generations is that the audio transmissions of 1G networks were analog, while 2G networks were entirely digital.
The history of mobile phones covers mobile communication devices that connect wirelessly to the public switched telephone network.
Autoradiopuhelin was the first commercially operated public mobile phone network in Finland. The technology is zero-generation (0G), since although it had cells, moving between them was not seamless. The network was proposed in 1968 and building began in 1969. It was launched in 1971, and reached 100% geographic coverage in 1978 with 140 base stations. The ARP network was closed at the end of 2000 along with NMT-900.
Alltel was a landline, wireless and general telecommunications services provider, primarily based in the United States. Before its wireless division was acquired by Verizon Wireless and AT&T, Alltel provided cellular service to 34 states and had approximately 13 million subscribers. As a regulatory condition of the acquisition by Verizon, a small portion of Alltel was spun off and continued to operate under the same name in six states, mostly in rural areas. Following the merger, Alltel remained the ninth largest wireless telecommunications company in the United States, with approximately 800,000 customers. On January 22, 2013, AT&T announced they were acquiring what remained of Alltel from Atlantic Tele-Network for $780 million in cash.
Autotel is a radiotelephone service which was the "missing link" between earlier MTS/IMTS and later cellular telephone services. It used digital signaling for supervisory messages, except the voice channel was analog. This system was not cellular, as it used existent high-power VHF channels. This system was developed for rural British Columbia, Canada, where building a network of low-power cellular terminals to cover a forest would have been prohibitively expensive.
The Mobile Telephone Service (MTS) was a pre-cellular VHF radio system that linked to the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN). MTS was the radiotelephone equivalent of land dial phone service.
Area codes 408 and 669 are telephone area codes in the North American Numbering Plan (NANP) in the U.S. state of California. The numbering plan area comprises most of Santa Clara County and Northern Santa Cruz County, and includes Gilroy, Morgan Hill, Saratoga, Los Gatos, Monte Sereno, Milpitas, Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, Cupertino, Campbell, and San Jose.
Mobile radio or mobiles refer to wireless communications systems and devices which are based on radio frequencies, and where the path of communications is movable on either end. There are a variety of views about what constitutes mobile equipment. For US licensing purposes, mobiles may include hand-carried,, equipment. An obsolete term is radiophone.
The Altai mobile telephone system is the pre-cellular 0G radiotelephone service that was first introduced in the Soviet Union in 1963, and became available in the most large cities by 1965. It is a fully automated UHF/VHF network that allows a mobile node to connect to a landline phones, and was originally conceived to serve government officials and emergency services, but has since spread into general use, and is still in use in some places, where its advantages outweigh those of conventional cellular networks. Work on the system of automatic duplex mobile communication started in 1958 in Voronezh Research Institute of Communications. It was established subscriber stations and base stations for communicating with them.
Storno was one of the early leaders in the field of Public and Private Mobile Radio (PMR) in Europe. The company is probably best known for its Radiotelephones and Mobile telephones like the Stornophone and Stornomatic series.