Ira Brodsky.com - The History & Future of Wireless Technology

ZigBee Earns a Place in the Home

nospam@example.com (Ira Brodsky) — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 06:00:58 -0600

My latest article about wireless technology at NewsFactor Network:

The consumer electronics industry has talked about home automation since low-cost microcontrollers first appeared on the market a few decades ago. While some envision homes straight out of The Jetsons, most entrepreneurs have looked for practical ways to make today's homes more comfortable, energy-efficient, and safe. A key missing ingredient, however, has been a technology for networking large numbers of sensors and controllers freely distributed around the home.

A home automation network technology should be flexible, easy to deploy, and easy to use. It should be able to relay sensor data and controller commands in a timely, reliable, and (when necessary) secure fashion. And it should enable devices that are small, inexpensive, and consume minimal power. Ideally, it should be wireless , support ad hoc and mesh networking, and enable devices that can run for years off a small battery. ZigBee, a solution ten years in the making, meets all of these requirements.

ZigBee supports up to 64,000 devices on a single network. The latest standard supports both a basic feature set (ZigBee) and an enhanced feature set (ZigBee PRO). The latter permits self-powered devices as well as devices that can harvest energy from their surroundings using the optional ZigBee "Green Power" feature. Recognizing that key applications often have very different requirements, the ZigBee Alliance has also developed more detailed standards for specific applications such as smart energy, remote controls, and health monitoring.

A Big Deal

However, technical capabilities and detailed standards alone do not guarantee success. ZigBee has made substantial progress in recent years: It's been quietly integrated in TV remote controls and set top boxes. That puts ZigBee firmly in the hands of consumers and in a popular device that is strategically positioned to talk to both home automation networks and the Internet.

The emergence of ZigBee-based TV remote controls is a fairly big deal. Until recently, virtually all remote controls used infrared communications due to its simplicity, low cost, and good battery life. However, infrared has some major disadvantages. Infrared requires line of sight access and must be pointed at the target device. Low-cost infrared remotes can send but not receive data. Consequently, there is no way to command a misplaced infrared remote control to emit an audible signal.

Read the rest here.

ADDENDUM (January 11, 2013)

Cees Links, Founder and CEO of GreenPeak Technologies, a leading maker of ZigBee chips, predicted a while back that radio-based remote controls will ultimately replace infrared-based remote controls. Cees was a pioneer of wireless LANs (read his fascinating blog entry about Steve Jobs and wireless LANs here) and is now a pioneer of home automation networks.

Virtualization Is the New Key to Wireless Innovation

nospam@example.com (Ira Brodsky) — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 08:40:18 -0600

My lastest column at Sci-Tech Today:

In the past, wireless carriers built and operated their own networks. Now, vital components of those networks are being virtualized--their functions are being provided as services over the Internet. Wireless network virtualization isn't just a more cost-effective way of doing things, however. Virtualization creates exciting new business opportunities for operators, resellers, and users.

Introducing new features and services on traditional mobile networks is time consuming and expensive because traditional mobile networks consist largely of proprietary hardware and software. Virtualizing the mobile network dramatically reduces the time required to develop and deliver new services. Services that catch on with consumers can be quickly scaled to meet demand. And virtualization makes it easier for third parties to create and sell packaged solutions for markets such as health care.

Read the rest here.

Does NFC Technology Have the Magic Touch?

nospam@example.com (Ira Brodsky) — Tue, 06 Nov 2012 11:04:40 -0600

You've probably seen Samsung commercials promoting a new technology (called NFC) that lets smartphone users exchange data just by tapping them together. My latest column at NewsFactor explains why NFC is destined to succeed:

Proponents say that near field communications (NFC) will change the world. With a simple tap of your mobile phone you’ll be able to pay for things, download information from posters, and open doors.

Many tech pundits, however, are skeptical about NFC. Some say there are better ways to do the same things. Others think NFC has a critical mass problem: Retailers won’t invest in NFC infrastructure until everyone has NFC handsets, and manufacturers won’t make NFC a standard feature on handsets until NFC infrastructure becomes ubiquitous.

