The history of mobile phone dates back to 1950 however the distinction becomes a bit blurry if Radio Telephony is also taken into account. In the year 1946, the first mobile phone was probably used by the Swedish Police in the sense that it was connected to a telephone network with the help of a car battery. But at that time mobile telephony was not able to gather momentum because of various problems such as size, charging facilities and coverage due to non availability of adequate infrastructure.

On 3rd April 1972 a man, while walking on the sidewalk of the streets of New York, suddenly stopped and took out a strange ‘brick’ from his pocket, put it to the ear and started talking with it. This was the actual beginning of the mobile phone revolution more than 30 years ago. This ‘brick’ was the first real mobile phone DynaTAC through which the first call was made. The man who did this was the project manager of Motorola, Martin Cooper.

During the seventies, the race to invent cheaper and more reliable mobile phones got hotter with companies like Motorola, Nokia and AT&T leading the race. Motorola was the first company to introduce the first commercial mobile phone. The mobile phones of this era were much bigger in size compared to present day mobiles, many of them were designed for permanent installation in cars or as ‘transportable’ in something the size of a briefcase .

During the 1980’s, mobile phones began to proliferate with the introduction of ‘cellular’ telephony and new base stations which were located relatively close to each other . As the technology improved during the 1990’s , the ‘bricks’ disappeared and tiny hand held phones came into existence .

In most parts Europe and UK , wealthy parts of Asia , Australia and US , the penetration of mobile and cellular phones is staggering . With majority of the teenage, adult and even the child population owning one, mobiles phones are now a universal phenomenon.

Due to their rapid development, low establishment cost and smaller size, mobile networks are spreading rapidly throughout the developing world. The growth rate of mobile telephony is far outstripping the growth rate of fixed telephony. Mobile telephony is now considered as more economical than fixed telephony even with a small customer base.
With new technologies coming into existence almost every day, we can expect a lot in the coming days and years from this field.

The day when the number of mobile phone subscriber out-number fixed phone subscribers is not far away.