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Celebrating 50 years of mobility
From 40 kilograms to 40 grams. From voice alone to SMS, MMS and mobile broadband - the mobile telephone has come a long way in 50 years and Ericsson has played an important part.
October 17, 2006
In 1956, the world's first automatic telephone system, MTA, was brought into commercial operation in Sweden. It had been developed by Sweden's then Televerket (now TeliaSonera) and Svenska Radio Aktiebolaget, (SRA), a subsidiary of LM Ericsson in which Marconi owned a 29 percent minority share.
The MTA mobile was installed in a car trunk, weighed 40kg and cost about USD 9 478- as much as the car in those days. With about 150 subscribers, MTA never became a mobile system for the average consumer.
The analog NMT and the digital GSM systems are also marking milestone birthdays this year, their 25th and 15th respectively. Ericsson has been a driving force in the development of all these systems.
When NMT 450 was launched in Sweden in 1981, it was to become a mobile system for the masses, even more so when GSM was launched 15 years ago. Today, there are more than 2 billion subscribers in more than 100 countries. In 2001, 3G was introduced as an evolution of GSM to provide mobile broadband services offering up to 3.6Mbps.
Carl-Henric Svanberg, Ericsson President and CEO, says in a statement that the company is "proud to have developed attractive and easy-to-use mobile services for billions of users worldwide.
"Today, mobile communication is part of everyday life for nearly a third of the world's population."
Mobile telephony's 50-year anniversary will be celebrated with a month-long exhibition, a conference, a special magazine and a gala. It is expected to arouse great interest as the mobile telephone has become one of the most important technological innovations and commercial successes of our era.
Read more on 50th anniversary web site.