The skeptics are mistaken. Retail businesses will flock to NFC once they see that it speeds checkout and creates new opportunities for interacting with customers. Consumers will warm to NFC when they discover that its tap-and-go operation is simple, convenient, and puts them in control.

Read the rest here.

The History of Wireless Now Available for Kindle, Nook

nospam@example.com (Ira Brodsky) — Sun, 19 Jun 2011 11:24:09 -0500

The History of Wireless: How Creative Minds Produced Technology for the Masses is now available in ebook formats in the U.S., U.K., and Germany:

Kindle (US)
Kindle (UK)
Kindle (DE)
Nook

The History and Future of Wireless, Chapter 14

nospam@example.com (Ira Brodsky) — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 10:53:04 -0500

This post is the last in a series based on my book, The History of Wireless: How Creative Minds Produced Technology for the Masses, published in 2008.

How to be a Technology Innovator

The wireless industry boasts over a century of experience developing successful products and services; today there are more than 4 billion mobile phone users. Are there lessons technology innovators can learn from the history of wireless?

I’m glad you asked.

Identify and exploit holes or weaknesses in prevailing solutions

As the great inventor Edwin H. Armstrong said, “It ain’t ignorance that causes all the trouble in this world. It’s the things people know that ain’t so.”

In the early days of radio, engineers wondered if there was a way to reduce or even eliminate the static that invariably accompanied broadcasts. One idea that emerged was to use frequency modulation (FM). But a respected Bell Laboratories engineer, John Renshaw Carson, threw cold water on the idea, saying “static, like the poor, will always be with us.” When Carson tested FM he used a narrowband implementation to conserve bandwidth. It didn’t work. Armstrong tried using a wider channel and the results were stunning. You could hear a pin drop.

Be persistent

New technologies are rarely immediate hits. Most require a gestation period. Samuel Morse waited six years to build his first demonstration telegraph line. Wireless was mainly used in niche applications (in maritime communications) for the first 25 years. Television, wireless LANs, cellular radio, and Bluetooth all required significant gestation periods. Some technologies succeed in specific military or industrial applications first. Others only seem to succeed when nearly everyone has given up on them.

Accept reality: the best technology does not always win

What the market wants is the right product, with the right features and packaging, at the right cost. It’s all about value. In many cases, a technology that is just good enough wins.

The best standards build on successful proprietary solutions

Much of the industry will tell you that there has to be a common standard before customers will invest in products or services employing a new technology. This gets it exactly backwards, confusing politics with the wisdom of crowds. The best standards usually come from proprietary technologies. For every successful standard that was dreamt up by a committee, there are hundreds of committee standards that end up rotting in warehouses.

In fact, many of today’s standards aren’t even necessary. Look at your PC. It’s easier to just support a long list of formats than to hammer out one or two universal standards. Most committee standards are obsolete before the ink dries. With the “long list” approach, you can always just add another format that looks promising to the mix.

Consider the mobile phone as another example. I remember a conference at which a respected industry analyst warned that with four mobile phone standards and two frequency allocations in the U.S., anyone who traveled frequently would need to carry five or six different phones. It didn't occur to him at the time that a single phone could support multiple standards—in a small, inexpensive package.

Most successful technology standards start as proprietary or ad hoc solutions that are then transformed into formal standards. Companies innovate. Committees work out compromises.

Timing is (almost) everything

If I had to boil technology innovation down to one thing, I would say it’s recognizing opportunities and knowing when and how to act on them. I confess that sounds all-encompassing, but that’s not how I meant it. My point is this: most people miss the opportunity, are too early, or overshoot the target.

Science or Magic?

nospam@example.com (Ira Brodsky) — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 09:21:45 -0600

Below is the Introduction from The History of Wireless: How Creative Minds Produced Technology the Masses.

Science or Magic?

How did the human race develop palm-sized devices that enable people to converse and exchange text messages worldwide, snap and upload pictures, download music and videos, and determine their precise locations?

I’ve been interested in the history of technology for a long time, having worked in the high-tech industry for 30 years; I specifically wanted to know more about the evolution of wireless, and I was surprised that I couldn’t find a comprehensive history. There are many books on key figures and time periods in the history of wireless, but none that explain how we got to where we are today. So I decided to write such a book.

