Mobile communications: global trends in the 21st century became available. The Bell System, producers of the finest landline telephone systems in the world, moved hesitatingly and at times with disinterest toward wireless. Anything AT&T produced had to work reliably with the rest of their network and it had to make economic sense, something not possible for them with the few customers permitted by the limited frequencies available at the time Frequency availability was in turn controlled by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), whose regulations and unresponsiveness constituted the most significant factors hindering radio-telephone development, especially with cellular radio, delaying that technology in the USa by perhaps 10 In Europe and Japan, though, where governments could regulate their state run telephone companies to a lesser extent, mobile wireless came no sooner, and in most cases later than the USA. Japanese manufacturers, although not the first with a working cellular radio, did equip some of the first car mounted mobile telephone services, and their technology was equal to whatever the USA was producing. Their products enabled several first commercial cellular telephone systems, starting in Bahrain, Tokyo, Osaka and Mexico City Table 1 lists the key technology milestones in the mobile communication industry Table 1 Key technology milestones in mobile communication industry Guglielmo Marconi's first wireless telegraphy sent signals across the Atlantic ocean 1910 The first car-telephone by Ericsson The first commercial American radio-telephone service by at& T and Southwestern Bell The first commercial cellular radio system by Bell System 1973 The first handheld cell phone by motorola 78 First generation of analogue cellular systems by bahrain Telephone Company 1982 The rise of GSM in western Europe 990 North American set IS-54B standard up for digital cellular systems using TDMA 3 Mobile applications [4] A number of widely used mobile applications are briefly described in this section. These include: mobile phones, mobile satellites, handheld devices, wireless computing and mobile commerce(m-commerce ). 3.1 Mobile phones This would be counted as the most obvious example of mobile applications based number of users, as many as 1.3 billion worldwide in early 2003. Table 2 shows a statistics snapshot of the mobile industry as of February 2003 according to Cellular Online [2] The mobile utilisation can be classified according to geographic distribution given in Table 3Mobile communications: global trends in the 21st century 69 became available. The Bell System, producers of the finest landline telephone systems in the world, moved hesitatingly and at times with disinterest toward wireless. Anything AT&T produced had to work reliably with the rest of their network and it had to make economic sense, something not possible for them with the few customers permitted by the limited frequencies available at the time. Frequency availability was in turn controlled by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), whose regulations and unresponsiveness constituted the most significant factors hindering radio-telephone development, especially with cellular radio, delaying that technology in the USA by perhaps 10 years. In Europe and Japan, though, where governments could regulate their state run telephone companies to a lesser extent, mobile wireless came no sooner, and in most cases later than the USA. Japanese manufacturers, although not the first with a working cellular radio, did equip some of the first car mounted mobile telephone services, and their technology was equal to whatever the USA was producing. Their products enabled several first commercial cellular telephone systems, starting in Bahrain, Tokyo, Osaka and Mexico City. Table 1 lists the key technology milestones in the mobile communication industry. Table 1 Key technology milestones in mobile communication industry Year Technology milestone 1901 Guglielmo Marconi’s first wireless telegraphy sent signals across the Atlantic ocean 1910 The first car-telephone by Ericsson 1946 The first commercial American radio-telephone service by AT&T and Southwestern Bell 1969 The first commercial cellular radio system by Bell System 1973 The first handheld cell phone by Motorola 1978 First generation of analogue cellular systems by Bahrain Telephone Company 1982 The rise of GSM in western Europe 1990 North American set IS-54B standard up for digital cellular systems using TDMA technique 3 Mobile applications [4] A number of widely used mobile applications are briefly described in this section. These include: mobile phones, mobile satellites, handheld devices, wireless computing and mobile commerce (m-commerce). 3.1 Mobile phones This would be counted as the most obvious example of mobile applications based on number of users, as many as 1.3 billion worldwide in early 2003. Table 2 shows a statistics snapshot of the mobile industry as of February 2003 according to Cellular Online [2]. The mobile utilisation can be classified according to geographic distribution given in Table 3