TABLE OF CONTENTS The first generation of mobile cellular telecommunications systems appeared in the 1980s. The first generation was not the beginning of mobile communications, as there were several mobile radio networks in existence before then, but they were not cellular systems. The capacity of these early networks was much lower than that of cellular networks, and the support for mobility was weaker.
In mobile cellular networks the coverage area is divided into small cells, and thus the same frequencies can be used several times in the network without disturbing interference. This increases the system capacity. The first generation used analog transmission techniques for traffic, which was almost entirely voice. There was no dominant standard but several competing ones. The most successful standards were Nordic Mobile Telephone (NMT), Total Access Communications System (TACS), and Advanced Mobile Phone Service (AMPS). Other standards were often developed and used only in one country, such as C-Netz in West Germany and Radiocomm 2000 in France (see Table 1.1).
| SYSTEM | COUNTRIES |
|---|---|
| NMT-450 | Andorra, Austria, Belarus, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cambodia, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Faroe Islands, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Iceland, Indonesia, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Malaysia, Moldova, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine |
| NMT-900 | Cambodia, Cyprus, Denmark, Faroe Islands, Finland, France, Greenland, Netherlands, Norway, Serbia, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand |
| TACS/ETACS | Austria, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, China, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Kuwait, Macao, Malaysia, Malta, Philippines, Singapore, Spain, Sri Lanka, United Arab Emirates,... |