The following pages trace the entire journey—from the discovery of fundamental scientific effects to the development of next-generation wireless standards.

Arthur C. Clarke said that a sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. But most magic is just sleight of hand. Drawing back the curtain reveals the true sources of advanced wireless technology: brilliant science, ingenious products, and innovative business models.

Science rarely progresses in a straight line. Nor is there a single correct way of doing science. The history of wireless technology shows that the clash of opposing philosophies of science can be a catalyst and even a necessary ingredient for progress.

The history of wireless technology cannot be separated from the history of wireless business. Technology harnesses science to create valuable products and services. Business delivers those products and services to customers. Before a technology comes to life, someone has to determine who needs it and what they’re going to do with it. It’s also business’s job to figure out how best to package and distribute technology—how to get it in the hands of as many people as possible in a form they can use.

The story of wireless is fascinating and inspiring, and the technology should be celebrated. Great technology is every bit as creative as great art. While we can often perceive the creativity in a work of art directly, we usually need to know the story behind a technology to fully appreciate the creativity that went into its development.

No one has figured out how to bottle and sell creativity, but the history of wireless provides important clues about its sources. There are lessons about persistence; luck and preparedness; synthesizing ideas; challenging common assumptions; and more.

The first decision for anyone writing history is deciding where to begin. A history of wireless communications could begin with the first person to commercialize the technology, Guglielmo Marconi. Or it could start with Heinrich Hertz, the first scientist to create and detect radio waves. Why not go back further? After all, Hertz was only verifying James Clerk Maxwell’s theory of the electromagnetic field. The dilemma is that there would not have been a Marconi without a Hertz, nor a Hertz without a Maxwell, nor a Maxwell without a Faraday.

I chose to start with the debate between Luigi Galvani and Alessandro Volta that led to the invention of the battery. (Galvani actually witnessed wireless communications but did not understand its significance.) Once investigators were armed with a source of continuous current, the discovery of electromagnetism became almost inevitable.

The narrative proceeds to Michael Faraday, the great experimentalist who added more to our knowledge of magnetism and electricity than anyone before or since. Faraday laid the foundation for James Clerk Maxwell, who translated Faraday’s observed facts into the symbolic language of equations and assembled them into a comprehensive theory of electromagnetism—an achievement that, ironically, might have been disowned by the strict empiricist Faraday.

A note about terminology: most early scientists were known as “natural philosophers.” That term is used here, as well, because that’s what investigators such as Michael Faraday wanted to be called. Faraday detested the word “physicist.” I’ve also kept the jargon to a minimum; however, some of it is unavoidable. Most concepts are explained in place and reviewed in the Glossary.

Faraday did science in the laboratory; Maxwell did science in his head. Heinrich Hertz proved that Maxwell’s fertile imagination produced something concrete. There really are electromagnetic waves that propagate through free space.

Next the journey takes us on an important detour. Wireless communications is technology for conveying human intelligence. There would be no wireless telegraph without Samuel F.B. Morse’s wired telegraph and there would be no wireless telephone without Alexander Graham Bell’s wired telephone. The stories behind these two great inventions are essential to the history of wireless.

The idea seems obvious today but taking wireless out of the laboratory, fashioning it to serve specific applications, and offering it for sale initially faced tremendous resistance. With the telegraph going great guns, Guglielmo Marconi struggled to build the first wireless business. He built it around a technology—spark transmission—that would prove a dead end. (At least, temporarily; more than a century later a technology called ultra wideband is emerging that uses spark-like signals.)

That brings us to several lesser known names: the people who put wireless on the right technological footing. Reginald Fessenden and Edwin H. Armstrong led the way. Fessenden understood that wireless needed to be based on continuous waves rather than sparks. Armstrong took the vacuum tubes invented by John Ambrose Fleming (the valve) and Lee de Forest (the Audion) and built vastly superior transmitters and receivers. Amateur radio operators—Armstrong was one of them—contributed numerous refinements.

