Digital Communication System (DCS)
Mobile Device Trends
Short Message System (SMS)

Mobile Phones become a mass market

In 1990, before the GSM network was rolled out, people were still cautiously optimistic about the mobile phone market. It was estimated/hoped that there could be 40 million mobile phone subscribers for the GSM system at the turn of the century. In any case, it was assumed that business people in particular would use mobile communications. Such a phone would still be unaffordable for normal people. As it turned out, this assumption was quite wrong.

For example, the competition that has recently prevailed in the mobile phone market has been underestimated. There were at least two mobile phone operators everywhere who tried to retain as many customers as possible. The prices for a subscription fell year after year. There was also a new element to mobile phone contracts. With a 2 year contract you got a mobile phone for free. This in turn led to mobile phone users getting the latest mobile phone every 2 years, which fueled the market for terminal devices.

What about capacity? It could have been assumed, that capacity of the network would soon become a limiting issue as it was the case for analogue systems. However, this did not seem to happen. This was probably also due to the fact that “normal users” used the telephone more to be reachable and less to make active calls. The landline telephone still dominated.

Digital Communication System DCS

Before capacity bottlenecks could arise, new frequency bands were soon added. In Europe, the so-called DCS frequencies in the 1800 MHz range were allocated in 1994. So twice as high as for GSM. In Germany, the old naming conventions continued. The GSM network was also known as the D-Netz (as the successor of the C-Netz), namely D1 Telekom and D2 Mannesmann. The new frequency band was now called the E-Netz, although not much had actually changed in the standard. There were quickly mobile devices that switched to 1800 MHz. There were also soon dual band devices that could handle both 900 MHz and 1800 MHz. The range near 2 GHz was also popular in the USA. There it was called PCS (Public Communication Service) and it was in the 1900 MHz range. Through PCS, GSM also established itself in the United States in direct competition with CDMA.

There were soon two providers of DCS in Germany. The higher frequencies in DCS meant smaller cells because of poorer wave propagation. Therefore, DCS was initially not as powerful as classic GSM, especially in terms of coverage. But the DCS providers compensated for this disadvantage with more attractive prices, which further fueled the market.

Mobile device trends

New devices were presented annually, especially at the CeBIT fair in Hanover. The main trend here was the size of the device. Each provider tried to bring the smallest device onto the market. This was achieved through the integration and the continuously improved technologies.

A real pioneer for small handheld devices was Motorola. As early as 1996, Motorola released a folding cell phone called StarTac. In the US such a phone was called a clamshell phone. It was initially only available for AMPS but was also released for GSM two years later. This phone was only 120 cc in size and weighed an incredible 90 grams with a respectable talk and standby time. Additionally it was the first cell phone to have a vibrate alert.

The StarTac came with a special belt clip into which the phone could glide in. When there was an incoming call, it was possible to pull the phone out of the clip and flip it open with only one hand. With the opening of the phone, that call was accepted. On the other side, the phone was terminated by closing the phone.

The StarTac was very popular, especially in the USA, and was one of the greatest gadgets you could own in the 1990s. In Europe, however, it was not so popular. For any reason the European did not like folding phones that much.

Devices from Nokia, such as the legendary 8110, a slider phone, were more popular in Europe. Here a slider was pushed over the keyboard. As with the clamshell phone, this protected the keyboard and you could answer or hang up a call by opening and closing it. The Nokia 8110, which was released in 1996, was 170 cc in size and very light at 145 g. As mentioned, it was the first phone having an ARM processor.

What was special about the 8110, in addition to its size and weight, was its design. This applied to practically all Nokia models. They somehow looked more elegant than the competition.

The 8110 became famous thanks to an innovative action film that was released in 1999, the Matrix. Morpheus and Neo, the legendary characters of this movie used the Nokia phone to contact each other. Films like this helped to give Nokia the aura that only companies like Sony previously had. This led to Nokia overtaking Motorola to become the world’s largest mobile phone manufacturer in 1998.

In 1997, Philips created a small sensation at the CeBit. Although Philips was somewhat of an outsider in the mobile phone market, it surprised everyone with the smallest phone at that time, the Genie. It was smaller than 100 cc and weighed about 95 grams. For answering and hanging up, Philips came up with a pop-out microphone which could be extended at the bottom end like a ballpoint pen. Later, the genius appeared without this microphone and was therefore a little smaller.

Philips didn’t hold that record for long. Ericsson came out with the world’s smallest phone the T28s in 1999. It was a “flip phone”. So a phone in which a flap covered the keyboard. Calls could be answered or ended by opening and closing the flap. The T28s weighed just 83 grams and was 72cc in size. Despite its small size, the T28s was not very popular. People spoke of a „Volvo design“, square and small windows. In fact, the T28s only had a two-line display and therefore no longer met the needs of the market.

Cell phones haven’t gotten any smaller since 1999. New applications required larger displays. Soon the mobile phone market became defined by additional functionality rather than size and price.

In 2000, Nokia was the market leader in mobile phones with 30.6%. it was followed by Motorola 14.6%, Ericsson 10%, Siemens 6.5% and Samsung 5%.

Short Message Service (SMS)

As described in the GSM Air Interface, the first two time slots in GSM are reserved exclusively for control channels. Specifically, there were the slow assigned control channels. A short-term connection can be established between the mobile phone and the base station, for example to initiate a call or to exchange information regarding reception quality. When the GSM standard was defined in the 1980s, the idea came up of using these control channels to exchange text messages between phones. This would be an additional service that mobile operators could offer. It would also allow information to be sent briefly via text between the mobile operator and the customer.

This service was called Short Message Service (SMS). It was already part of the GSM standard in 1991, but was not immediately introduced. There were also doubts as to whether such a service could really become established. It was difficult to imagine how to enter text using a cell phone.

At the turn of the millennium, young people primarily communicated with text messages instead of calls. Messaging became part of the communication culture.

From 1994 onwards, SMS was introduced across the board without much advertising. Some operators even thought about offering it for free. Nevertheless, the SMS was a success. This was probably mainly due to young people. These young people got inexpensive phones, mainly pre-paid mainly because it was possible for the parents to call them. Those clients used text messages to exchange messages with each other. This became the main way of communication for the young people. Voice calls were only used in exceptional cases. The youth also developed unprecedented abilities to type messages using the keyboard. Ultimately, you had to press a key up to four times in a row to get the correct letter. A special „SMS language“ developed among young people with a lot of abbreviations to make it short.

The network operators quickly recognized the benefits of SMS and charged relatively high prices, even though they only had to invest little for SMS. There was practically no additional load on the networks. Soon, text messaging became an equal source of income alongside voice.