Mobile Jobs

People had the idea of improving the convenience and flexibility of this new communication medium, and of bringing it to new areas such as cars. The first cities in the world where you could use a cell phone but their availability was extremely limited and the new phones were only available to a select number of trial customers to begin with.

The idea caught on like wildfire. It seemed as if everyone wanted a cell phone and the major companies involved had really hit a home run. However, there were difficulties. However, instead of giving more, they forced the cell phone companies to improve technology and come up with more efficient ways of utilising the bandwidth they had.

The design and engineering teams began to work together at a fast pace to meet the impending deadline. We know at present really got underway. The age of the cell phone was at last born, and who did he call. None other than his rival who had been racing with him to create the invention. The engineers' challenge now was to make the electronics small enough to fit in the handset team designed.

Fortunately, because two way radio and semiconductor experience, the company already held patents on, and manufactured, much of the basic electronics needed for a portable phone system. A type of wireless communication that is most familiar to mobile phones users. It's called 'cellular' because the system uses many base stations to divide a service area into multiple 'cells'. Cellular calls are transferred from base station to base station as a user travels from cell to cell. This system presaged many cellular developments.

Users by the scores vied for an open frequency. Young states all the elements were known then: a network of small geographical areas called cells, a low powered transmitter in each, the cell traffic controlled by a central switch, frequencies reused by different cells and so on. One frequency to transmit on and one to receive. It makes up a circuit or a complete communication path. Sounds simple enough to accommodate. But what could you do with just six channels, no matter what the technology. You had, in effect, a wireless party line, with perhaps forty subscribers fighting to place calls on each channel.

Radio waves at lower frequencies travel great distances, sometimes hundreds of miles when they skip across the atmosphere. High powered transmitters gave mobiles a wide operating range but added to the dilemma. Telephone companies couldn't reuse their precious channels in nearby cities, lest they interfere with their own systems. They needed at least seventy five miles between systems before they could use them again. While better frequency reuse techniques might have helped, something doubtful with the technology of the times.