Cellular+Technology

Celluar Technology:
Cellular technology is based around rf (radio frequency) transmitter/receiver towers with limited rage that create overlapping "cells". A cell phone is a portable device that uses this cellular rf technology to connect to the normal phone network to place calls. Recently this technology has been expanded to allow for other types of (non voice) transmission. The phones themselves have gone from large boxes with phones attached to compact devices, some smaller than a pack of cigarettes with pda (personal digital assistent) like functionality.

Early Cell Phones:
Motorola was the first company to use a mobile phone out of a fixed car position. on April 3, 1973 Motorola's Manager made the mobile phone call off of a bulky cell phone. However, they were not the first company to launch a commercial cellualr network. The first company was launched in Japan by a company named NTT in 1979. The 1st fully automated cellular network called 1G was launched with the Nordic Telephone System. The first handheld 1G mobile phone to become commercially available to the US market was the Motorola DynaTAC 8000X. = = = = = = = = =Networks=

There are three types of cellular access networks available in the United States. They are advanced mobile phone systems (AMPS), time division multiple access (TDMA), and code division multiple access (CDMA). AMPS is the standard cellular service. It has been available since 1983. TDMA is a digital cellular access method. It works by dividing its frequency channels into six times slots then giving two time slots to each user. CDMA works by using a wide frequency channel to send multiple messages. These messages are then decoded at the receiving end.

Cell Phones Today:
Possibly link the famous wired cell phone hacking article. who uses them/what for. Cost. 911 GPS Government? Voip The Death of the payphone.

Cellular Internet:
Cellular Internet is using the internet by accesing the cell phone network. The performance is limited by the capabilities of the phone and the cell tower that it is connected to. That performance could range anywhere from 14.4 kbps to 300+ kbps, but typical digital speeds are 50-120 kbps up/down. 300+ kbps is just starting to arrive in very few cities, but it is expected to continue replacing existing networks. Back in the days the only way to get a wireless connection to your laptop was to buy an an expensive serial modem computer kit ($200) for your cell phone and use it to dial into a dialup ISP at approximately 9.6-19.2 kbps. As you can imagine, this was terribly slow and expensive. Factor in consistently poor reception, and the experience was pretty painful. Nowadays they have 2Gand 3G cellular service. this has enabled speeds to increase an allow the use of bluetooth technology.

Cell Phones and Pop Culture:
As an icon. Appearance in movies. The cultural effect of a full time connection. Driving / accidents.