David Sarnoff thought about becoming an engineer, but he ended up becoming the prototype for today’s high-tech business leaders. He was a hands-on executive who understood that success requires the right technology, the right products, and the right marketing. He was also one of the first business leaders to successfully navigate the hazardous waters of intellectual property, government policy and regulation, and unscrupulous competition. During this era the word “radio” gradually replaced the word “wireless.”

Wireless underwent a dramatic transformation in the years leading up to World War II. The wireless market, once the exclusive domain of entrepreneurs and small businesses, became a playground for big corporations. New technology was developed by teams. It becomes harder to identify individual inventors, but they are still there.

The aftermath of World War II saw the commercialization of frequency modulation, mobile radio, television, and mobile telephone. Less well known, it was also the gestation period for the wideband radio technology that later (after being declassified by the U.S. government) enabled unlicensed wireless LANs, the Global Positioning System (GPS), and third generation (3G) cellular systems.

We finally arrive at the modern era of wireless. It would be difficult if not impossible to recount this part of the story without research at the frontlines of development. Fortunately, several leading actors—including Andrew Viterbi, Martin Cooper, and Donald Cox—contributed to my research.

It would be hard to exaggerate the impact of cellular telephone on culture and the global economy. Ironically, its development was largely hidden from view—and its commercialization was significantly delayed. Perhaps that explains why it has grown way beyond the most optimistic forecasts. [There are now over 4 billion mobile phone subscribers.]

The historic role of industry standards must also be acknowledged. A degree of conformity is required so that products from different manufacturers can talk to each other. But it would be remiss to deny the impetus of proprietary technologies and business contrarians. The evolution of wireless continues to be driven by the clash of opposing ideas.

By no means has the era of individual discoverers and inventors come to an end. The current industry is obsessed with planning, and much is already decided about the next generation of wireless technology. Or so the experts think. Even the best planning cannot prevent unexpected twists and turns in the road ahead.

The book concludes by identifying some key lessons. How did the science behind wireless technology evolve? Why did some technologies succeed and others fail? And what can scientists, inventors, and entrepreneurs learn from the history of wireless about creativity? The history of wireless provides a treasure trove of lessons about how to avoid pitfalls—and how to succeed in science and business.

The History and Future of Wireless, Chapter 13

nospam@example.com (Ira Brodsky) — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 16:04:00 -0500

This post is the thirteenth in a series based on my book, The History of Wireless: How Creative Minds Produced Technology for the Masses. Next week I’ll wrap up the series with some thoughts about human creativity.

Wireless: The Next Generation

Creators of the 1960s television series Star Trek guessed that centuries of technological development would yield clamshell devices that look much like today’s mobile phones. But don’t be fooled: Star Trek communicators use subspace (faster than light) transmission to communicate at great distances with zero latency. In Star Trek: the Next Generation, handheld communicators are replaced with badge communicators featuring a built-in, universal language translator.

However, strip away subspace transmission and the universal translator, and you are left with a phone that even today’s entry-level users in developing countries would look down on.

What, if anything, did Star Trek’s creators miss? I predict that in two or three centuries communicators will include a computer-brain interface for the ultimate in multimedia communications... with selectable background, theater, and being there modes, of course.

Getting back to Earth… Today’s mobile phones range from ultra low cost units (free to subscribers and a throwaway after two years) supporting voice and text messaging to mid-range multimedia phones with built-in digital cameras and color displays to smart phones designed to interoperate with desktop PCs and the Web. Over the next five years, expect mobile phones at all price levels to become more intelligent, more multimedia, and more interconnected with other devices, networks, and services.

Video displays for mobile phones are evolving along multiple paths. The main challenges are achieving an acceptable viewing experience while minimizing power consumption and cost. Three development paths that look promising (and that I discuss in the book) are: displays that use ambient light, projection displays, and retinal projection displays.

Another challenge for small mobile devices is ease of use. Telephone keypads are fine for entering numbers, but cumbersome for entering text. Some handsets feature voice recognition capability, though it’s most reliable for specific functions such as dialing numbers and accessing address book entries. Indexing software will help users quickly find and use handset functions. For example, when the user enters the word “camera” a menu of camera tasks appears. The key to positive user experiences is minimizing the number of key clicks required per task.

