History of mobile phones

A man talks on his mobile phone while standing near a conventional telephone box, which stands empty. Enabling technology for mobile phones was first developed in the 1940s but it was not until the mid-1980s that they became widely available. By 2011, it was estimated in Britain that more calls were made using mobile phones than wired devices.[1]

The history of mobile phones covers mobile communication devices that connect wirelessly to the public switched telephone network.

While the transmission of speech by signal has a long history, the first devices that were wireless, mobile, and also capable of connecting to the standard telephone network are much more recent. The first such devices were barely portable compared to today's compact hand-held devices, and their use was clumsy.

Drastic changes have taken place in both the networking of wireless communication and the prevalence of its use, with smartphones becoming common globally and a growing proportion of Internet access now done via mobile broadband.

  1. ^ Wallop, Harry (18 June 2011). "Mobile phone calls overtake landline calls for first time". The Daily Telegraph. London. Archived from the original on 12 January 2022. Retrieved 20 October 2019.