Cellular radio - just ten short years
F.G. Harrison · 1995
Cellular radio was designed to overcome the channel capacity limits by re-using radio frequencies over and over again in a pattern of coverage areas, called cells. In fact, the foundation ideas for cellular radio had been developed by Bell Laboratories soon after the second World War, although the technology to turn the ideas into commercial reality did not become readily available until the 1980s. In 1979 the World Administrative Radio Conference allocated a higher frequency band near 900 MHz for public land mobile radio networks, and the UK Government licensed two competing cellular radio operating companies, now known as Cellnet and Vodafone. A technical standard was developed, defining the “air interface”, which enabled mobiles to work on either network, and ensured compatibility between the networks using adjacent frequency allocations. The standard was a refinement of the American AMPS Specification and was denoted TACS, Total Access Communication System.