Unfortunately, battery technology is evolving more slowly than electronics. Most recent improvements in battery life have been achieved through greater semiconductor integration and better power management. Though fuel cells promise up to a 20x improvement over lithium-ion batteries, they require complex “micro-plumbing” and are years away from general use.

What about the radio technology? Wireless entrepreneurs have long dreamed of using wireless to replace wires. However, the dream has been thwarted by a persistent performance gap. When wireless LANs were introduced in the early 1990s, most could not deliver one-tenth the throughput of inexpensive Ethernet LANs running 10 megabits/s over twisted pair cables. As wireless LANs slowly climbed to 10 megabits/s, wired LANs raced ahead to even faster speeds: Fast Ethernet (100 megabits/s), Gigabit Ethernet, and 10 Gigabit Ethernet.

In the mid-1990s, Dr. Greg Raleigh realized that with the proper signal processing algorithms and multiple antennas at both ends of a wireless link, multipath propagation (normally an impairment) could be harnessed to dramatically increase the speed and range of wireless LANs. Raleigh’s MIMO (pronounced my-moh) technology is the centerpiece of the new 802.11n wireless LAN standard, supporting speeds up to 600 megabits/s, and a key component of fourth generation (4G) mobile phone standards. MIMO technology will enable home entertainment networks and make mobile multimedia more affordable.

Two new short-range wireless technologies look promising: ultra wideband (UWB) and near field communications (NFC). Ultra wideband uses narrow pulses or very wide channels (>500 MHz) to send data at high speeds without interfering with other devices and services. Speeds in the gigabit/s range are possible.

While UWB can be used for specialized applications such as radar and medical diagnostics, it offers a Bluetooth-on-steroids capability for mobile handsets. UWB is being embraced for transferring multimedia content between handsets and PCs; using handsets to drive large video displays; personal area social networking between handsets; and handset-to-kiosk communications. WiMedia is an ultra wideband-based standard that has been selected by both the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) and the USB Implementers Forum as the foundational technology for their high-speed wireless solutions.

Do handsets really need a short-range wireless link running hundreds of megabits per second or faster? It’s all about quick content transfers. For example, assume a user wants to download several albums of music from a PC to a handset or PDA before heading out the door. It will take several minutes at Bluetooth speeds, but mere seconds at UWB data rates.

NFC supports wireless communications at very short distances (up to about ten inches), primarily for secure transactions. The NFC-equipped handset is waved past or tapped against a point of sale terminal, a vending machine, or a poster equipped with a tiny NFC chip. For example, NFC can be used to pay tolls or download URLs for further information.

Wireless may reach a technology plateau at some point down the road. But for now, I see only accelerated evolution ahead.

Next time: Lessons in Creativity

The History and Future of Wireless, Chapter 12

nospam@example.com (Ira Brodsky) — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 15:35:45 -0500

This post is the twelfth in a series based on my book, The History of Wireless: How Creative Minds Produced Technology for the Masses, published in 2008. Each week I’ll present the most interesting and surprising facts about the history and future of wireless from one of fourteen chapters.

The World Reaches 4 Billion Mobile Phone Subscribers

The digital mobile phone is one of the greatest success stories in the history of technology. According to the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), there are now more than 4 billion mobile phone subscribers. (China recently surpassed the 600 million subscriber mark.) Digital technology has driven down the cost of feature-rich handsets and driven up the capacity of mobile phone networks. It’s generally believed that, globally, more people access the Internet from mobile phones than from PCs.

The dominant standard, GSM, was developed by committee in Europe and proved a boon to companies such as Nokia and Ericsson. It’s often said that a good standard is a prerequisite to market growth. That may be true, but there was another key factor that contributed to GSM’s success. GSM licenses were awarded to multiple operators in each country, putting the final nail in the coffin of the state-owned telephone monopoly. GSM also inaugurated continent-wide roaming, and the switch to digital enabled higher network capacity and rapid handset cost reduction.

Ironically, the U.S. was slower to develop and implement a digital standard because it had a coast-to-coast analog standard with plenty of subscribers. There was reluctance to fix something that didn’t appear broken. However, that was an illusion: back then subscribers were so desperate for mobile phone service that they put up with noise, dropped calls, and high prices.

