Talk:Mobile phone/Archive 1

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Is this for real?

"Mobile phones have a long and varied history that stretches back to the early 1970's. During this time advancement was slow due to the extreme marijuana smoking."

Am I the only person who distinguishes between mobile phones, that have their own numbers and use many telco operated base stations, and portable phones, which have only one base station through which they connect to a landline? (Not sure if this terminology is common, or just my idiolect...) -- SJK

No, I also draw this distinction, and I think most telephone companies and the industry generally does as well. kiwiinapanic 22:27 Jan 19, 2003 (UTC)
    • A Mobile Phone is often called a Cellular Phone and is one that can be taken anywhere in the service area and it will work.
    • A Portable Phone is perhaps better described as a cordless phone and is associated with a fixed telephone landline. It can only be operated in close proximity to (less than 100 metres of) it's base station, and generally only works within a house, bulding or property.

I disagree with:

  • "Reasons advanced for this include incomplete coverage, fragmented networks making roaming difficult, inferior network technology, relatively high minimum monthly service charges, relatively low-cost fixed-line networks, and the car-centric nature of US society."

Other countries have these features too, yet they have much higher cellphone penetration. I suspect the basic problem is one of marketing and pricing flexibility. A car-centric culture should drive up market penetration. After all the first Mobile Phones were built into cars in the USA - particularly the rich in LA and New York. I can remember them being shown in 1960s and 1970s (Hollywood) TV dramas when the actors would ask for the Mobile Operator to make a phone call - not a two way radio either. Technology should not be a problem as the new networks can overlay the old ones, and do. Roaming was built into the original AMPS system from the start because the American networks demanded it. In Europe, one can travel all over the continent with a mobile phone, though each country has its own national network - so it is not network fragmentation. Coverage in many countries is not 100%, it just needs to cover the main population centres and highways. Anyway, how often do people really travel outside their own home service area. And if you do then there is voicemail to catch those missed calls, which is almost a given feature. Many people have both a mobile phone and access to a fixed-line phone, so I am not sure that the two service actually compete - they are rather complimentary.

What is left? - service charges - i.e. it is a marketing and regulatory issue. The US mobile phone companies have not been brave enough to risk an antitrust lawsuit and ruthlessly discount to capture customers. Whether this is a good or bad thing remains to be seen. It might result in the US having the ability to implement the most technically advanced network, as they will not be so locked into one technology and there will still be new customers to put on to a new network. kiwiinapanic 23:46 Jan 19, 2003 (UTC)

I don't know if this article is simply outdated, or is just uninformed, regarding the technologies used by modern wireless phones. Satellite phones are certainly not the only alternative to cellular phones--many, if not most, wireless phones being sold today use "PCS" technology instead of cellular technology. (Caveat: My knowledge is limited to the US market--I don't know what technologies are used elsewhere.) Niteowlneils 21:41, 29 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Personal Communications Service is still cellular Edward 22:02, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)
PCS is a marketing name for cellular service on the 1900 MHz band in North America. The same services can be (and are) provided on the 800/850 MHz band in North America and 900 and 1800 MHz elsewhere. --Nate Silva 21:23, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)


should be clarified a bit:

Even if a connection was active, call or packet handovers would happen so often as to introduce many issues with signal processing, network subscriber handling, etc. It would be next to impossible for a cellular network to handle a plane full of mobile subscribers even if not all have an active connection at the time.

Mozzerati 21:57, 2004 May 21 (UTC)


This page needs much copy editing, which I'm planning to do (soon)

  • clear out any cellular network explanations now that there is a cellular networks page separately except where required for simple understanding
  • join various fragments into complete paragraphs
  • reduce redundancy (e.g. cellular vs. satellite is explained multiple times)
  • make the intro more enticing by concentrating on what mobile phones do.
  • make a clear comparison with related technologies and terms.
  • move historical text in cell phone section into history section..
  • group all health stuff together
  • etc...


