Wireless Access

To understand wireless communications, it is necessary to examine both radio and telephone technologies because the two are inextricably intertwined. In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell, a part-time inventor and a teacher of hearing-impaired students, invented the telephone while attempting to resolve the challenge of transmitting multiple telegraph signals over a shared pair of wires. His invention changed the world forever.

In 1896, a mere 20 years later, Italian engineer and inventor Guglielmo Marconi developed the spark gap radio transmitter, which eventually enabled him to transmit long-wave radio signals across the Atlantic Ocean as early as 1901. Like Bell, his invention changed the world. For his contributions, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1909.

It wasn t until the 1920s, though, when these two technologies began to dovetail, that their true promise was realized. Telephony provided interpersonal, two-way, high-quality voice communications, but required the user to be stationary. Radio, on the other hand, provided mobile communications, but was limited by distance, environmentally induced signal degradation, and spectrum availability. Whereas telephony was advertised as a universally available service, radio was more of a catch-as-catch-can offering that was subject to severe blocking.