Then a fight broke out over digital standards. The U.S. ended up with two standards. One was based on a technology (time division multiple access, or TDMA) similar to, but not compatible with, GSM. The other was an unproven technology, using spread spectrum radio, developed by San Diego-based Qualcomm. It is called code division multiple access (CDMA). Critics said CDMA wouldn’t work, and some even accused Qualcomm of fraud.

Today, there are over 500 million CDMA users worldwide. That would normally be a very impressive number, but it’s small when compared to the number of GSM users. However, even Europe chose CDMA as its next generation (third generation, or 3G) standard. So unless operators leapfrog to 4G standards, CDMA should enjoy significant growth over the next several years.

During the mid-1980s there was a big push by landline telephone companies to digitize the so-called “last mile.” Integrated services digital network (ISDN) would have enabled a host of end-to-end digital services. It never took off in the landline phone business, but it is very much in evidence in the mobile phone business. Today, many features that are extras for landline users are standard features on mobile phones, such as caller ID, three-way conferencing, and call waiting. Plus, mobile phones can do text messaging, take and upload pictures, and run applications such as games and turn-by-turn driving directions.

Digital wireless has also enabled wireless LANs, wireless personal area networks (WPANs), and the Global Positioning System (GPS). Each of these technologies had to endure a long gestation; now they are near-ubiquitous.

The Internet gave us speed-of-light markets and citizen journalists. Digital wireless is enabling us to take the Internet with us everywhere and at all times.

Next time - Wireless: the Next Generation

The History and Future of Wireless, Chapter 11

nospam@example.com (Ira Brodsky) — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 14:27:33 -0500

This post is the eleventh in a series based on my book, The History of Wireless: How Creative Minds Produced Technology for the Masses, published in 2008. Each week I’ll present the most interesting and surprising facts about the history and future of wireless from one of fourteen chapters.

Bell Invented the Landline Phone, Ring Invented the Mobile Phone. No Kidding.

Cellular telephone was first described in a Bell Laboratories’ internal memorandum written by Douglas H. Ring in 1947. The memo laid out the essential elements of cellular radio: divide a city into cells, use low-power transmitters, and handoff calls from one frequency to another as mobile users travel from cell to cell. In theory, the cells can be divided over and over to achieve ever-greater capacity.

Ring, who passed away in 2000, never received the honor he deserved. Most cellular telephone histories—Bell Labs is responsible here—refer to him only as “D.H. Ring” if they mention him at all.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) was for many years an obstacle to introducing the cellular telephone service. Regulation of the wireless spectrum has always been contentious, and though course corrections have been made over the years, the FCC has never been able to keep up with rapidly evolving technologies and markets. The FCC likes to pretend in hindsight that its leadership made cellular telephone successful. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The old FCC saw its main job as policing the radio spectrum. Consequently, the FCC was reluctant to introduce new services that would create more work for its staff. The FCC dragged its feet not only on cellular telephone, but services such as FM radio, television, and unlicensed radio.

The cellular telephone technical standard became a battle between AT&T and Motorola. The AT&T and Motorola cellular visions differed in several key respects. While AT&T focused exclusively on car phones, Motorola was convinced handheld subscriber devices were coming.

Motorola’s vision of handheld mobile phones, brought to life by Martin Cooper, heralded a future of personal communications. As Cooper later observed, cellular brought about a shift in which phones became associated with individuals rather than locations. Cooper placed the first official call from a portable cell phone in 1973, astonishing New Yorkers as he walked around the city talking on a phone. Today, people would be equally astonished to see someone using a mobile phone weighing almost two pounds.

The first commercial cellular telephone networks came online in Bahrain, Japan, and Mexico. But these were extremely limited systems. Then the U.S. truly fell behind. The first robust cellular telephone services were launched in Scandinavia in 1981.

What saved the U.S.’s lead in mobile telephone? The U.S.—thanks to its broad geography, extensive network of roads, and middle class prosperity—was the most mobile society on the planet. People in several professions could justify the high cost of the service just in terms of the time it saved them.