Any comments or warnings appreciated (but I'm planning to edit "boldly") Mozzerati 16:39, 2004 Jul 4 (UTC)

There's been some reverts recently about the power output of cellphones, so I tried to find more info to settle the question. I can't find a definitive source for this information though. Anyone? --Ilya 20:46, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)


for GSM, at least, it's defined in the standards. You are looking for Powerclass (or something similar). On http://www.3gpp.org/. N.B. that will be maximum power; remember actual average power is much less (or you would use your battery up and stop calling and stop being profitable :-). According to my memory, the 900 -> 1900 edit was just wrong though. It has to be someone who thought 900 was a typo for the American frequencies. I think that 1900 phones have noticably lower maximum power than 900 phones. I was going to revert it myself, but I decided to look it up to be absolutely sure and got distracted. Mozzerati 20:54, 2004 Aug 4 (UTC)
If I'm reading section 4.1 from [1] correctly, it goes up to 8 watts for GSM 900. From a practical perspective I agree that this is moot since the power output is for sure quite low on a regular basis. But all this talk about health hazards is probably theoretical anyway. --Ilya 23:47, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)
It's little more subtle (you have to spot the word "handset" in the article :-)... The key section is 02.06 section 5 which says "A GSM handheld MS shall only be of GSM class 4 or 5." this approximately means that only a dedicated car phone with a separate antenna may have a power up to 8 watts, but a standard hand portable mobile phone will less (max 2Watts). Remembering the inverse square law, the power from an antenna 1 metre away (typical for car antenna) is 1/100 of the power from an antenna 10 cm away (below about 10cm we are in the near-field region so this doesn't work), so car phones are pretty much irrelevant in terms of energy absorption even before we talk about the attenuation from the car body. That gives us a 2 watt maximum for GSM 900, and 1 watt for 1800/1900. Incidentally, if I understand right, this is the instantaneous power, so we could divide by eight (timeslots) to get the average power output. The fact that 1900 car phones can have a maximum of 2 Watts output means that I withdraw "just wrong" above and say "subtly wrong". Mozzerati 07:00, 2004 Aug 5 (UTC)
Awesome. Thank you for the clarification. --Ilya 07:30, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Contents

Request for information

I'd like to see a list of cell phone related laws here. For example, in New York it's illegal to drive a car while talking on a cell phone. Do any other States have such a law? It'd be great to have a list (perhaps on its own page, linked from here -- Mobile Phone Laws or some such).

germany (OK - another country, not another state...): Illegal to use a cell phone while driving anything (including bicycles), except if you are using a (er... what's english for Freisprechanlage?) headset (?). --Xeper 17:08, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)
It should be clarified that in the state of New York it's against the law to use a hand held cell phone while driving. It's not illegal to use a hands free phone when operating a vehicle. User:SteggallSteggall 13:03, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I see a lot of shops around advertising mobile phone unlocking - can somebody please explain unlocking? Thanks. --62.231.39.150 16:21, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I believe this is related to SIM lock, in which a carrier locks their phones to their network, so you can't use that phone with another network. Needless to say, it's popular to people who change their service. --YoungFreud 17:37, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)
It's illegal in Australia to use a mobile (cell) phone while driving. User:The Living Peanut/sig 11:48, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

cell phone fashion

I think this page should include a discussion of "cell phone fashion", particularly in the U.S.

Distinguishing general network from devices

This is a good comprehensive article, but I agree with earlier comments that redundancy needs to be reduced. Tempting as it might be, this page shouldnt be used to describe every single aspects of mobile phones.

I suggest only putting information about the mobile device on here and move network stuff to one of the many good technicial pages. Also, I think there needs to be a new page describing the activities of mobile operators which pulls together some of the commercial stuff like the section on roaming

ChrisUK 13:02, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Removing section about future prospects

I don't think a section about future speculation is appropriate for an encyclopedia. If and when some of these features appear, they will be captured and documented in this (or other) pages. I am proposing making drastic cuts in this area, leaving only a reference to the fact that active R&D is going on in this area, rather than it being a dead end topic.

I don't know if there are any other precedents/examples in the wikipedia where future events are speculated upon. I myself have actually included a 'futures' section in articles before, but that is only to indicate whether or not development is happening in that area (see intelligent network for an example).

What are your views? Do we substantially remove this section?

