The first 1G (first generation) network was launched in the US on March 6, 1983 by Ameritech. It cost $100 million to develop and took a decade to reach the market. Phone talk time was limited to 30 minutes and the phones took 10 hours to charge. Despite the obvious issues, the system was in high demand with waiting lists for the system in the thousands.The 2G network emerged in the 1990s with two systems competing for supremacy: the European GSM standard and the US-developed CDMA standard. The 2G network differed from the previous generation by using digital instead of analog transmissions and also fast out-of-band signaling. Mobile phone usage exploded in the 1990s with the onset of 2G connectivity. The advent of prepaid mobile phones also emerged during this era.

NEXT GENERATION TECHNOLOGY

The 2G network also saw the emergence of a new variant in communication: SMS (text messaging). This technology was at first only available in GSM networks but eventually spread to all digital networks. The first machine-generate SMS message was sent in the UK on December 3, 1992 followed in 1993 by the first person-to-person SMS in Finland. The emergence of prepaid services saw a move of telephony into the hands of young people, and eventually to persons of all ages.2G also introduced the ability to access media content on mobile phones, with the first downloadable content sold to mobile phones in 1998 – the first content available being ring tones. The first advertising on mobile phones followed shortly later in 2000, with an SMS-based headline service.

2G

Also, the first mobile payments were trialed in 1998 in Finland and Sweden where a mobile phone was used to pay for a Coca Cola vending machine and car parking. The first commercial payments system to mimic credit cards was launched in the Philippines in 1999. The first mobile Internet service was launched in Japan in 1999.As the 2G revolution became more widespread and people of all ages began to utilize phones in their daily lives, it became evident that demand for data was growing. This also meant that there would be a much greater demand for faster data transfers. Since 2G was not capable of handling this new era, 3G technology was unveiled in Japan in May 2001 to take on the task. The main technological difference between 2G and 3G was the use of packet switching in 3G rather than the circuit switching in 2G, which helped immensely with data transfer. With this, 3G speeds rose to 2 Mbps on average.

ERA OF 3G

With the advent of 3G, competition in the market heated up with numerous companies vying for 3G space. The 2G CDMA networks were capable of transitioning to 3G to help ease some demand. With the high connection speeds of 3G technology, a transformation of the industry was at hand. For the first time, media streaming of radio and television content to 3G handsets became possible, with RealNetworks and Disney being among the early pioneers of 3G media streaming.In the mid-2000s, 3G technology evolved into an enhanced high-speed telephony network, with new coining of the technology: 3.5G, 3G+ and turbo 3G, allowing for data transfer speeds skyrocketing up to 14 Mbps.

With the ever-increasing speeds of 3G, it was clear that the days of the traditional mobile phone/feature phone would be coming to an end. In 2007, Apple released its flagship iPhone, touted as one of the first mobile phones to use a multi-touch interface. With the concept of multi-touch displays, traditional keypads and keyboards would soon become obsolete and onscreen keypads would be the new norm.By 2009, it was clear that, at some point, 3G networks would be overwhelmed by the growth of bandwidth-intensive applications. The industry soon focused on implementing 4G technologies, with the promise of delivering speed improvements up to 10-fold over existing 3G networks. The first 4G technologies were introduced in the US (WiMAX) and Scandinavia (LTE).One of the main ways 4G differed from 3G was in the elimination of circuit switching, instead employing an all-IP network. With this, 4G ushered in the age of LAN and WAN networks via VoIP.

NOW THE 4G