Anoduck's Das Wiki

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Cellular Technologies

About half of today’s population were around during the birth of the cellular age. In it’s infancy, circa 1960s, Mobile phones were really nothing more than an extension of hand radios, and there big clunky hardware was something that was built into the car. Car phones rose in popularity in the seventies by the elite hollywood crowd. Where, during the time, you were still unable to “dial” anyone from the phone. Rather, you picked up the phone, an operator answered, and then manually dialed the number for you, and then patched the call into the radio. The nostalgic and hilarious “brick phone” made it onto the scene in the late eighties, and usually required a bag to be carried around in. During the early nineties, cellular technology became affordable to the average household. These early models were still quite bulky, were contained in a bag, and often required both a heavy battery and an external antenna to be functional. The late nineties saw the rise of a truly portable unit, one that was still too large to comfortably fit into a pocket, but a significant improvement over the past. Then in the glorious turn of the century, Apple produced the first “Smart Phone”. The first generation of iPhones did three things, was a phone, performed text messages, and allowed you to listen to music. Which by comparison, can be achieved today by a device the size of a badge as was in Star Trek NG.

To meet the demands of the evolving uses of cellular phones, the cellular communication technology had to evolve with it. The eighties to early nineties are considered to be generation one, or as we now refer to it “1G”. The mid nineties is where the significant increases in cellular advancement occured, and is considered to be “2G”. During the early to mid two thousands is when cellular communication providers began to promote and advertise the availability of these significant improvements in cellular technology with the birt of “3G”. This trend continued for over another decade with the birth of “4G”, and at the time of writing “5G” is the current standard in use.

Frequencies

Contrary to what one might think, Cellular technology populates three seperate bands (frequency ranges). This is due to the properties of radio waves as they increase in frequency. The higher the frequency the less ability the radio wave has to penetrate obstacles and the shorter the distance the wavelength can travel before losing it’s waveform. Where as the problem with lower frequencies is the over population of the radio sepctrum.