The first mobile phones looked like 40 kilogram bricks carried around in suitcases. Little did we imagine a 21st century telephone the size of a credit card with a sliding key pad, a touch screen,  a camera, a radio, wireless internet and weighing just 200grams.

Mobile technology has indeed come a long way; however, the concept of mobile communication is not new.  The concept originated with mobile radio systems in the 1920s for police and ambulance services and became an important part of military equipment during WWII.

Bell Labs, Motorola and Ericsson were the early leaders in global mobile phone technology. In 1940s, Motorola developed the first handheld radio called the Handie-Talkie™ and Bell Labs built the first mobile phone cells. However, the mobile network has developed most rapidly since Japan and Sweden launched the world’s first mobile phone network in 1979.

It was in the early 1980s that Australia saw the mobile “network” flourish when Telecom introduced the first 0G mobile phone technology for cars. It was an expensive system where consumers paid over $5000 for handsets to be installed and connected to the network. In 1987, Telecom updated Australia’s mobile system by launching the 1G cellular mobile phone system based on the US Advanced Mobile Phone System (AMPS) system.

In the early 90s, Optus and Vodafone became licensed providers and Telstra (formerly Telecom) launched Australia’s 2G (GSM) digital mobile network which provided new payment and data facilities on mobile phones.  From 1993, people could send text messages and make commercial payments from their phones and in the late 1990s they could purchase ringtones and other content for their phones and access the internet.

At the turn of the century, Australia’s mobile phone network was flourishing: there were more mobile phones than landlines, the number of Australian service providers grew with the inclusion of OneTel and Hutchison as they phased in the CDMA network. Mobile technology further expanded as Telstra introduced mobile phone email and internet services.
In 2003, 3Mobile launched Australia’s 3G network followed soon after by Telstra, Optus, Virgin Mobile and Vodafone. This offered faster call connections and data transfer and also introduced multiuser facilities for the same time slot.

The growth in consumer demand seems to have mirrored the rapid advance of Mobile technology. This year, the Australian government is expected to deploy the latest 4G network which offers faster and more reliable broadband access. This, combined with the growing fascination for products such as Apple’s new iphone and the new Google phone, makes the mobile phone an indispensible part of life and perhaps our most valued medium.