ChrisUK 20:42, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)


I support; at least that for which a good reference can't be found should be deleted. "Wikipedia isn't original research". Moreover, much of the stuff ends up very speculative and pseudoscientific. It's difficult to tell those things like disposable phones (which seem to have been a deliberate con) from thing which are just speculation (like phones which manage your lifestyle) from real development (like camera phones & smart phones a few years ago). Better to be very careful in what is left in. Mozzerati

I have made an attempt to prune out some wild claims (star trek, embedded human devices etc). I have set out a structure for trying to highlight genuine areas of R&D. I think it still needs more work though ChrisUK 00:14, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Non-technical overview needed

Could someone give a concise explanation of what GSM, GPRS, TDMA, PCS, CDMA, 3G, PTT, SIP, RTP, terms in Category:Mobile_telephony_standards, terms in Category:Channel_access_methods and related terms all mean? What seems to be sorely needed is a chart that clearly shows which Xs are types of Ys, and perhaps another that shows which protocols run on top of what other protocols? It would be nice to have a coherent explanation of what level of abstraction each protocol works at (e.g. this protocol is what modulates the radio signal, this one is what establishes and maintains the phone-to-phone connection, etc.) and why they are needed (e.g. multiplexing is needed so that multiple signals can share the air; direct-sequence spread spectrum reduces harmful interference that other devices experience, frequency hopping increases privacy and interference from other devices, etc.) Which technologies are analog, and which are digital? What about carrying voice and/or data? Which are also used outside of wireless telephony? When were they finalized? How do these all relate to frequency bands (e.g. GSM_frequency_ranges)? Where do these frequency bands lie in the context of TV, radio, 802.11, cordless phones, visible light, etc.? What geographic areas, which companies, and about how many people use which mobile phone technologies?

For example, it seems TDMA, CDMA, and FDMA are both physical-layer multiplexing schemes, TDMA being time-dividing, CDMA being code-dividing, and FDMA being frequency-dividing. spread spectrum. TDMA is often used to mean IS-136. IS-136 is apparently the same thing as D-AMPS, even though the D-AMPS redirects to AMPS? CDMA appears to be a form of Direct-sequence spread spectrum, even though it links to the spread spectrum article, which confusingly includes discussion of frequency-hopping spread spectrum techniques.

I found the existing collection of articles really hard to piece together in a coherent way in my brain. I have a college degree in EECS; I can only imagine how confused the average reader must feel.

Non-technical readers would probably greatly benefit from a simple step-by-step explanation of what happens when they place or receive a cell phone call. -- Beland 00:07, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)

This is a good set of points and I have started to make some changes on the GSM core network page to reflect these comments. I agree that some kind of page stitching it all together is needed. However I don't agree it should be done on this page. If you look back at the history you will see a huge page with everything possible about mobile phones written up. We then spent some time in the last two months boiling down the content and moving appropriate stuff to other pages. The result is an article which mostly centres on the mobile phone as a device and cross references topics where necessary. Judging by the edits that have taken place since then, this article is a lot more manageable and readable. Please can we start a separate discussion section on this page proposing new content etc before it is added in ChrisUK 01:24, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)
By the way, there is a description of a cell phone call set up on the GSM services page - it may need making less technical but I'd rather see that bit hacked aroubd than a brand new page created ChrisUK 01:24, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I believe this article should have a mention, especially in security concerns, about cellular phone cloning. I recall this being a popular crime a few years back, when cellular phones where really expensive, and included some rather ingenous methods of copying the phones data. --YoungFreud 17:37, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Charging for Incoming calls

In Canada and the United States, it is common practise to charge a mobile phone user for both the outgoing AND incoming usage of his phone. So, a Canadian or US mobile phone user actually pays for a call when he answers one made to his phone, as well as when he makes a call from his phone. Additionally, most mobile phone services will require new users to sign a contract promising them a minimum time period with which they will continue to be their customer (usually 12 to 24 months). If a person wishes to terminate service before the end of the contract, a cancellation penalty applies, which can be as much as paying off the remaining time left on the contract. It should be noted that once a person has been with a mobile phone provider for the initial contract period, they are usually not required to sign another contract to continue using them. If, at that time, they decide to switch to another provider, they will usually have to sign another contract promising to stay with that provider for a minimum period.

I know that charging for incoming calls is not universal. What about requiiring a minimum period of use? Is that the norm in other countries?

Take note that I'm talking about "the norm". I'm sure that there are providers that don't require a contract and some that may not charge for some incoming calls. But the vast majority do charge for incoming calls, and most providers do require a contract (or else charge much higher rates for their calls). Steggall Date: 21 Feb 2005, 13:45 (UTC)

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