Scandinavia didn’t miss out completely, however. Nokia would go on to become the dominant supplier of mobile phones.

Nokia’s roots trace back more than a century. In 1865, mining engineer Fredrik Idestam started a paper mill based on a more cost-effective process. It was an immediate success. Idestam changed the company name to Nokia AB in 1871. “Nokia” was the local name for the marten, a northern weasel hunted for its sable-like fur. A cousin to the wolverine, it is also a carnivorous predator. Perhaps Idestam wanted people to think of Nokia as valuable to investors and customers and fearful to competitors. Or perhaps he just liked furry critters.

Nokia pioneered analog cellular phones in 1979 with Mobira Oy, a joint venture of Nokia and Finnish television manufacturer Salora. Nokia developed a digital telephone switch and the Mobira 450 Nordic Mobile Telephone (NMT) car phone in 1982. Two years later, it introduced the Mobira Talkman, a portable mobile phone for the NMT system. This was followed in 1987 by the 800-gram Mobira Cityman, the first handheld NMT phone.

Nokia succeeded, in part, because Finland had a more competitive telecommunications market than other European countries (where telephone service was often a government-run monopoly). The decision to aggressively pursue portable and handheld phones early—despite initial high costs and limited demand—positioned Nokia to benefit from the explosive subscriber growth ignited by digital cellular several years later.

Next time: Going Digital

The History and Future of Wireless, Chapter 10

nospam@example.com (Ira Brodsky) — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 17:01:23 -0500

This post is the tenth in a series based on my book, The History of Wireless: How Creative Minds Produced Technology for the Masses, published in 2008. Each week I’ll present the most interesting and surprising facts about the history and future of wireless from one of fourteen chapters.

The Mobile Radio Pioneers

Now is a good time to remember that bad economies are merely crucibles for the next crop of brilliant entrepreneurs. The development of mobile radio started before the Great Depression and received its biggest boost after World War II, but its leaders were made during times of economic hardship and transition. The stars in this industrial drama are the people who built Motorola, LM Ericsson, and the transistor.

Paul Galvin was just trying to be a successful small business owner. His first efforts ended in failure. Just as the Galvin Manufacturing Corporation began to enjoy a boom in its consumer radio business, the stock market went bust. It was 1929.

Galvin entered the car radio business in the early days of the Great Depression. At the time, car radios were aftermarket products, and Galvin recognized that he could succeed by bringing down the cost. Galvin renamed the company Motorola and developed relationships with dealers and distributors around the country. By 1936, the economy was starting to recover and Galvin was thriving. But there were more challenges ahead.

During World War II, Motorola developed the SCR-300 backpack two-way FM radio in a deal with the U.S. Army. Now the company was positioned for growth. But it was Galvin’s son Robert who turned Motorola into a radio behemoth, growing sales 30 times the level he inherited in 1958. Key to that success was the creation of internal, competing R&D teams and a commitment to ongoing innovation.

A much older telephone company, LM Ericsson of Sweden, would become Motorola’s fiercest competitor in mobile radio. Lars Magnus Ericsson started a telephone repair business in 1876. He also produced what might be considered the first mobile telephone for consumers. Except that this “mobile” telephone used wires. Ericsson’s wife Hilda liked to go for long drives in the country. Ericsson gave her a telephone with wires attached to two long poles. When his wife needed to make a phone call, she could pull over to the side of the road and use the poles to connect her phone to overhead telephone wires.

Like Motorola, Ericsson succeeded by doing what was needed to survive. The two firms would eventually become bitter rivals in both the land mobile radio (e.g., police radio) and cellular telephone businesses. The tactics employed by their land mobile radio sales teams often resulted in lawsuits.

Keep in mind that Motorola began making mobile radios in the vacuum tube era. Even the SCR-300 backpack radio used tubes. Invented in late 1947 by a team at Bell Labs, the transistor would require a full decade to perfect and commercialize. Sure enough, it was just as transistors started to gain traction that Robert Noyce and Jack Kilby, working independently, developed the first integrated circuits.

To the pioneers, hardship and change are just opportunities.

Next time: Birth of the Cell Phone