Mobile radio telephone
A mobile radio telephone.
Mobile radio telephonesystems preceded modern cellular mobile
telephony technology. Since they were the predecessors of the first
generation of cellular telephones, these systems are sometimes
retroactively referred to aspre cellular(or sometimes zero generation)
systems.
Technologies used in pre cellular systems included the Push to
Talk(PTT or manual), Mobile Telephone System(MTS), Improved Mobile
Telephone Service(IMTS), and Advanced Mobile Telephone System(AMTS)
systems. These early mobile telephone systems can be distinguished
from earlier closed radio telephone 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 dispatch system.
These mobile telephones were usually mounted in cars or trucks, though
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, AKA telephone
companies), RCCs (Radio Common Carriers), and two-way radio dealers.
Origins
Early examples for this technology:
*. Motorolain conjunction with the Bell Systemoperated the first
commercial mobile telephone service Mobile Telephone System(MTS) in
the US in 1946, as a service of the wireline telephone company.
*.TheA-Netzlaunched 1952 in West Germanyas the country's first public
commercial mobile phone network.
*.System 1 launch in 1959 in the UKas the country's first mobile phone
network, although it was manual and with very little coverage for
decades.
*.First automatic system was the Bell System's IMTS which became
available in 1962, offering automatic dialing to and from the mobile.
*." Altai" mobile telephone system was launched into the experimental
service in 1963 in USSR, becoming fully operational in 1965, a first
automatic mobile phone system in Europe.
*.The Televerket opened its first manual mobile telephone system in
Norway in 1966. Norway was later the first country in Europeto get an
automatic mobile telephone system.
*.The Auto radio puhelin(ARP) launched in 1971 in Finlandas the
country's first public commercial mobile phone network
*.The Automatizovaný městský radiotelefon(AMR) launched in 1978,
fully operational in 1983, in Czechoslovakiaas the first analog mobile
radio telephone in the whole Eastern Bloc
*.The B-Netzlaunched 1972 in West Germanyas the country's second
public commercial mobile phone network (but the first one that did not
require human operators to connect calls)
Radio Common Carrier
Parallel to Improved Mobile Telephone Service(IMTS) in the US until
the rollout of cellular AMPS systems, a competing mobile telephone
technology was calledRadio Common CarrierorRCC. 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 called
roaming in modern systems). 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
pagingto alert a mobile or hand-held that a wired phone was trying to
call them. Other systems used DTMF. Some used a system calledSecode
2805which 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 pushbutton dials, and operated full duplex like a
conventional wired telephone. A few users had full-duplex briefcase
telephones (radically advanced for their day).
RCCs used paired UHF 454/459 MHz and VHF 152/158 MHz frequencies near
those used by IMTS.
